On this week’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation, Jeanne interviews her best friend Tate, a graphic designer and photographer working in Phoenix, Arizona. They talk about some of Tate’s fine art photography work, including their project The Labor of Being Transgender, and spend some time discussing the nuances and challenges of medical transition for non-binary people. Tate also shares their experience being arrested during a political protest and the way the system treated them for being a trans person.
Links for Context
WPAWS (White People Against White Supremacy)
Rough Transcript
Fully edited version to come.
00;00;00;16 - 00;00;32;26
Jeanne
From Equality Arizona. You're listening to The Arizona Equals Conversation. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the interim executive director of Equality Arizona and the host of this podcast. And today, I want to wish you all a very happy holiday season. Tonight, December 14th we’ll be hosting our holiday bash and celebrating 30 years advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in Arizona. This is my last chance to invite anyone to the party, and I'd really love to see as many of you there as possible.
00;00;33;12 - 00;01;06;21
Jeanne
For all of the specifics, you can find more information on our events calendar online equalityarizona.org/events. When this episode airs, I'll be on a plane flying home from Washington, D.C., where I was invited to attend the signing of the Respect for Marriage Act in a ceremony at the White House. It's a tremendous moment for civil rights, and it's taken a fight longer than I have been alive to get us here, going to the White House as a queer person, a place I'd only ever seen before through a fence.
00;01;07;14 - 00;01;34;09
Jeanne
I chose to keep in my mind the image of the Ashes action of 1992, the year our organization was founded. It's important to me to remember that debt that we owe to the past and the debt we owe to the community around us. I have like, so much love for the queer community, and it's difficult to imagine who or where I would be without that context.
00;01;35;07 - 00;02;11;21
Jeanne
And I think that's the perfect introduction for today's guest on the podcast, my dear friend Tate Peak. I know I've mentioned this before, but Tate and I met on the day I started hormones, and it's this magical moment of serendipity that almost fades away to meaninglessness, when you look at the whole history of our friendship. But I just can't really imagine what anything about my life would be if Tate hadn't been there for it.
00;02;11;29 - 00;02;44;26
Jeanne
Right. So you can imagine how complicated it was trying to figure out how to record a normal interview with them. And so we did, two. I talked to them and forgot to ask them questions. And then we did a second interview and I asked them more normal questions. And then I edited all that together into this. And I let us break the fourth wall a few times to show those edits.
00;02;44;26 - 00;03;18;12
Jeanne
But overall, I think it comes together pretty nicely and I don't think Tate will ever listen to it. But if they do, I hope they agree. All that being said, it's still a pretty long one. So let's roll the tape, I think.
00;03;18;18 - 00;03;41;19
Tate
What am I going to say? My name is Tate Peak. I use they/them pronouns, if that's important. I'm a graphic designer and photographer and I'm trans and I'm pretty cool. So should I redo that? [Jeanne 00:03:33:14] Yeah. [Tate 00:03:34:02] Okay. Should I say I'm pretty cool, though? [Jeanne 00:03:36:12] Yeah. [Tate 00:03:36:26] Okay, So my name is Tate Peak. I'm a trans graphic designer and photographer.
00;03;41;22 - 00;03;46;09
Tate
I use they them pronouns and I'm pretty cool.
00;03;47;02 - 00;03;48;02
Jeanne
Okay. Yeah.
00;03;48;23 - 00;03;49;06
Jeanne
Thank you.
00;03;49;12 - 00;03;51;26
Tate
Yeah.
00;03;51;26 - 00;04;09;10
Jeanne
So just actually, pretty recently, you've been able to set up a career as a freelance graphic designer and photographer. Mm hmm. Tell me a little bit about the kind of work you do. And tell me a little bit about how you got into the work that you're doing.
00;04;10;04 - 00;04;16;26
Tate
All right. So the kind of work I do right now, mostly work for Equality Arizona.
00;04;18;01 - 00;04;19;02
Jeanne
That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
00;04;19;05 - 00;04;19;21
Tate
I mean, you do.
00;04;19;21 - 00;04;22;00
Jeanne
All the photos for the show are on this.
00;04;22;01 - 00;04;35;14
Tate
For the show art on this, I take event photos. I help with lots of other things. It's a big list, and there's no point in me like listing every single thing. Right. But if anyone wants to see that work, it's in my portfolio.
00;04;35;23 - 00;04;39;12
Jeanne
Yeah. Oh, so your portfolio is you have a website.
00;04;39;13 - 00;04;53;26
Tate
I do, thisistatepeak.com. It exists. And it's also my handle on everything without the dot com. Obviously that wouldn’t -- actually it would be quite funny but Twitter doesn't allow periods.
00;04;53;26 - 00;04;57;26
Jeanne
You'd have to spell out the word dot. Yeah. And that would get confusing.
00;04;57;26 - 00;05;06;21
Tate
Yeah. And there's no point in doing that. So “thisistatepeak” or thisistatepeak.com or tate@thisistatepeak.com for email.
00;05;07;10 - 00;05;17;25
Jeanne
We also did some comms related creative work together before Equality Arizona. Yes, with White PAWS. White People Against White Supremacy.
00;05;18;05 - 00;05;43;13
Tate
I made them a style guide that I have learned isn't as good. I've learned a lot of things since then, since doing the work I did there on and off. And then at Mutual Aid Phoenix and just generally throughout college and in high school, I started doing graphic design in high school as a small child. Around the same time I got into Doctor Who and started being a vegetarian.
00;05;43;18 - 00;06;01;01
Tate
There were a lot of things that happened all at once, and graphic design was one of them. I took a graphic design class. My teacher was, you know, at every high school there's like a weird teacher. There's like the weird guy, you know, they like - well you don't know but -
00;06;01;02 - 00;06;02;15
Jeanne
I mean, I don't know.
00;06;02;15 - 00;06;03;11
Tate
You can speculate.
00;06;03;14 - 00;06;11;04
Jeanne
But I've watched, like, movies and TV shows that include high schools. Yes. So like Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
00;06;11;24 - 00;06;21;06
Tate
Yes. So kind of like that. Except more like if if Shawn or Gus from Psych.
00;06;21;06 - 00;06;21;18
Jeanne
Like.
00;06;22;02 - 00;06;41;17
Tate
Was a teacher at a high school and pretty much everything else about them was the same, either of them. So, like Mr. Narducci was my my high school graphic design teacher and he wore - he would do something fun for his, like yearbook photo every year. So he wore like four polo shirts at the same time, all with
00;06;41;26 - 00;07;03;28
Tate
with the collars popped. Yeah. And these, like, ridiculous glasses. I think he takes his own photo and then sends it to the company that did the yearbooks and like, had them put it in. It was um - anyway, he was really fun and made graphic design class fun, though really different parts of graphic design than anything I do now, which is interesting.
00;07;03;28 - 00;07;09;28
Tate
So we made like I mean, he talked to us about movie posters and stuff, which is.
00;07;10;08 - 00;07;10;28
Jeanne
Oh yeah.
00;07;10;28 - 00;07;30;22
Tate
I don't do that level of like photo editing and retouching and stuff. It's not - it's a lot and it's not really where I am interested in design. Yeah, but then graduated high school. Didn't do any more art after that really, for a long time. And I went to ASU and.
00;07;30;22 - 00;07;30;29
Tate
I had like
00;07;31;10 - 00;07;32;22
Tate
12 majors.
00;07;32;23 - 00;07;36;21
Jeanne
Yeah. When you started at ASU, it wasn't graphic design, it wasn't photography. No, it.
00;07;36;21 - 00;07;57;18
Tate
No it was medicinal biochemistry. Yeah. And then I switched my major after that. Well, actually, that's not even true. I graduated a year early from high school, and so I was going to start college early. But then I broke my neck, and so I couldn't go to college right away. But when I first registered for ASU, I actually registered to major in industrial organizational psychology.
00;07;58;02 - 00;08;21;11
Tate
And then I switched to medicinal biochemistry before my actual orientation. And then I switched to psychology and then I switched to human systems engineering. And then I switched to graphic information technology. And then I was either going to do graphic design or photography, but graphic design would have taken longer and I was going to run out of my scholarship.
00;08;21;11 - 00;08;31;09
Tate
And so I decided to do photography instead, which I do love, but I do graphic design now, mostly because there isn't a lot of money in photography unless you're going to do like weddings, which.
00;08;31;22 - 00;08;39;29
Jeanne
That's not what you did when you were a photography major. You were doing something. Actually, when I think about like that, the biochemistry degree.
00;08;40;09 - 00;08;41;08
Tate
Yeah, the stuff that's.
00;08;41;09 - 00;08;43;24
Jeanne
Very chemistry focused photography.
00;08;43;29 - 00;08;51;20
Tate
I love film, I love alternative processes, I love putting chemicals on paper and seeing what they do.
00;08;51;24 - 00;08;58;16
Jeanne
Right. You did a lot of work that I think people wouldn't automatically think of when they think of You are an artist who takes photos.
00;08;58;16 - 00;09;28;09
Tate
Yeah, that almost no one actually thinks of when you say that to someone. Every time I tell someone I'm a photographer, they're like, Well, what kind of photography do you do? And I'm like, Uh, not the thing that you're going to say you do in about 5 minutes because you're going to say, Oh, well, you know, I'm a little into photography, and then someone's going to say something about like astro photography, and some of it's going to say something about - which are fine things, but just totally different than what I do. [Jeanne 00:09:27:25] Completely different.
00;09;28;09 - 00;09;31;10
Jeanne
And some of the stuff you do doesn't involve cameras.
00;09;31;20 - 00;10;06;09
Tate
Yeah, a lot of the stuff I didn’t, well my my one of my major projects didn’t. Yeah. And actually a few of them, I put cyanotypes on ceramics. That didn't require any cameras. Most alternative processes don't necessarily require a camera that you can use anyway. It's a lot of fun. I think that’s the kind of stuff I wish I could be doing still, but it's incredibly expensive to set up at your own home and then you have to like, market yourself in a whole different way and it's the pandemic and people are always short for cash.
00;10;06;09 - 00;10;20;06
Tate
They're not really buying art in the same way as ever. Yeah, and most people want to buy digital things. They don't actually like physical copies of things these days, you know? NFT’s. [Jeanne 00:10:19:00] Well, and.
00;10;20;06 - 00;10;24;10
Jeanne
You know, the stuff that you're making is really inherently physical.
00;10;24;23 - 00;10;26;07
Tate
Yeah, and and unique.
00;10;26;13 - 00;10;33;23
Jeanne
People could buy a print, but a lot of it is about the actual chemical reactions of, of the paper and the light and everything.
00;10;33;23 - 00;10;53;20
Tate
So yeah, and there's always a question of like, well, if I make this like one of a kind thing because most of these things are totally one of a kind that I - that I made, if I digitize it, and then I print it again because it's the only way to reproduce it, like, should I even? That's, that's a conversation I've had in my head a million times.
00;10;53;20 - 00;10;54;03
Jeanne
Oh, yeah.
00;10;54;08 - 00;11;08;28
Tate
Of like, does it ruin the specialness of this thing to digitize it and then reprint it on an inkjet printer? Yeah. Is that like sacrilegious or something to the medium?
00;11;09;06 - 00;11;27;17
Jeanne
Well, I'm thinking about the Labor of Being Transgender project that you did, and part of the actual creative process was scanning the lumen prints. That's true. And then turning those into print prints. Yeah, from a printer. Print prints from a printer? Mm hmm. Yeah.
00;11;28;02 - 00;11;29;10
Tate
That's proper terminology.
00;11;29;23 - 00;11;34;09
Jeanne
Yeah, for sure. I sat next to you in a lab sometimes, so its almost like I have a degree.
00;11;34;11 - 00;11;36;27
Tate
Yeah. Where I was making those print prints from a printer?
00;11;36;27 - 00;11;42;06
Jeanne
Yeah, Yeah, for sure. So I'm totally qualified to have a technical conversation about this.
00;11;42;06 - 00;11;42;22
Tate
Absolutely.
00;11;42;22 - 00;11;56;22
Jeanne
I think that was a really good project to bring up as an example of the kind of work that you do. Mm hmm. That's very far afield from what a lot of people would think of when they think of photography as like pointing the camera at something and taking a picture of it.
00;11;56;23 - 00;12;04;21
Tate
Yeah, they're lumen prints mostly, was that project, which is you take photographic paper. And then what I did is I put stuff on it.
00;12;05;05 - 00;12;06;18
Jeanne
And put stuff like.
00;12;06;27 - 00;12;37;22
Tate
Flowers and used injection needles from hormones and used injection vials from hormones and other sharp things and leaves and vegetables and fruit, grains, spices, eggs, my body parts, all of it. Anything you could think of. I tried to put it on top of there and it turns these like beautiful, like pink and yellow and purply colors that are just so gorgeous.
00;12;38;02 - 00;12;51;21
Tate
And it's like an inverse thing. So everything that isn't covered by an object or whatever is on top of the paper is turns those colors. And then there's like white spaces. So they look really delicate and, and special. And they were, they were a lot of fun to make.
00;12;52;15 - 00;12;55;07
Jeanne
And then you turned that into a project about.
00;12;55;27 - 00;12;57;27
Tate
The emotional labor of being transgender.
00;12;58;03 - 00;13;05;03
Jeanne
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's I mean, I got to write a few letters. [Tate 00:13:04:02] like ten.
00;13;05;13 - 00;13;06;09
Tate
You wrote like, ten.
00;13;06;09 - 00;13;26;27
Jeanne
I did write a lot of letters to submit to that anonymously. And you got other people to write in letters anonymously, even people you didn't know just from the Internet. And I think when it all came together it was a really, really moving project, this is something that I think you started pretty early in terms of really transitioning on some levels.
00;13;26;27 - 00;13;34;19
Tate
So yes, yeah, yeah. I pretty much started that project like the semester after I started transitioning.
00;13;34;27 - 00;13;35;13
Jeanne
Yeah.
00;13;35;22 - 00;13;47;01
Tate
Yes. Yeah. Because I didn't change my name until after that project was over. Pretty much. All right. And all of that. Yeah. So.
00;13;48;17 - 00;13;53;03
Jeanne
So I've been thinking about how to interview you. [Tate 00:013:51:02] Mm hmm. I'm aware. [Jeanne 00:13:52:06] I’m trying to have a real -
00;13;53;03 - 00;13;54;13
Tate
No, no, I'm aware. Yeah. Yeah.
00;13;55;00 - 00;14;03;12
Jeanne
I've been thinking about it, and I feel like since you just started testosterone again, you could use that as, like, an entry point.
00;14;04;28 - 00;14;07;06
Tate
It's been, like, three days.
00;14;07;20 - 00;14;11;16
Jeanne
Right? But there's a decision factor behind it. And, um.
00;14;11;28 - 00;14;26;03
Tate
I could talk about how weird gel is. Just. Rubbin’ weird gel all over my shoulders. It's strange. It smells like rubbing alcohol. So that's fun. It's a fun little. It's a little gritty.
00;14;26;29 - 00;14;27;27
Jeanne
A little gritty?
00;14;28;01 - 00;14;32;19
Tate
Yeah, I don't. I don't know why, but it is.
00;14;33;07 - 00;14;37;15
Jeanne
What was the decision behind gel? You don't like doing the injections?
00;14;37;15 - 00;14;53;22
Tate
I didn't mind the injections, but they were. It feels like. Like a build up to, like, a little thing. And then you have to, like, make sure you buy the needles and you got to, like, disinfect the vial and you got to disinfect your leg and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I have to remember to do it one day a week.
00;14;54;11 - 00;15;00;28
Tate
And that was a lot of work. If I don't do something every day, it's harder for me to remember. And then I would just put it off well.
00;15;00;28 - 00;15;18;05
Jeanne
And there's a big cognitive load to starting the task and remembering to do the task, which I think probably. I mean. Well, do you think that the first time you were on testosterone, that that challenge of just the routine of it was part of why you stopped back then?
00;15;18;05 - 00;15;20;28
Tate
No, the biggest reason I stopped was because I was covered in acne.
00;15;21;22 - 00;15;22;13
Jeanne
Right. Okay.
00;15;22;20 - 00;15;48;21
Tate
It’s terrible. And it was painful and super uncomfortable. But I have come to the conclusion that estrogen apparently is the only thing that stops my acne, because now that I don't have hormonal birth control in my body, it's just it's just back and better than ever, apparently. So it doesn't matter anymore, well, the acne part of things. It's not like as big of a factor.
00;15;48;21 - 00;16;07;16
Tate
I'm just hoping it doesn't get really bad. But the testosterone as the gel is also nice because I just do it with my meds in the morning. So with all of the many other medications I take every day, yeah, I get to just put it as part of my routine and then I just try not to accidentally further masculinize
00;16;07;16 - 00;16;09;09
Tate
my my little boy cat.
00;16;10;18 - 00;16;14;15
Jeanne
That's going to sound really bad out of context.
00;16;15;08 - 00;16;26;07
Tate
Should I restate it as I get to do it in the morning when I take the rest of my medication? And the only thing I actually have to remember to do now is to wash my hands afterwards so I don't get testosterone on my cat.
00;16;26;07 - 00;16;28;22
Jeanne
I [laughs] it's it's important.
00;16;29;24 - 00;16;40;09
Tate
He's already like a little asshole every day. And I don't need him like, having weird hormonal fluctuations adding to the problems that would be - I can't even imagine how much worse it would be.
00;16;40;25 - 00;16;58;17
Jeanne
Well, so I was thinking about just the other day when I was taking my my hormones in the morning, along with all my other medications, I my little routine. Here's the three things I take in the morning. Here's the three things I take at night and thinking about the fact that I'm going to be doing that for the rest of my life.
00;16;58;28 - 00;17;21;16
Tate
Oh, yeah. Forever. [Jeanne 00:17:00:19] With all of them, really. I mean, there's a chance I could change some of my psych meds. There's a chance the kinds of hormones or dosage of hormones I take could change. But I legitimately have to take all of these and will have to take all of these forever. And I was thinking about how transition gets medicalized on some level.
00;17;21;29 - 00;17;47;11
Jeanne
Or being trans gets medicalized because obviously there's just medical transition, but then trans identity gets medicalized and thinking about, okay, well, I have my psych meds which make my brain function and I have my hormone medication, which I think some people might think of as something that's like treating the condition of being trans or treating gender dysphoria. I mean, like from like an insurance code standpoint
00;17;47;11 - 00;17;49;05
Jeanne
Yeah, that is what it is.
00;17;49;05 - 00;17;51;16
Tate
And that is what a lot of people view it as.
00;17;51;19 - 00;17;52;01
Jeanne
Right.
00;17;52;05 - 00;17;59;06
Tate
Especially people who are not trans. Um, more often, I know I have to have that conversation with my mom regularly.
00;17;59;15 - 00;18;10;11
Jeanne
Yeah. How how often do you have conversations with people about hormones? Like where do people come from with those questions or just that curiosity?
00;18;10;19 - 00;18;37;20
Tate
Uh, normally I would say it's just people who, like, say I start a new job or something. My coworkers, if they feel like we have gotten to a point where they can ask those questions, will just ask questions. So it doesn't happen very often now because I work from home and don't leave my house and don't interact with a lot of people outside of you.
00;18;37;28 - 00;18;43;23
Tate
But outside of that, when I was working at like The Opportunity Tree and stuff and.
00;18;43;27 - 00;18;45;10
Jeanne
What's The Opportunity Tree for context?
00;18;45;15 - 00;19;10;03
Tate
The Opportunity Tree is a local nonprofit that is dedicated to working with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And so I worked there as a digital studio assistant doing graphic design stuff and teaching members with disabilities how to do graphic design. But they do a lot of other stuff, too. They have a lot of housing and day programs, and there's even a youth program as well.
00;19;10;03 - 00;19;37;28
Tate
So it's not just adults, it's yeah, scattered across the state. But when I was working there, my coworkers and those who don't know queer people already, who don't know trans people specifically, would have questions and the members had questions too. Well, a lot of them just didn't think about it. But then the people who who would actually like put thought into it and communicate verbally really well, um, they would they would ask me questions as well.
00;19;38;02 - 00;20;07;14
Tate
And it was mostly stuff like, uh, like why did you decide to transition? You know, they ask questions that like go along the lines with like the “whole wrong body narrative” that people love to perpetuate for some reason. And then I would just tell them “No, I just I didn't think I wanted to do this. And then and then someone I knew was doing it and I got jealous and decided to also do it with the encouragement of my friends.”
00;20;07;14 - 00;20;21;22
Tate
And then I figured out I actually really enjoy being the person I am now. And that was it. It’s whole thing. And those people are - half of those people that were encouraging me were - are Jeanne, for the listeners, by the way.
00;20;22;02 - 00;20;42;26
Jeanne
Right. I've got to be careful about that. I think, you know, there's the whole like social contagion idea and stuff like that and, you know, here I am, I'm like a public trans figure pushing hormones on people. But that's not the case. I mean, I think the way you talked about it is interesting because you were saying I knew someone who was getting started on testosterone.
00;20;43;12 - 00;21;02;12
Jeanne
I thought, hey, this is interesting. I had friends who said, yes, that's a perfectly normal thing to do. And then you tried it, I think with sort of a mentality of I'm going to try this not a mentality of like, oh, this is what I must do. Yeah, but just I'm going to try this. And then you found out that you liked it.
00;21;02;22 - 00;21;19;25
Jeanne
And I think that that's something that gets brushed over because, you know, on the one hand, when we have to defend our right to even get hormones, we don't want to always construe it as like, oh, it's a thing that I can do instead of the thing that I have to do or I'll die.
00;21;19;27 - 00;21;46;05
Tate
Yeah. And like, I would have been fine, probably, having not transitioned. I mean, I don't know about fine, but, you know, it would have been okay, I guess. But at the time especially and when I had tried to transition a couple of years before that and was told no because I didn't fit the narrative, I had to get all the letters and stuff and I was like, Well, that's never going to happen because I don't have the narrative that they want me to have.
00;21;46;15 - 00;22;00;04
Tate
It's just not a thing. And there wasn't any information out there on like or not a lot of information. It took a lot of searching to find anything about like gender euphoria versus gender dysphoria. Like, I don't experience a ton of gender dysphoria.
00;22;00;10 - 00;22;02;29
Jeanne
Around about when was this the first time?
00;22;03;05 - 00;22;09;21
Tate
So the first time was uhh 2016.
00;22;10;09 - 00;22;11;26
Jeanne
The first time was around 2016?
00;22;11;28 - 00;22;20;28
Tate
Around the same time I started photography a little bit before that. I think that was 20, 2015 or 2016, I don't know.
00;22;21;01 - 00;22;22;12
Jeanne
So but around that, around that time.
00;22;22;15 - 00;22;30;29
Tate
Actually yes, it was because Trump was elected that year and that was that was the year I was also looking into things. I do, yes. Okay. So 2016 and.
00;22;30;29 - 00;22;58;16
Jeanne
And that's the same for me. I remember back in around 2015 and then into 2016 was when I started looking for information about hormones and places to get on hormones. And I really did have trouble finding anything that would talk about it outside of like, well, here's the extremely medicalized and gate-kept way that you can get in. And none of these doctors are actually still providing services.
00;22;58;16 - 00;23;01;07
Jeanne
It was really difficult for me to find resources at the time.
00;23;01;12 - 00;23;23;16
Tate
Yeah, like impossible. There was just nothing out there. I remember helping friends also trying to find resources to transition. We just couldn't find anything. There is nothing out there. The closest Planned Parenthood that did HRT at the time was all the way in California. Yep. Right. And then finding any other doctor that would do informed consent was next to nonexistent.
00;23;23;27 - 00;23;26;07
Tate
And then even again, in what year was that?
00;23;26;08 - 00;23;27;06
Jeanne
2018?
00;23;27;07 - 00;23;29;24
Tate
2018. It was still pretty hard to find.
00;23;29;24 - 00;23;31;05
Jeanne
Or no, no. 2019.
00;23;31;11 - 00;23;52;00
Tate
Was it 2019? Yeah, that was the year I graduated. So yeah, yeah, yeah. It would have been 2019. So again in 2019, it was still actually kind of hard to find stuff. I had to go to to the Southwest Center and we made an appointment with a doctor and that doctor told me he wouldn't do it. And but then he was like, Well, I have a coworker.
00;23;52;00 - 00;23;55;06
Jeanne
Well, and to be clear, this doctor wasn't at the Southwest Center.
00;23;55;06 - 00;24;17;23
Tate
No, it was at Adelante Healthcare in Mesa because I my insurance didn't take the Southwest Center. And so at Adelante Healthcare. The first doctor I saw was like, No, we're not going to I can't I don't feel comfortable doing this without, like, letters and stuff. But then for some reason, he's like, you know, I have a coworker who would probably do this for you.
00;24;17;23 - 00;24;22;00
Tate
And I'm like, Why? Why would you just refer me when you.
00;24;22;12 - 00;24;44;27
Jeanne
But why can't you just do it yourselves? Yeah, there's like a weird hesitancy around doing trans care and then you end up with someone who actually is still also just figuring it out. I know that. So we see the same NP for hormones. And she works with a lot of trans clients now and I think at the time she had some other trans patients, but -
00;24;44;27 - 00;24;46;23
Tate
Yeah, a few maybe.
00;24;46;24 - 00;24;54;21
Jeanne
It's definitely something where it's not like we found someone who was an expert. An expert, right?
00;24;54;27 - 00;25;15;02
Tate
Like she absolutely was like, yes. So I have never prescribed hormones to anyone who's like, non-binary. Yeah. So we're just going to play this by ear and we're going to figure it out together. And I was like, All right, let's have fun, I guess. But she's so chill, so it actually works out perfect. And now she knows so much.
00;25;15;02 - 00;25;25;06
Tate
Like just between then and now. I saw her, you know, just a week or two ago and like her knowledge has grown an incredible amount. Right. Just from seeing trans people so often
00;25;25;06 - 00;25;42;16
Jeanne
Well, I mean, even at the very beginning, she was very clearly just deeply committed to learning. Um, but it's challenging as a non-binary person who really doesn't fit into any kind of established narrative, doesn't even come from a standpoint of extreme gender dysphoria.
00;25;42;16 - 00;25;56;26
Tate
Mhm. Or at least not the stereotypical gender dysphoria. Like I think I definitely had dysphoria absolute, but it didn't present itself in the ways that everyone talks about having dysphoria. Yeah, that was, that was an interesting thing.
00;25;56;27 - 00;26;15;28
Jeanne
Well I think it's probably good to parse out when you say like how everyone talks about dysphoria before maybe 2015, 2016, when you started to think about getting on hormones, where were you seeing people talk about hormone therapy and trans identities and dysphoria and all of those experiences.
00;26;15;28 - 00;26;17;29
Tate
In my friend circles?
00;26;17;29 - 00;26;19;15
Jeanne
So people you actually knew?
00;26;19;15 - 00;26;43;25
Tate
Yeah. So I was dating a trans woman at the time, and she had has probably or had, I don't know, really intense dysphoria that I never experienced. Like she was very fixated on like ways that her certain body, like certain parts of her body like, didn't look the way she wanted them to do. Honestly, it was also definitely body dysmorphia and dysphoria.
00;26;43;25 - 00;27;04;02
Tate
So there's is was a lot of things at the same time. But they were really intense feelings that she was having, and I didn't have anything like that and I didn't have any of the same feelings that other people I knew as well. Like I had a lot of queer friends at the time, a lot of trans friends and it was I was just didn't feel all the same ways.
00;27;04;10 - 00;27;25;06
Tate
And though I also didn't know that many transmasc people at the time and the couple of people I did know, I just actually never talked about it with because I was just like, Well, I'm obviously not trans, so clearly I don't need to ask about it. Duh.
00;27;25;17 - 00;27;43;03
Jeanne
Well, I think then that's pretty interesting. Looking ahead to when you did get started on hormones a few years later, you had someone who was having an experience that you could identify with a little bit more closely on some of those levels. And then that was a meaningful way to get over the hump.
00;27;43;14 - 00;28;02;25
Tate
Yeah, and it's not like I wasn't doing other things before hormones, like I was wearing a binder, I was doing other stuff. I had a more masculine haircut. Those were steps that I did take. Hormones were just kind of like, Is this a step that I, I feel better now than I did before, already, do I need to take hormones as well?
00;28;03;02 - 00;28;23;13
Tate
Do I want to like what is what is that going to change for me? Will that give me will that give me more satisfaction than what I already have? And it did. And so that was good. And I would like less acne. I would like to be less hairy, but otherwise great experience. Ten out of ten I would recommend it. Medical science just has to,
00;28;23;16 - 00;28;23;20
Jeanne
Well, you know.
00;28;23;20 - 00;28;25;27
Tate
you know, to like get a little further there.
00;28;26;00 - 00;28;50;15
Jeanne
I think, you know, that's a joke we like to make ten out of ten would recommend. But I think that's actually a thing that you do recommend on some level is that attitude of let me try this out and figure out if this is going to give me things I want or not. Yeah, as opposed to an all or nothing, am I trans and therefore can grant myself access to every single aspect of transition?
00;28;51;01 - 00;28;57;17
Jeanne
Or am I secretly not trans enough on some level and therefore unworthy of even cutting my hair?
00;28;57;27 - 00;29;12;09
Tate
Exactly. And knowing that like you can stop hormones. Like, I don't know if we actually said it at the beginning, like how long I haven't been on hormones, but I haven't been on hormones for about two years now. Right. Like I think it has been two years or something that.
00;29;12;09 - 00;29;13;24
Jeanne
It has, about two years. Yeah.
00;29;13;25 - 00;29;27;23
Tate
And I was fine with that for a while and I decided I wasn't fine with it anymore and I wanted to go back and here I am now. Will my voice change again? I don't know. It'd be kind of cool if it did, but I don't think that's going to happen.
00;29;28;15 - 00;29;30;28
Jeanne
I mean, it depends on how long you stay on it, but.
00;29;31;15 - 00;29;49;20
Tate
That's true, I guess. Like sometimes I watch TV shows with like old men and then if you watch something with them in it, when they were younger, you can tell that their voice has still masculinized further, like it's gotten deeper and more gravelly as they've gotten old. Yeah, and I think that's a that's a fun thing to think about.
00;29;49;20 - 00;29;51;03
Tate
Testosterone is wild.
00;29;51;03 - 00;30;16;15
Jeanne
You know, as the host of a podcast and interviewing, you know, talking about like voice change and everything like that, I think it's really fun to think about gendered voices because, you know, everyone listening to this, all they have is our voices right now. You take great photos of all the guests, but, you know, once you're listening to the podcast, you're washing dishes, you're driving your car.
00;30;17;11 - 00;30;19;18
Tate
I feel like we were both going to say something there.
00;30;20;13 - 00;30;21;00
Jeanne
Yeah.
00;30;21;09 - 00;30;33;26
Tate
But I think what you're saying is, like, people don't know necessarily what we look like, right? And so they only have our voices and they're just going to assume what they assume based on our voices. Yeah.
00;30;34;17 - 00;30;53;12
Jeanne
And those assumptions are something that both of us have to navigate in a lot of contexts, right? What are the different things people get to latch onto in the 2 seconds before they decide who we are? You know, if we're on a Zoom call and all they can see is us from the shoulders up, if we're on a podcast and all they can hear is our voice. [Tate 00:30:51:19] Or at a call center.
00;30;53;21 - 00;30;57;06
Jeanne
Yeah. And so that's an experience you had working at a call center.
00;30;57;18 - 00;31;16;23
Tate
Yes, it was. It was an adventure. It was. It was it was something not my favorite thing, but everyone thought I was a woman. Every like almost every customer that called in thought I was a woman. They all thought my name was Kate, which was fun because it sounds close enough. And so you just you just run with it.
00;31;16;23 - 00;31;24;02
Tate
That's what people do. And the interactions are so short, there's no time to correct anyone. There's no reason to correct anyone. And so you just live with it.
00;31;24;13 - 00;31;47;27
Jeanne
Well, as trans people with one syllable names I've found is some kind of a a trend. When I see my name, you know, ordering coffee, it's a one syllable name. It starts with a J. It'll become any name that someone has decided they've heard. Yeah. And I think that same thing plays out with our genders in general, right?
00;31;48;12 - 00;32;05;08
Jeanne
We're presenting a lot of information that other queer people can read and that a lot of people who are even trans just aren't going to pick up on and they fill in the blanks on some level, sometimes in really just complete non sequitur ways.
00;32;05;12 - 00;32;28;14
Tate
Yeah, it doesn't always make sense. I always want to know what people are thinking and I want to I want to I want to see the the little map they draw in their heads to, like get to the end point where they pick whatever they decide to gender one of us as I want to, I want to know what that route is because I, I cannot understand like, actually I get it with most people to some extent.
00;32;28;14 - 00;32;48;19
Tate
But then I'm like, why though? Why is that the route you picked? And it varies with each person or when people change their minds halfway through when they decided to gender you one way and then they look at you one more time and they're like, Wait a minute, I got that wrong. And it's I want to know what makes them change their mind.
00;32;48;21 - 00;32;51;11
Tate
Right? That's that's an interesting.
00;32;51;16 - 00;33;05;06
Jeanne
Also hard to know. Well, so for me, it's not just I don't want to say that this is just something that like Straight cis people are doing because I think it's kind of it well, it's just inaccurate to my experience to say that the world is divided into people who get it and people who don't get it.
00;33;05;07 - 00;33;06;13
Tate
You know, plenty of people don't get it.
00;33;06;14 - 00;33;16;07
Jeanne
Plenty of people don't get it. And that includes trans people. That includes queer people of all stripes. Mm hmm. What's your experience with that? What do you run into along those lines?
00;33;17;12 - 00;33;37;16
Tate
I mean, pretty much all the things like anything you can imagine, probably all of it. I it's hard to, like, put into words because it's really just like, well, most of the time now, everyone thinks I'm a woman. So that's that's just a thing. So I don't I don't get gendered in a variety of ways anymore. And so that's, that's part of it.
00;33;37;27 - 00;34;00;20
Tate
But mostly queer people can tell. But most of the time, so I use they them pronouns and that's, that's where it gets interesting because people never assume that to start for the most part. And so a lot of the time, if it's a queer person, they'll pick up on certain things and they'll assume he instead of they, and which I guess they're close, everyone's but everyone's close.
00;34;00;20 - 00;34;07;09
Tate
Like I'm non-binary, everyone's getting something a little bit right, but they're always getting it wrong. I don't Yeah, there's really no, no right way.
00;34;07;24 - 00;34;26;06
Jeanne
Do you feel like there's a way that people will they/them you that is also getting it a little bit wrong? Because I've waffled on this, I've said, you know, I really feel like they/them pronouns would be nice or no, only want to she/her pronouns. And sometimes it feels like if people use she, they’re gendering me wrong.
00;34;26;10 - 00;34;37;07
Jeanne
If people use they, they’re gendering me wrong. If people use he, that's not anything I ever want, right? The point is they can all feel wrong coming in certain contexts.
00;34;37;22 - 00;35;02;01
Tate
I don't get they’d very often from people I don't know and then people I do know don't have to they/them me because they just use my name or they're talking directly to me. So it's irrelevant. My pronouns don't tend to come up in a lot of conversations. And so I'm not sure if there's a situation where being called they has felt wrong.
00;35;02;09 - 00;35;16;22
Tate
I feel like maybe it would - it feels fine when I ask people to do it and they do it because it's like, Cool, you're respecting me. You're doing the thing I asked you to do. It almost never happens where someone will gender me as they without me asking?
00;35;17;14 - 00;35;18;11
Jeanne
I see. Yeah.
00;35;18;19 - 00;35;41;10
Tate
And then if they do, I don't actually notice. So I guess in that way it feels right because I can't - I don't actually pay attention. I'll only notice when they pick he or she, because I'm paying attention. I'm like watching for it. But otherwise I don't think I'd actually realize. And sometimes even when they use he or she, I wouldn't notice because I don't actually care if it's not going to be like a long term interaction.
00;35;41;10 - 00;35;47;14
Tate
It doesn't matter how someone gender is me in that moment. So I try not to think about it when I can.
00;35;47;25 - 00;35;56;00
Jeanne
It doesn't matter on what level, like what are the some of the choices that you're making when people are gendering you in terms of how you want to handle that?
00;35;57;09 - 00;36;19;06
Tate
Well, a lot of the time it's just a really short interaction. So it doesn't matter in terms of like this is ever going to affect my life again. It will never be relevant to my existence if I correct this person in this moment. And if anything it could be more dangerous for me to correct a person in a moment, especially in a public situation at the grocery store, at a job interview, right.
00;36;19;06 - 00;36;46;10
Tate
Those things can can be problematic for me. Or sometimes it's like a lot of the members at my old job would gender me incorrectly, but it would be a very long conversation to get that to stop. And then they would forget the next day and I'd have to do it again. Right. And like in those situations that also like how they gender me has - it's just words they're using.
00;36;46;10 - 00;36;54;05
Tate
They get pronouns mixed up all the time with everyone. And so it's not relevant for me to, to fix that.
00;36;54;10 - 00;37;07;15
Jeanne
And it seems like the choice you're making in those or the choices you were making in those situations or were about, for their sake, sharing things about you to help them understand, you know, not for your sake to get them to use the right pronouns.
00;37;07;16 - 00;37;28;18
Tate
Exactly. And that's how it that's how it would be with anyone. Like if I correct someone at the grocery store, it's not for me. I'm not going to talk to this person again. It would be to make it so that the next person who looks like me that goes through that person's line gets gendered correctly. So it's maybe not a traumatic experience for them because it is for a lot of people, right?
00;37;28;19 - 00;37;34;15
Tate
But for me, I don't care. I just it'd be nice. It'd be so nice.
00;37;34;26 - 00;37;40;25
Jeanne
But so you care on that level. Yeah, but on, on the level where.
00;37;41;03 - 00;37;56;19
Tate
Where I want to put in the labor to do it for myself because it's only worth it if it's someone I'm going to be talking to for a long time. Yeah. Or like someone who's an important part of my life. If it's a coworker. Yeah, they need to get it right. They work with me, especially if it's a boss.
00;37;56;23 - 00;38;11;21
Tate
They have to get it right. There's no other option there. If it's. I can't think of a lot of other people who I feel like it's really important that they get it right. My parents, they don't get it right. Right.
00;38;12;11 - 00;38;15;07
Jeanne
Have you talked with your parents about going back on testosterone?
00;38;16;00 - 00;38;19;26
Tate
I don't even think they know. I'm not on it. I can't even remember if they - I don’t tell them things.
00;38;19;26 - 00;38;24;18
Jeanne
Oh, it just hasn't been an ongoing conversation now one way or the other.
00;38;24;24 - 00;38;39;19
Tate
No. Like, I didn't even tell them that I was getting surgery when I got top surgery. Like, it wasn't until it came up, well because it was around the holidays. So I told them, but mostly to be like, I'm getting surgery and I can't see you. And we're in the middle of a pandemic. Sorry.
00;38;39;27 - 00;38;42;11
Jeanne
This was back in 2020, right?
00;38;43;01 - 00;38;45;09
Tate
Yeah, I think so. I think it would have been 2020.
00;38;45;09 - 00;38;52;09
Jeanne
I think it was the first year of the pandemic. Yeah. So still real restrictions. I couldn't go into the surgery center. No. To see you.
00;38;52;23 - 00;39;11;27
Tate
Now. No one could. I had to just sit there in the waiting room. I just got dropped off, and then I got picked up and that was it. It was fine, though. I mean, it would have been boring anyway. And no one needed to watch Turkeltaub draw on my boobs like that. That's not an experience everyone needs to see.
00;39;12;09 - 00;39;15;07
Jeanne
No, I'm going to cut that.
00;39;16;03 - 00;39;34;05
Tate
But it is what happened. Like I didn't know it was going to happen. And that was the wild part. No one told me, You think I would have figured it out because it's like a thing people like on TV shows when they do plastic surgery, they, like, draw on the face and stuff. And I didn't I didn't realize that was part of the surgery process.
00;39;35;10 - 00;40;00;18
Jeanne
So we've talked about decisions around accessing care and transitioning in different ways. And the three different times you've tried to start hormones two times successfully, and how even just between, you know, kind of two, three year gaps, how things have changed so much, the level of competency of medical professionals.
00;40;00;23 - 00;40;01;03
Tate
Mm hmm.
00;40;01;23 - 00;40;31;23
Jeanne
I think even just perceptions culturally around why people start hormones or what people might use hormones for as part of their transition. So I think I'm curious, with your experience, you didn't feel six years ago like people were writing about the kind of experience you had and that really held you back in some real ways. Yeah. Where do you see that conversation now around?
00;40;32;11 - 00;40;46;28
Jeanne
You mentioned gender euphoria, but all of the things that you had to work through to allow yourself to do the kinds of things you wanted to do. Where do you see that now in sort of the public discourse?
00;40;46;28 - 00;41;20;17
Tate
I think in like trans more trans spaces, it's way more common, like so much more common. I wasn't in a lot of like online trans spaces. Yeah. Before really. But they were hard to find in the first place. And then it was still full of a lot of that language and, and now I think things like my experience are far more common to, to read about even on like Reddit, on the trans subreddits and MTF and nonbinary and all of them.
00;41;20;17 - 00;41;27;07
Tate
There's so many there's, there's so many - trans. Trans is just a subreddit, right? I don't know. Or is transgender? I don't know.
00;41;28;07 - 00;41;28;27
Jeanne
I have no idea.
00;41;29;17 - 00;41;57;09
Tate
Yeah, but the point is those conversations are happening way more often on those platforms, in terms of the general public outside of queer space, I still think it's pretty uncommon, but it's comparable to like for a long time with as with any kind of marginalized identity and societal change, people trying to get, you know, more rights and more awareness and etc., etc..
00;41;57;09 - 00;42;19;04
Tate
Like even in the black community, a lot of things are still really focused on like this is all the trauma that black people go through. But now the conversation has shifted more and more often to be like, Hey, like, have you heard of Black Joy? And I think that's starting to happen in the trans community too. It's like it's not just like, look at all the hard things that trans people have to go through every day.
00;42;19;13 - 00;42;31;15
Tate
It's also like, look at how much fun trans people have being trans. Yeah. And how much fun gender is to play with instead of gender is sad to experience or whatever.
00;42;31;17 - 00;42;59;19
Jeanne
Yeah, I think that's actually a really big shift because a lot of the time I think that gets emphasized here is all the pain and suffering of the trans experience because that's what we have to use to justify our access to any medical care. Because for a lot of people, the way they think of trans care is, well, I don't know that I think that's a great thing, but it seems like you need it enough.
00;43;00;05 - 00;43;15;12
Jeanne
And so, okay, I guess I guess I'll tolerate it or I'll be fine with that or I'll even be very supportive of it in a really kind of pity driven way. Mhm. And that's shifted I think among allies significantly.
00;43;15;12 - 00;43;40;21
Tate
And then there's just more people that have these experiences because they are more accessible and they're able to, to write about them. So when I first, when I started hormones in 2019 I guess, Right. Mm hmm. I found like one blog and one blog and maybe like a couple of Reddit posts that were like, what about what if I, like, didn't do like, all the testosterone?
00;43;40;21 - 00;44;03;14
Tate
What if I did like a little bit of testosterone and I just kind of like kind of space it out over time, what if i I did low dose T? Yeah, and there were, there just was really minimal information on it and there wasn't a lot of conversation about like, well, what if I don't want to be a man and I don't want to do all of these like, man things that people think trans men are supposed to do.
00;44;03;20 - 00;44;27;20
Tate
And I want to, like, do something a little different than that. I don't it's different for everyone, but like, right, right. There was those conversations weren’t happening and now they're everywhere. Yeah, there's like a whole subreddits dedicated to it. There's like medium articles, there's yeah, Tumblr blogs, it's everywhere, all of it.
00;44;28;17 - 00;44;45;12
Jeanne
I sometimes think about the work trans people do, like creative work. I mean, or sometimes professional work early in transition compared to what Then we do even like two years.
00;44;45;26 - 00;44;47;03
Tate
Yeah, it's super different.
00;44;47;04 - 00;44;53;05
Jeanne
It's really different. Tell me about that. Like, talk to me about that. I think I don't want to speak for you.
00;44;53;08 - 00;45;23;10
Tate
Well it's it's a hard conver - because I don't I don't make stuff in the same way now that's true. Yeah I it's not that different because I'm not - it's super different cause I'm not doing it. And I don't think I think even if I was still making that kind of work, like working within fine art photography and an alternative processes and stuff, I think I would still make stuff around transness as a concept, but it would be a really different thing.
00;45;23;22 - 00;45;36;26
Tate
It would be focused on completely different parts of the trans experience that people don't talk about or neurodiversity is a thing I think I would I would probably make something about if I could figure out how to do that.
00;45;37;00 - 00;46;04;22
Jeanne
I was talking with guest on the podcast, Vanessa. She mentioned her own neurodiversity and then afterwards off mic, we were talking about how this is something the two of us, Vanessa and I talk about all the time with people is this overlap of people who are disabled and queer neurodiverse that is somehow completely unrecognized, like a broader cultural level.
00;46;04;22 - 00;46;11;11
Jeanne
It's not a real conversation that's happening except among the people who are in it, right? And then we talk about it all the time.
00;46;11;12 - 00;46;12;26
Tate
Oh, constantly, Constantly.
00;46;13;15 - 00;46;23;26
Jeanne
So if you were to make art about aspects of the trans experience that don't get talked about or neurodiversity, what are those things that aren't getting talked about?
00;46;25;00 - 00;46;51;11
Tate
Hmm, That is a large question. It's very broad in terms of there's just so many parts of like so much stuff that is the mainstream conversation with almost every with both things at this point is like, well, it's so hard to be one of those things isn’t it so hard? And I got to I just I can't even imagine what it would be like to live your life.
00;46;51;11 - 00;46;58;08
Tate
It must be so difficult. Like that's the conversation right now that’s happening in the world, right? Still. [Jeanne 00:46:57:13] One of the first.
00;46;58;08 - 00;47;17;09
Jeanne
People I talked to about being trans had this attitude of like, well, not an attitude, just a really explicitly stated thing of like, I could never understand what you're experiencing. Thank you for sharing with me. And I was like, I just want to actually talk to you about this.
00;47;17;18 - 00;47;45;23
Tate
Yeah, people love to call trans people brave. Yes, like the big thing. And even like at my show, like one of my my senior art show where, like, half the people that came up to me to talk about my trans project were like, Oh my God, I had no idea. This is incredible. Like, did you write all of like, they thought I wrote all of them, which is just there were like 50 something letters and they're.
00;47;45;23 - 00;47;49;07
Jeanne
Very disparate experiences. They couldn't all be from one person.
00;47;49;07 - 00;48;11;02
Tate
No, though. I mean, some people there was one in Spanish and people were like, did you did you do you speak Spanish? No, I don't. But I appreciate that you think I might. But no, these are all community submitted. And yeah, it but they just assumed that like because I'm the trans person in the room, I obviously did all the trans stuff, but aside from that, it was just all like, Oh my God, you're so brave.
00;48;11;02 - 00;48;34;06
Tate
This is incredible. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and for talking about this. And yeah, those aren't things people want to hear anymore now or really ever now. Like that's not fun. I'm not brave. I'm just a person and I'm just a person who decided to make art about this. I'm not brave if I decide to make art about other stuff.
00;48;34;06 - 00;48;45;04
Tate
Actually, you know what, though? That has been my experience. The entirety of of my photography career, though, is people just being like, Wow, it is so touching that you shared this. Because I used to make a lot of art about mental illness.
00;48;45;13 - 00;48;48;12
Jeanne
That's right. And you did some really good art about that.
00;48;48;26 - 00;49;13;05
Tate
And during one of my final critiques for a project I worked on, my whole classroom wouldn't critique my work because I think they were afraid of upsetting me because they thought I was too fragile. And I also think, like, it's hard to critique that kind of work when people don't have that experience because what are they going to say?
00;49;13;05 - 00;49;36;23
Tate
That it doesn't make any sense that your feelings aren't real or something like that. You're not accurately capturing your own feelings, right? Like it wouldn't. It's it's a weird place to have to critique from. But then also, like in my the notes for my professor, it was like, hey, by the way, here's uh, here's the talk line and all of that.
00;49;36;23 - 00;49;58;26
Tate
Just like, here's how you can contact the suicide helpline and all of those things. So that's always been an experience. Anytime you're talking about something taboo, people are going to call you brave, right? But that doesn't answer the question you asked me originally, which is what are those things that people don't talk about? Yeah, about transness and neurodiverse-ness and stuff.
00;49;59;10 - 00;50;07;27
Tate
And I think one of the first things is like trans joy doesn't get talked about very often, like how cool it is to be trans because it's so cool.
00;50;08;01 - 00;50;16;28
Jeanne
Yeah, I mentioned that before. Like when you were looking for resources about transition. There was nothing about gender euphoria.
00;50;17;01 - 00;50;17;23
Tate
Exactly.
00;50;18;03 - 00;50;19;00
Jeanne
For a long time.
00;50;19;06 - 00;50;47;05
Tate
And so stuff about that would be fun. I don't see any art about neurodivergence for the most part, like not on the mainstream really, unless it's like comics. It's definitely in comics, but it's not in like fine art that I've seen personally, at least in photography. Even like that, it's hard to capture. And so stuff about that would be almost anything would be new and interesting in some way.
00;50;47;05 - 00;50;48;18
Tate
But I don't know what I would do.
00;50;49;02 - 00;51;15;15
Jeanne
I well, I think it's illuminating the reaction people can have of like, here's 50 letters from a lot of people and they can imagine that one person wrote them because they're all about being trans and they're looking at one trans person, which is just baffling. Yeah, I think they see kind of just like if you're trans, then you have the one trans experience.
00;51;16;28 - 00;51;38;21
Jeanne
And in reality, not only do we have many, many experiences, but we're all talking to each other and we're in community. And that means a big part of the experience of being trans is interacting with trans people who are different from you, and that community aspect and relationship aspect would be a big thing. I think a lot of people just don't recognize.
00;51;38;21 - 00;51;39;28
Jeanne
Yeah, because they're not in it.
00;51;40;14 - 00;52;04;18
Tate
Yeah, I mean, think they can probably recognize that in other parts of their lives, but they just, they don't think of it that way because I don't, I think that is just the thing people do is like, forget that they're actually really similar to everyone else. Like nothing's that different. Like the trans community is the trans community. It's pretty special, but it's not different from most communities.
00;52;04;18 - 00;52;18;26
Tate
Like it's still a community, right? It's able to fit that definition because it meets some criteria. Yeah, that everyone else has that experience. Everyone's been part of a community, right? Like those things overlap.
00;52;18;26 - 00;52;31;03
Jeanne
People understand the concept of waking up and having breakfast and talking to your friends and having hopes and dreams and building things together. And that can be a very trans experience. It can just be anyone's experience.
00;52;31;03 - 00;52;45;17
Tate
Yeah, but people, I think, tend to default to like this person that's different from me. Like, is this one of these things or all of these things? And like the word monolith is coming to mind that just that is what happens.
00;52;45;18 - 00;52;46;10
Jeanne
Monolithic.
00;52;46;10 - 00;53;13;08
Tate
Yeah, they just get there. And well obviously this is the whole thing and I think that's just mostly from not being exposed to those experiences outside of that one person or whatever it is. You just, of course your - that's where your brain is going to go. If you only experience this person in this context every time, like, you know, yeah, like, yeah, those weren’t the right words.
00;53;13;08 - 00;53;30;01
Jeanne
But I remember when you were planning the Labor of Being Transgender project, you were trying to avoid kind of the obvious, Okay, I'm going to make a photo project about trans people. Yeah. Which is let me take a bunch of portraits.
00;53;30;08 - 00;53;31;00
Tate
Right.
00;53;31;07 - 00;53;32;18
Jeanne
Of people who look trans.
00;53;32;21 - 00;53;56;21
Tate
Yeah. And I also didn't know enough trans people, though some people have done that really well. Joshua Gutierrez, who we went to to his show, his senior thesis or his master's thesis, was was beautiful. And it was mostly portraits of gay people and trans people and that whole thing. But I couldn't even find the time in my schedule to take pictures of people.
00;53;56;21 - 00;54;09;07
Tate
So they were like a of things that were like, Yeah, maybe I shouldn't just take portraits of trans people. I don't think this would be effective and it doesn't. Everyone's done it - it's been done like a million times - well okay, not a million times.
00;54;09;07 - 00;54;11;09
Jeanne
No, but it's been done I think. Yes.
00;54;12;06 - 00;54;22;07
Tate
And and so like why do that? People know what trans people look like. That is a thing. It's if you want to see pictures of trans people, you can just find that on Instagram.
00;54;22;07 - 00;54;28;26
Jeanne
Well, and I bring it up because I think a lot of the time that thing people think about when they think about trans people is, Oh, you look different.
00;54;30;03 - 00;54;38;09
Tate
But that wasn't - that's already been covered. I didn’t want to talk about that. I wanted to talk about like and it's also for the class I was taking about labor.
00;54;39;13 - 00;54;43;01
Jeanne
Right. And that was just part of the prompt.
00;54;43;03 - 00;54;55;14
Tate
Yeah. But like emotionally we're like, we have a different emotional labor that we have to deal with every day. And we still do. And it's still actually a thing that we talk about all the time.
00;54;55;23 - 00;55;09;12
Jeanne
Well, and I think, you know, one of the definitions of emotional labor people like to point to is more of like customer service, like having to smile on the job, that kind of thing. Like as part of your labor, you have to do emotional labor.
00;55;09;12 - 00;55;10;01
Tate
Right.
00;55;10;16 - 00;55;13;24
Jeanne
And that was actually something that you could write about.
00;55;14;09 - 00;55;36;12
Tate
Yeah, that was that was my whole my whole thing. And I think even outside of being a customer service person, like a person who's worked in customer service or is working in customer service, yeah, that is what it's people have to do anyway. Being trans in public is like doing a customer service job. Let's be real. You have to, you're nice, you smile, you nod, you do all the things.
00;55;36;19 - 00;55;39;17
Tate
Because if you don't, you don't know what’s going to happen. Yeah.
00;55;40;00 - 00;55;42;29
Jeanne
Or you explain things you don't really want to explain.
00;55;43;27 - 00;56;02;22
Tate
But yeah, I was working at Sprouts at the time and so I was transitioning very early - on in my transition. So very obviously like going through some stuff while I was making that project and while I was working as a cashier at a grocery store.
00;56;03;14 - 00;56;10;05
Jeanne
Talking to for, you know, talking to a bunch of people in a row for a very short amount of time for each person.
00;56;10;11 - 00;56;31;07
Tate
Yeah. And most people wouldn't didn't say anything, but just having to go through the motions of like, how is this person going to gender me in this moment and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, over and over and over and over again. While, like I'm still getting used to things and figuring things out and so it was, it was an ordeal.
00;56;31;16 - 00;56;36;12
Tate
Um, but yeah that project was fun. That's the last, like, fine photography thing I did.
00;56;36;14 - 00;56;39;21
Jeanne
Yeah. And that was at the very end of your BFA.
00;56;39;22 - 00;57;03;05
Tate
Yeah, right before the pandemic. So I graduated December of 2019. Yeah. And then the world fell apart. And now I do graphic design, which I do really enjoy. I've always really enjoyed design, and now I have more skills, which is really fun, and I can always apply those to photography one day if I want to, or I can keep doing graphic design.
00;57;03;05 - 00;57;04;05
Tate
Also a lot of fun.
00;57;04;17 - 00;57;10;01
Jeanne
Now, in the pandemic, you didn't just go from being a student in college to working in graphic design.
00;57;10;14 - 00;57;12;28
Tate
No, I did customer service.
00;57;12;28 - 00;57;13;10
Jeanne
Right.
00;57;14;01 - 00;57;15;12
Tate
More customer service.
00;57;15;14 - 00;57;37;07
Jeanne
Early in the pandemic and into the mid-pandemic. That meant a lot of different things. You know, you also got really involved in, I guess one way to say it would be activism, and I think some of that really set you up to do graphic design work. Like I was saying and working together with mutual aid stuff and and.
00;57;38;03 - 00;57;39;17
Tate
White PAWS stuff and yeah.
00;57;40;03 - 00;57;43;07
Jeanne
But that's been a big part of your pandemic experience, I think.
00;57;43;07 - 00;57;44;10
Tate
Yeah.
00;57;45;02 - 00;58;00;14
Jeanne
And I'm not sure that everyone had that response righ? So you kind of got started around some of the racial justice uprisings in actually in 2020 right? That was in 2020?
00;58;00;16 - 00;58;06;22
Tate
Yeah. I didn't get to go to the earlier events and protests because I was mostly working.
00;58;07;01 - 00;58;07;13
Jeanne
Yeah.
00;58;07;13 - 00;58;40;25
Tate
And I couldn't because they all happened at the same time that, you know, like that's the night shift, oh no. But I was able to go to a lot of things and then I kept getting a little more involved here and there and doing mutual aid things and then just trying to help out wherever I was able to, which wasn't financially because I was a broke customer service agent slash cashier, depending on that, you know, month, whenever, whenever that happened or, you know, recovering from top surgery, all of that.
00;58;40;25 - 00;59;04;00
Tate
And so I could offer my services in other ways to, you know, like help further the movement. And so that was mostly like I can take pictures and I can put things on a digital page and send them out into the world. I can I can volunteer my time and my my expertise.
00;59;04;18 - 00;59;25;27
Jeanne
Is something you commented on, is that I mean, not not now, but something we've talked about is that those initial protests were huge. Oh, gigantic.
There was a lot of momentum. They fell off. Yeah, pretty quickly. But you actually got more and more involved in things over time.
00;59;26;09 - 00;59;36;02
Tate
Less so now. But that's, you know, mostly financial things still. Yeah. And also there's just not as much happening.
00;59;36;24 - 00;59;43;06
Jeanne
And you're involved in different work now. Yeah, but that was that was a really big thing for you.
00;59;43;22 - 01;00;08;07
Tate
It was interesting because it let me use a lot of different skills that I like to use, like not just graphic and art things, but also like I got to learn how to use Airtable and make forms and stuff. And that was also really exciting because I saw the intersection of industrial psychology.
01;00;08;07 - 01;00;11;00
Jeanne
Yeah, stuff you didn't really get to pursue as much.
01;00;11;00 - 01;00;33;06
Tate
I never got to pursue industrial psychology and never took a single class. Oh, really? Yeah. No, no, it was my major. And then I. And then I never - I didn't start college before I started college. Yeah, actually started in college. I changed my major. So I got to I got to use some of those things that I never actually officially learned but did have an interest in and did.
01;00;33;06 - 01;00;54;08
Tate
Yeah. Side research on in my youth. Oh, fun fact for listeners just because why not, in part one of this podcast I don't know if Jeanne's going to like put like a differentiating thing, but in part one, I was 24 and I'm now 25. I have grown a year older since.
01;00;54;29 - 01;00;55;21
Jeanne
We recorded these.
01;00;55;21 - 01;00;56;20
Tate
Interviews, two.
01;00;56;20 - 01;01;02;11
Jeanne
In whole or apart. So since then, you at the time you had just gotten back on T. Now it's a whole year.
01;01;02;21 - 01;01;03;11
Tate
Oh my God.
01;01;03;11 - 01;01;07;24
Jeanne
How is that been for-? Okay, I'm going to have to. You have to clean this up.
01;01;08;09 - 01;01;15;18
Tate
Oh, I hope you all enjoyed that fun fact.
01;01;15;18 - 01;01;22;12
Jeanne
Do you want to talk at all about the some of the things that went down with the protest and your arrest and everything? Or do you not want to talk about that?
01;01;23;03 - 01;01;53;01
Tate
I mean, it's I think it's already on Lefty's Instagram, so it's fine. Like it's it's really fine. I got arrested. It happened. It sucked as a trans person. Getting arrested is is an awful experience. It's different for everyone. Going into a protest there's always a risk of arrest. Right. And so a while beforehand, I had made a decision as if I were to be arrested as a trans person.
01;01;53;01 - 01;02;10;05
Tate
This is how would - I have to figure out how to handle it. How do I want them to treat me? This is before top surgery. So do I want them to put me with the women? Do I want them to put me with the men? Those are the only two options, but I have to pick one my ID said at the time and still says female.
01;02;10;16 - 01;02;16;23
Tate
But I was adamant when I was arrested that I wanted to be with the men.
01;02;16;23 - 01;02;17;29
Jeanne
But then they actually didn't.
01;02;17;29 - 01;02;38;18
Tate
They just didn't do that. No, they isolated me after the precinct. So the way it works is you get arrested. They don't do all the things that you see in movies and TV shows. That's total bullshit. It's fake, it's not real. And they never read me my my Miranda rights. Legally, they don't have to unless they plan to question me.
01;02;38;18 - 01;02;58;14
Tate
They asked me if I was going to answer questions. I said no. My arresting officer walked away. That was the entire interaction. And they take forever to fingerprint you. They do it like 12 times because they're terrible at it. Mm hmm. They’re really so bad. Well, they're better in jail. In the jail, they actually do - they're pretty quick.
01;02;58;20 - 01;03;16;26
Tate
But the cops in the precinct are just the worst. They're so bad. So you're sitting in the precinct. The precinct looks like the jails you see on TV. There's like, a bench, there's a couple holding cells, and then they take you to 4th Ave. Though that might be different now because they built like a new jail. I don't know.
01;03;18;04 - 01;03;38;18
Tate
And they make you like, well, if you're AFAB, they make you take a pregnancy test. And so they do some basic like, let's do some med stuff at the front to make sure, you know, we can just so we can say we checked you out and that, you know, if something happens in here, it's not our fault, blah, blah.
01;03;39;02 - 01;03;54;22
Tate
And then they send you off to a room to pee in a cup. Except they sent me off to a room to pee in a cup, and I never saw anyone else that I was arrested with for the rest of the night for about 8 hours at least. The minute I went in that room, I was separated from everyone else.
01;03;54;22 - 01;04;20;24
Tate
I got taken out very briefly to get my headshot or my headshot, my mug shot taken, and the second time they do everything more than once it's ridiculous. And then I went back into that room and I was alone entirely for the rest of my stay in jail. They said it was for my safety, obviously. Yeah, because it's right.
01;04;20;24 - 01;04;21;14
Jeanne
Yeah, because.
01;04;21;14 - 01;04;43;17
Tate
It's so safe. First of all, to be left alone with, like, a plastic bag. And, like, if it's for my safety, like, for myself, that's not safe. And if there's. Do they need to protect me from the other people that are in there or isn't that their job? Like, isn't why would they be able to fight me anyway?
01;04;43;19 - 01;04;50;07
Jeanne
Yeah, the only the only way to keep you safe is to punish you by isolating you. Yeah, but it doesn't hold water.
01;04;50;12 - 01;05;09;07
Tate
It's. Yeah, it's a ridiculous thing. And so you're just sitting there alone for a long time. They give you a bag of bread. Sometimes the bread is moldy, sometimes it's not. They give you a little thing, a jam that tastes like a grape popsicle. It's disgusting. And these little cookies that kind of tastes like coconut oil, really weird.
01;05;10;13 - 01;05;30;10
Tate
And the benches in there have bars on them, Like it's just like a concrete bench, but it's got a little metal bar in the middle so that you can't sleep on it because they don't want you to sleep. It's freezing inside. It's just terrible. You get a little bar soap to wash your hands with, but you can also draw with it like a soap stone.
01;05;30;19 - 01;05;51;25
Tate
So that's how I passed some of my time. When I wasn't sleeping, was I would, I was doing like lettering on the ground and the the people they got mad at me and they made me clean it up and it was a whole thing. And then you go to your IA [initial appearance], which might be in the morning at like 6 a.m. because that's when they do some of the IA’s or - they only do them twice a day.
01;05;51;25 - 01;06;20;17
Tate
That's the important thing. So if you don't go to the morning one, you have to wait many, many hours till the next one. And that's the end. Like it just they pat you down a million times. It's super uncomfortable. They never respect you and they say it's for your safety and it's not. It's a really broken system, but especially for people who are already considered other.
01;06;21;06 - 01;06;55;02
Jeanne
Yeah, I don't know if you remember, but at this point, a few years ago we were having a conversation about the word non-binary and comparing it to like genderqueer, queer and things like that and how you felt specifically in terms of like your gender. You've kind of shifted over time in terms of how you use those labels. I think maybe you have less strong feelings about it now, but I bring it up because I think there has been much more public awareness of the word non-binary.
01;06;55;15 - 01;06;55;28
Tate
Oh yeah.
01;06;56;12 - 01;07;18;20
Jeanne
And I think it really shapes the way a lot of people think about gender. Sometimes they think about non-binary people and trans and kind of divide those into separate categories, but it's really uneven. There's a lot of different understandings of that still, even though the word itself is much more common, there are celebrities who will decide to use they them pronouns and be very public about that.
01;07;18;21 - 01;07;28;12
Jeanne
Mm hmm. Has that changed things for you in terms of how people interact with you and people's, I think, more importantly, people's expectations of you.
01;07;28;12 - 01;07;55;19
Tate
I mean, I think it's helpful that people are using non-binary as a term more often. The - Okay. So back story. When I was in college, this would would have been like 2015 still before I started - before the first time I tried to do hormones and it was when I was still like figuring out like, oh, maybe I'm not a woman, blah blah, blah, blah, blah.
01;07;55;23 - 01;08;15;11
Tate
Right? The classic like, you know, I wouldn't mind if someone used all these pro- all of those things - all of the pronouns and just trying and trying different stuff out and bought my first binder and was like, well, I don't think like, I think gender's like, weird, but like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know, you know?
01;08;15;11 - 01;08;16;07
Jeanne
Yeah, it's.
01;08;16;08 - 01;08;16;15
Tate
The.
01;08;16;15 - 01;08;28;16
Jeanne
First stage of like, what if people did gender to me in a different way? Yeah. Like I'm not ready to do gender differently yet, but what about the idea of people just being different to me?
01;08;28;25 - 01;08;53;08
Tate
Yes. And also just like thinking about gender critically being critical of just like gender as a whole and like what that means. I had never thought about at all before, really. And so I started thinking about it, just like, how do I feel about gender and when gender, when people gender me and blah, blah, blah. And was like really femme at this time.
01;08;53;13 - 01;09;14;25
Tate
So it was a big deal because, oh boy, that not good for my brain is what I figured out long term. But after that, or around that same time I was using the word, I was obviously more specific with the language I was using to refer to myself because I thought I needed to be. And now I don't do that.
01;09;14;25 - 01;09;32;21
Tate
And that's kind of the point of what I'm talking about here is like at the time I was using like gender and stuff to describe myself. I actually prefer gender queer over non-binary. It took me a while to figure out that they were the same thing. I was like, Why are two words for the same thing? And it's not always the same thing.
01;09;32;21 - 01;09;43;04
Tate
Not everyone thinks of the same thing, but they describe a really similar experience. Yeah, and genderqueer is just like a has the word queer in it, and that's kind of that anyway. Well, I.
01;09;43;04 - 01;09;58;27
Jeanne
Saw a really good tweet the other day where someone was kind of speculating like the rise of non-binary as a preferred term over genderqueer is probably in some way connected to parents trying to accept their kids and not wanting to use a word that has the word queer.
01;09;59;15 - 01;10;24;07
Tate
Potentially. And also non-binary I think describes a little more directly that is outside the binary. Like it's really clear in that way of what it's describing in a way that genderqueer isn't. And so it took me a little while to understand that those two things were the same thing and. I was using genderqueer as a term to describe myself more often than but as non-binary as a term got more popular.
01;10;24;07 - 01;10;42;19
Tate
I just started saying non-binary instead. If I don't even feel like describing the word non-binary, I'll just say queer. And if I. If I say queer and people still don't get it, I'll just say gay and it's fine. Just realize I'm not like them. And that's as far as their brains actually end up going a lot of the time anyway.
01;10;42;19 - 01;11;02;15
Tate
They don't actually, they're not thinking critically about my gender. They just decide they see me and they're like, Wow, you're you look like this. But you're telling me you're not that. So I'm just going to remember you as a thing that is that but isn't. But I can't refer to it as that. And that's how that's just, you know, it's fine.
01;11;02;29 - 01;11;04;08
Tate
This is how gender works.
01;11;05;12 - 01;11;09;21
Jeanne
Gender is a set of rules of how you're supposed to view people.
01;11;09;27 - 01;11;12;14
Tate
That I think that is what it is for a lot of people.
01;11;12;22 - 01;11;13;14
Jeanne
Unfortunately.
01;11;13;14 - 01;11;48;11
Tate
Yeah. So in terms of the word non-binary becoming more popular, yeah, it's nice because it means there's a word I can say to someone and most well, not most people, but a lot of people are going to be like, Oh, I've heard that word before. Right? And that's really helpful though of course, sometimes there's still the situation, if I feel comfortable bringing it up, like if I'm, I don't know, somewhere and if I say I'm non-binary, there's like the couple people who, you know, would be like, Oh, you're one of those or something it doesn't happen almost never because I don't go outside.
01;11;48;11 - 01;11;48;26
Tate
But you've got to.
01;11;48;26 - 01;11;51;18
Jeanne
Elaborate on that a little bit is this people who are like -
01;11;51;23 - 01;12;01;15
Tate
Like if I'm at an event in public or when I was a cashier at a grocery store or any of these situations where I interact with the general public. Right?
01;12;02;10 - 01;12;14;09
Jeanne
So these are people who are not cool with queer people. Yeah. And then they hear you're non-binary and they're like, Oh, you're one of these purple haired freaks running America by ringing up my groceries.
01;12;14;09 - 01;12;34;00
Tate
Yeah, Yeah. And then they tell me to take more vitamin C and that I need to start eating brewer's yeast because it'll cure COVID. These things are not true. Don't Do them. But it's all that kind of stuff where people just. They hear a word and it immediately just like, incites anger in their brain. It just starts it.
01;12;34;00 - 01;12;40;05
Tate
They’re just like this is a word that I associate with all the bad things in the world and blah blah. And we do it too, like the other way around.
01;12;40;05 - 01;12;40;14
Jeanne
Yeah absolutely.
01;12;40;20 - 01;12;53;14
Tate
Neither thing is okay. Neither thing should happen. Though, mine is out of safety. My reaction is is a safety reaction. It's a fear based reaction. Their reaction is based in hate.
01;12;53;14 - 01;13;01;07
Jeanne
Give me some of the examples where that happens to you, like the kind of knee jerk reaction that you experience. What are some of those things?
01;13;01;07 - 01;13;24;28
Tate
Well, if someone says they, like, voted for Trump or whatever, obviously I feel less safe around that person because, well, they might not be cool with me. They they definitely are not a person that has used their political voice to do a thing that would benefit my life. And in fact, they actively do things that make my life harder and more dangerous.
01;13;25;19 - 01;13;31;03
Tate
Or it leads me to believe they would do those things based on that one piece of , because, stereotypes.
01;13;31;03 - 01;13;56;04
Jeanne
You're taking, the one piece of information that for real reasons is associated with a lot of really harmful things. And so then as soon as you hear that you're making a snap judgment. Yeah, and the same thing is happening to them where for whatever reason, a bunch of people have told them they need to associate being nonbinary with a bunch of things that they think are going wrong in society, hurting their lives on some level.
01;13;56;19 - 01;13;58;22
Jeanne
And so they have that knee jerk reaction about you.
01;13;58;27 - 01;14;07;21
Tate
And but their knee jerk reactions tend to be more combative and mine tend to be more of a flight response. And so that's also a really important difference.
01;14;07;21 - 01;14;09;02
Jeanne
That's really important difference.
01;14;09;18 - 01;14;30;24
Tate
Though, that's not always true with everyon, I know people who will see people who are more conservative or do certain professions and immediately get, not combative, but a little feistier. And that's fine because, yeah, trauma and anger and you want to express those emotions. And I get it.
01;14;31;07 - 01;14;53;14
Jeanne
Yeah. I mean, I get it too. But I think it's actually I think this gets into a really interesting area of transness as also a material thing we're talking about these things that we're wrapping up and having a reaction to out of some level of trauma. And for us, it makes sense because these are very material actions that are connected to material harm in our lives.
01;14;54;08 - 01;15;12;12
Jeanne
I'm not trying to do some weird both sides like thing about being non-binary or being trans, but we are doing a real thing. We're doing something that is material and changes how we move through society and therefore is something that alters society.
01;15;13;02 - 01;15;13;13
Tate
Yeah.
01;15;13;24 - 01;15;26;26
Jeanne
And I worry that by saying, well, we have our trauma fight response to then say, Well, this is fine, it's fine to just respond to trauma however we want it. It's not correct.
01;15;27;04 - 01;15;50;23
Tate
Yeah, no, no, we're not it's not fine to just respond trauma however we want necessarily. Yeah. We should always be working to - in whatever way it is like regardless of how you're like, better coping mechanisms are always better, right? It's always good to have real coping mechanisms for things instead of to like resort to your first emotional response in a situation.
01;15;50;23 - 01;15;59;25
Jeanne
And that's something I think you've been really good at. You do have real trauma and you have real trauma around these political things, but I think that you handle it really well.
01;15;59;25 - 01;16;03;20
Tate
Mostly, I just don't have to be in those situations very often anymore.
01;16;03;20 - 01;16;05;19
Jeanne
But that's a good point.
01;16;05;22 - 01;16;30;15
Tate
Yeah. That it helps to not be like to not have to come to terms with that. All the time. But I know that's not the case for people and for like other friends of mine, and they have different coping mechanisms or they're working on them at the very least. It's a long process. It doesn't just happen overnight. But the important thing is no one's just like, yeah, this is the this is how it needs to be forever.
01;16;31;01 - 01;16;39;14
Tate
I don't think that's helpful anyway. Like it prevents change and progress to just react emotionally every single time.
01;16;39;28 - 01;17;01;23
Jeanne
And I think that that applies to the way that you've been talking about transition too, instead of I have this trauma, I need to justify these actions all or nothing thinking breaking it down and saying I can try this, I can try that. If I don't like this, I can change it. Yeah. Also applies to how you can process and respond to trauma in other areas.
01;17;02;09 - 01;17;20;28
Tate
Nothing is black and white and it's cool to to live in the gray area. It also makes for better pictures. So you got to have all of the all of the tones. You can't just have black and white. This isn’t an Andy Warhol painting. We got to do more.
01;17;22;17 - 01;17;36;29
Jeanne
You can find more episodes of the Arizona Equals Conversation or sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the podcast at equalityarizona.org/stories. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again next week.
