Pride: more love, more openess

Panelists discuss issues facing LGBTQ+ folx inside their respective groups and across affinities, offering skills and strategies to combat isolation and forge bonds. Plus an interview with drag artist Cindy Nèro about her art and mentorship, and Karen’s Sermon on the Pubic Mound.  From the June 2024 live show.

GET TIX for our sixth anniversary live show in Chicago: Oct. 11, 2024!

In this episode:

• Interview with drag artist, mentor and storyteller  Cindy Nero
• Panel with Channyn Lynn Parker, CEO of Brave Space Alliance; Luke Romesberg, Director of Youth Housing from Center on Halsted, Chicago; Jordan Dunmead from Live Oak
• Host, sex educator, and energy worker Karen Yates 

The June 2024 show was sponsored by Rowan Tree Counseling, a therapy practice that is anti-racist | queer-allied | poly-affirming | sex-positive.  Available in Illinois! 

Get Say It Better in Bed, Karen’s free guide to upping your intimacy pleasure. Download here!

The Afterglow, our Patreon membership group, brings you regular bonus content, early alerts, and goodies! Our newest $10/mo member benefit: 10% off all W&S merch! Or show your love for Wild & Sublime any time: Leave a tip!

Be Wild & Sublime out in the world!  Check out our new tees and accessories for maximum visibility. Peep our Limited Collection and let your inner relationship anarchist run free… 

Prefer to read the convo? Full episode transcripts are available on our website.

Transcript

[Music]

Jordan: Dunmead 

How do we include people in a way that still protects ourselves, and what does it mean to consciously recognize in the moment I am pushing away or I am closing in because of historical things that were harmful and so painful, and yet in the here and now, as you were saying, we are all we're not in control of the risk and harm that can come to us, and we are in control of how we show up” 

Karen Yates: 
Welcome to Wild & Sublime, a sexy spin on infotainment, no matter your preferences, orientation or relationship style,. Based on the popular live Chicago show, I chat about sex and relationships with citizens from the world of sex positivity and comedy, you’ll hear meaningful conversations, dialogs that go deeper, and information that can help you become more free in your sexual expression. I’m sex educator Karen Yates, our monthly patreon supporters pay for a large part of our operating expenses. Their contributions from $5 on up, help us big time. Plus members get discounts on show tickets and merch and receive wild and sublime news before anyone else and more interested in helping us spread the message of sex positivity. Go to patreon.com/wildand sublime.

[to listenr] Hey folks! This is a selection from our last live show—the Pride show—in June. What I love about the panel conversation, which was how we build community within and across all of the affinity groups under the Pride banner, was that the panelists really transcended the topic as it relates to LGBTQ+ matters and moved into universal themes about how we all connect with each other. I really think you’re going to enjoy it.   We talked with Channyn Lynn Parker, CEO of Brave Space Alliance on the south side of Chicago, Luke Romesberg, the head of youth housing for Center on Halsted, and Jordan Dunmead, sex-positive therapist at Live Oak. Included in this conversation are questions from the audience, and Luke shared his experiences as a teenager evading a conversion therapist. And both the show and this recording took place on the lands of the Council of Three Fires, the ohjubwe, adawa, and the pottawatomi nations.

At the end of this episode you’ll hear my Sermon on the pubic Mound.

But first, we’ll begin the episode with my interview with Cindy Nero, a drag artist, storyteller and mentor who is teaching folks how to use drag as a method of self-expression, as well as celebrating her Latinx roots with a queer re-do of the coming-of-age quicinera. Enjoy.

Karen Yates 
[to live audience] Cindy is a multifaceted artist, and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your project, "drag me to life." You started it last year.

Cindy Nèro 
Yes, two years at this point.

Karen Yates 
Tell the folks a little bit about that.

Cindy Nèro 
So I started this, what I call a drag incubator called "drag me to life." I did it in conjunction with this art leadership fellowship I did where it was about creating digital accessible digital arts programming for my age group was young adults, because it was all part of a research program that was trying to develop digital arts research and modalities and tools and resources for teaching artists. So I created this through this fellowship, I created this program where I would mentor or take in like a little swarm of young adults, ages 20 to 30, who wanted were curious or wanting to explore the art of digital drag through a lens of healing and social justice and spirituality. And I took these, it was a cohort of 10 adults, and for eight weeks, we met online on Zoom, and I gave them the basics of, how do you create a drag persona? How do you build... How do you imagine a world? How you want to exist as your drag persona, and that could either be influenced by your identity that you feel is repressed, or how you just want to envision a world and incorporate this into your art practice.

Cindy Nèro 
And my focus was on the storytelling aspect of it. And then, of course, I taught them basics of like makeup, how to do makeup, how to, you know, style a wig, how to devise a performance. How do you approach learning lip sync and all this. And then from that, I we did, like a showcase the incubator is on pause this year, but it was basically the desire that it's now evolving to to create a space of dreaming, of imagining for people who want to explore drag, whether they're young drag artists or someone who's never done drag before, but giving them A safe and accessible space to explore that, because we probably go into this a little bit, yeah,

Karen Yates 
We're talking about RuPaul influence, pernicious influence!

Cindy Nèro 
Yes. So if you are privy to my rants, or I have a rant to you about drag in the state or drag in the world right now, I love drag. It is such an important vehicle of expression, such a big modality for a lot of trans men and trans women to find themselves through. And drag is having such a moment right now in the mainstream. However, there's this, what I'm calling the drag race machine. RuPaul drag race machine is that they've created a industry, a scene, an art form that is so accessible now, so consumable by others, but the same time it is now it's in its accessibility to all it's become more exclusive and restrictive to newer performers. And this is no shade of Chicago. I love Chicago, and the scene here is phenomenal. You should get go see drag if you, if you are able to. But the drag here is so cutthroat, so competitive. It's so pay your dues. Got to do tips, tip spots where we may or will not guarantee you'll even make $20 but all this while, you're have to buy your drag, have to buy all your makeup, your wigs, and then take a plus, like a $40 Uber, just to get $10 in tips, because we're not paying you. And then from that, it just becomes inaccessible to a lot of young performers or people who want to explore drag plus, you know, in the drag race world, these girls are spending, admittedly, $50,000 on your packages, although that's not the case here in Chicago, I'm still hearing of people who are doing competitions. Friends who do competitions and saying that they're dropping $200 a week just to be in a competition for their looks or for their wigs and everything. And I'm like, Girl, how like you are working a part time job for $18 an hour? How are you affording this, plus rent, plus your bills, plus utilities, and they expect impeccable drag out of you if you're brand new, like dropping that's why we create. It creates, created an unsustainable funnel of like, people need to spend money to do drag, but then if they don't look up to par, they don't get opportunities to be seen. They're not they're not heard. Their stories are not giving any credence. So that's what I call, like the drag race machine. It's like in doing so, creating drag mainstream and accessible, it's creating space for queer artists, but at the same time, it's now pushing out younger artists, poorer artists who just don't have the means to be able to explore that drag, that art form, but deserve to explore that art form.

Karen Yates 
So one of the things that I was really intrigued by, working with Latinx folks who are 30, is if you can explain to folks that might not know what is the quinceanera, and you have created a doble quinceanera. This is really cool.

Cindy Nèro 
Thank you. So for those who are privy to Latinx culture, there's a thing that that happens when a girl turns 15 as she has a quinceanera. It's a coming of age. It's kind of like a debutante ball or a sweet 16, but it's like a big deal. It's a huge party. She wears a beautiful gown. It's like a ceremony where she becomes a woman. And I, for me, I there was this, there's this movement of, like 30, 30-somethings who are throwing what they call doble quinces, which is a double 15. You know, 15 plus 15 is 30. I sure. I don't know why I said that. [laughter] You all know math, but I wanted to throw one because, you know, I, you know, being queer and trans, it's like, oh, I never got one, but at the same time, 30 marks 15 years of queerness for me. So I really wanted to honor and celebrate that. So I did a fundraiser for Drag Me to Life, and my other performance collective, the Front Porch Oracles, of I'm just gonna throw a quince. We're raised some money for these collectives and these efforts that I'm doing, projects. I had, you know, a dress. We did a ceremony, an indigenous based ceremony, and then we had food party, we had vendors, we had calor Chicago do HIV testing in the back. And then we had drag performances. My court was, we're all drag performers, drag kings and drag queens. And it was a very beautiful experience.

Cindy Nèro 
And just like and just having it be a doblee quince, where it was like celebrating not just 30, but 15 years of being proud in who I am. And you best believe Imma have another quince when I'm 45 because then 15 years of transness, just gotta always have a reason to party, right? But yeah, that's what a doble quince is. And although you know, I was a one time thing, I am imagining a world where Drag Me to Life can also be a vessel, where every year we have a fundraiser that's a doble quince. We throw one for a fellow community member who just turned 30 and just wants to be celebrated. So although it's not happening again, there's I, I'm envisioning, like this could be a fundraiser for Drag Me to Life, but then also we get to celebrate someone in our community who turned 30, which for a lot of us, oftentimes, we don't envision a future for ourselves past 30. I definitely did it so wanting that that's a big deal for me. So I want to be able to honor that we are. We can be elders too, even though I get labeled the queer elder already at 30.

Karen Yates 
So you're going to be doing a performance july 27 at Comfort Station. Or what is this? Yes. So

Cindy Nèro 
although the cohort mentorship series is on pause this year and just looking for funding and opportunities for sponsors and partners, I am still keeping the spirit of it alive through some what I call drag pop ups. Future ones will have themes, but for right now, it's just like about yourself as a trans as a queer person, share your story, create us like tell us who you are and be proud of who you are, and then tie it in with a lip sync performance. Please support queer and trans artists.

Karen Yates 
All right. Cindy Nero, thank you so much, and we can find you on your Instagram page?

Cindy Nèro 
Yes, I am on Instagram at LA, l, a, underscore. Cindy narrow, C i n, d, y, N, E, R, O,

Channyn 
thank you so much, Cindy, appreciate it.

Cindy Nèro 
Thank you

Karen Yates 
Right on.

Karen Yates: [midroll to listener]

Did you know the wild & sublime, twice-monthly newsletter has news, views and tips about sexuality delivered to your inbox, plus info on the latest pod episodes and upcoming live show? How do you get this for yourself? Sign up at Wildandsublime.com.

We’ll now continue with our panel conversation.

Karen Yates 
[to live audience] Tonight we are going to be talking about Pride: cliques or community, or, if you're French, KLEEKS and community. Are we coming together or falling apart. First, some introductions. I'm talking with Channyn Lynn Parker, CEO of Brave Space Alliance, a black and trans led LGBTQ center on the South Side, Luke Romesberg, Director of Youth Housing at Center on Halsted, and Jordan Dunmead, sex-positve therapist at Live Oak.

Karen Yates 
Okay, so I'd love for each of you to just talk briefly, give some orientation about what you do in your particular organization or in your practice, Channyn, why don't we start with you.

Channyn 
My God, what do I do? What don't I do? Oh, my God, I handle all the things all the time. But on paper, what do I do? We are a Black-led, trans led, tlbgq plus organization on this.

Channyn 
We do image empowerment through barbershop, beauty shop, all on site. We do group supports. So we really run the gamut of services that we do every day for individuals to live their best lives. And you know what do, what they need to do in order to get to where they need to go. So that's just a touch of what we do. And I would love to talk more about that.

Channyn 
Awesome. Thank you so much. Luke?

Luke Romesberg 
hi everybody. Just a heads up. I'm losing my voice a little bit. I'm crediting this to talking constantly over Pride, and my Pride meter is dwindling, so I'm almost straight at this point. I think [laughter]

Luke Romesberg 
Once July, next year, I'll build back up. But anyway, yeah, I'm here from Center on Halstead. We are known as the third most comprehensive or the we have the most comprehensive queer center in the Midwest and Chicago area, considered the third most comprehensive in the nation. I run the youth housing program there 18 to 24 years old. Center on Halsted is located up in the north side, but apartments are located in the South Shore area, so we do have a presence down there on the south side as well. My program consists of housing eight folks. Currently we're on the process of hopefully building, within the next couple years, we want to be housing 24 to 30 people. So we have an ambitious school there. But folks in my program, they are. They have access to case management. They we can make sure they can connect them with any kind of government assistance programs, food security programs, job readiness, school readiness, really, if you name it, we try to do it for them so and then center on Halstead, as I said, very comprehensive. We offer mental health services. We have a Youth and Family Services program. We have tons of groups. We have a behavioral health program, housing for seniors. It's really just a lot of things, so I encourage you to check on our website, and if you need some assistance, we can probably find something for you.

Karen Yates 
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Jordan Dunmead 
I'm Jordan. I have been at a place called Live Oak, Chicago. We are a group private practice based in trauma informed work, really centering intersectionality and LGBTQ affirming work. I personally am a staff psychotherapist there, so I work predominantly with gender sexual and relationally diverse clients. So polyamory, non monogamy, queerness, kink, gender expansiveness, all of that at the intersection of sexual trauma survival. So I really focus on trauma in my work. I am also a supervisor for our post grad fellowship program, if there are any therapists in the room that would like more training after their grad school experience, come talk to me, and I'm a trainer and workshop person who facilitates and then mentors folks other therapists and consults with them about engaging in resource sharing and teaching.

Karen Yates 
Awesome.Thank you so much. So let's talk first about some of the challenges in building community within the LGBTQ culture, and then get... We'll first talk about challenges, then we'll talk about the opportunities. Obviously, there are larger forces in the US currently with legislation against the LGBTQ plus community, but let's go deeper into what's happening inside the community. Channyn, I'm hoping you can talk about Brave Space's work on Black trans liberation, which is, it's so important to your organization, what I would really love to hear about is how working in the Black trans liberation space lifts all of us. Yeah,

Channyn 
I think that's a great question. So one, liberation is a very evocative term, meaning that it means different things for different individuals. Right? For myself, Liberation means not being held captive to another person's imagination of who and what I should be. Okay? So I offer that same space or ideal for other individuals. We have a tendency to approach liberation as I've seen it lately through the lens of academia. We have a tendency to approach liberation through the lens of being very monolithic, but now allowing individuals to tell us what liberation means to them. So what we do at Brave Space Alliance is, first and foremost, take inventory of who is it that you are, and what is it that you want to be, and how can we support you in getting there? That unto itself is liberation. And for that person, you know what their idea of liberation may not be my idea of liberation, but that, in of itself is liberation, right? So I know that for a lot of people, this may sound very nebulous, but in fact, I believe that that is what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be something that remains nimble into evergreen and something that's meant to be totally contingent upon that person's definition of self. One of the things that I noticed in our community is I ask myself the question often, are we invested in purity? Are we invested in clarity? And I think that that is the the the ever expanding battle that we're engaging in right now. So for myself, I don't believe in purity, you know? I believe in clarity, and I believe in getting a better understanding of what it is that you want to be to this world. How can we assist you in getting there? And so long as your pathway is not involved in my destruction, then we're all good.

Karen Yates 
Right on. Thank you. We'll be getting back to that, Luke, what I wanted to ask you is, as the director of youth housing at center on Halstead, what is the biggest, biggest risk do you see the kids have that causes them to drop out of the housing program. What's going on there?

Luke Romesberg 
So let me clarify too, whenever we say youth in my program, it's 18 to 24 years old. Okay, so young adults, and within the program, we pay the rent, we pay the utilities, internet, all of that. So it's not often that we see a youth, you know, want to drop out of the program. It's it's more. We have stipulations that they have to abide by. Like the whole goal of the program is for them to achieve independence ultimately. So we realize that every youth enters the program at a different level, different life skills, different understanding, and it's our job to build them up to that level of independence, and to do so, they have to do things like be with their case manager once a week. They have to engage with their other community members, their housemates once a month at a house meeting where they talk about chores, leadership, life skills, hygiene, self, hygiene, all of that stuff. So we have those requirements. They also have to have a job and or be in school. So these are all parts, you know, of life and becoming an adult. And unfortunately, not everybody meets those, like those requirements. We do our best. We give as many chances as possible, you know, we work with everybody. We have a different point system, you know, and they're given multiple, multiple opportunities, but unfortunately, sometimes, and it's the worst part of my job, literally, is having to exit somebody from the housing program. So it's not necessarily by their choice, but sometimes, you know it's you have to realize that there's a very limited amount of beds. We have a housing crisis in this city, in this nation, in general. So if somebody isn't taking full advantage of that with all of the assistance that we're able to provide, sometimes we have to access them, and that we hopefully find somebody else who can take full advantage of a program and succeed and then become independent.

Karen Yates 
So Channyn, how does your housing program differ from Luke's? Is there a difference?

Channyn 
No, that's a great question. So we know that in the typical because I was a housing case manager for a long time, and we know that 18 to 24 is the standard for what a youth is. What we do at Brave space that is a bit more unique is we focus on the what's called the not enoughs, the not young enough, the not poor enough, the not make a money enoughs, the not sick enoughs, right? Because what we know is that 25-- my goodness, you're still a youth. 26 you're still, my God, you were 16 ten years ago! You know, we know that there is a crappy definition of what middle class is. Come on. So a lot of the participants that we have. Yeah, yes, they have a job, but you know what? They're making 15 bucks an hour, and what, what is fair market rent, right? I don't know if there's any. I don't think fair and market really go together, right? So what we do is we say, hey, look, we know that once again, that that that clear, that clean, rigid definition of what youth means, enough, making enough money means all these things. We know that that's no one fits neatly into that. So what we do is we give folks 18 months to stabilize well enough so they can kind of enter into, I guess we can say mainstream housing. But if you need more time, that's okay too. We will hold on to you until you are able to say, I've got it from here. And before I close out, a lot of folks will say, well, Shayna, won't they just hold on forever? No, because, truth be told, most people want their own. You know, that's a myth that people just want to take advantage. What do you mean?! We all take advantage, right? So again, we believe that people will tell us what they need. We'll give them what they're in need of, so that way they can go ahead and take their lives by the reins and go where they need to go.

Karen Yates 
Awesome. It sounds like you you and your organization look at things with like the clear light of reality.

Channyn 
Yes.

Karen Yates 
this is reality, because, like in America, there's this bullshit reality. I don't know. It's just like, No, there's so many people that cannot exist under the system that are not, you know, they're not like lying in the gutter. They're trying their damnedest. They're like working McDonald's and working something else, but they're working like 18 hours a day. That's

Channyn 
you hit it on the head, right? We're called Brave space for a reason. We're called Brave space because we reject the idea that anything in any place can be a safe space. You lock your door at night, you cut your alarm on you hit your card, lock door when you see a black, big black man walk by and write you all these things, but here's the reality. The reality is, if somebody wants you bad enough, they'll come get you right, absolutely right. So we create spaces for you to be brave. This is a brave space. When you walk out of your door every single day in this crazy climate that we're in, you have to lean on your brave space. So we curate brave spaces for people in our ecosystem so they can go out and tackle that world.

Karen Yates 
Fabulous, fabulous. So Jordan on a completely different angle, and angle, I'm assuming, of more privilege. Yeah, your caseload has clients that are more privileged, almost entirely LGBTQ. Plus, what concerns do your clients have that make them feel isolated from the greater community?

Jordan Dunmead 
When we talked about this, the I mean, I'm a trauma therapist, and the immediate thing that came up for me was trauma. So I think there's something in the queer community that being outside of it, regardless of if you're an ally, a queer person, what have you, there's this idea of joy, and that joy can be there absolutely and there is this inclusivity versus exclusivity? Struggle I have found, and so I, of course, as a therapist, am hearing a lot about the struggles, hearing a lot about the hard moments that folks are having within the queer community. But what I have found is, from a trauma perspective, as a queer person, I can say you know Me included in this. There is we're all a traumatized group, right, to varying degrees for different reasons, but there is this normalcy of feeling ostracized, of feeling like whether it's your family of origin, whether it's the systems we've been talking about that are not made for created for holding queer joy. And so what we see happen sometimes is that from a trauma place, we are so used to that ostracizing, that when folks come into the queer community, kind of saying that at large, there can be this piece around, well, now I need to protect everything, right? And so there can be this closing in of whether it's chosen family group of people you go out with, what have you that we want to protect ourselves because of this trauma place. Right, whether we're consciously thinking about it or not, that people are going to come in and hurt us and like maybe, right? But there is a piece around how do we include people in a way that still protects ourselves, and what does it mean to consciously recognize in the moment I am pushing away or I am closing in because of historical things that were harmful and so painful, and yet in the here and now, as you were saying, We are all we're not in control of the risk and harm that can come to us, and we are in control of how we show up. And so what does it mean to let folks into the community. What does it mean to open our arms to folks who maybe don't have those groups that they go out with, right? Don't have chosen family, instead of kind of becoming insular from a protective space that we're not even aware that we're doing?

Karen Yates 
I saw this on Instagram, which is my primary source of news and information. [laughter] I don't know if any of you who are on Instagram follow @gendersauce, so it's a really gendersauce is fucking amazing. They do these slideshows that with very pointed questions around gender and sexuality and trauma. This was one of them. It was about queerness and policing of the community from within. Focusing on people's ability to use terms you like more than focusing on class solidarity isn't helpful. It pushes away comrades, including queer ones, also policing people around what terms they use, who they have fucked and who they would fuck, doesn't help people to come out. It turns you into a social cop. Let's talk. Let's talk about internal divisiveness or building. You were talking a little bit Jordan, about the building of the shell, the wall behind, around us, and then the tribalism within, with inside, you know, the cliques that conform. Luke, you haven't talked much. What do you what do you say about this kind of policing from within? Do you see it happening?

Luke Romesberg 
Yeah. I mean, I think definitely it's, you know, we are essentially like a microcosm of the population and the queer community, where we're all marginalized in certain ways, and we have different levels of privilege. And you see those levels of privilege enacted in, I think, all spaces. You know, my experience as a CIS, white dude is very different than Channyn's experience as a Black trans woman, and that echo is much larger than just our community, but it's important to remember, you know, that the way that I navigate the world is going to be very different than somebody else, and the issues that I'm going to encounter are going to be way different than somebody else, just because I'm queer, my Experience again, it's it's, we all have a unique experience, and we all hold different levels of privilege.

Karen Yates 
Channyn, what do you have to say?

Channyn 
Oh, man, what don't I have to say? So when I think about the question that she posed, and thinking about the situation within our community. Here's the thing, none of us have gone unscathed from white supremacy, okay? And when I say white supremacy, I'm not talking about melanated versus unmelanated people. I'm not talking about that. Interestingly enough, anybody here painted before, painted the house. Okay? So in order to get rid of a very deep, dense color, you have to put a coat of primer over it. That's white, that's whiteness. And what happens is that coat of primer erases and strips all previous pieces of identity. So even the individuals who believe themselves to be white don't recognize that you too are victims of white supremacy, because you've been stripped of all of the gloriousness that came before you, okay, and you've been taught to buy into this idea that you are white. But in fact, somebody duped you into upholding a power supremacy, supremacy, okay, but to go back to your question, no matter how much we want to untether on or unanchor ourselves from this thing, it's all we know, and even when we believe that we're acting outside of it, we're still acting within it. You know? We say, oh, we need more black trans women at the table, but when we get to table, we suddenly recognize, Well, shit, I actually don't know how to navigate outside of what I've been taught. You. So you end up going God like I mean, I know I wanted to fight against status quo, but I find myself becoming increasingly status quo. And it's just an ever it's this hamster wheel, it's this conundrum. And before you know what, you recognize, I don't know how to break out of this. So you do the best you can with what you have, and you hope to raise up individuals who can come along and do the work a little less clumsily than you did, and begin to add their facets of liberation as they see fit. That's why I get out of the way of young people, because I realize that I'm on the brink of 50, and you know more than I do, and you know what your community needs, and I need to get out of your way, but my job is to set the table for you to take the reins so you can do What needs to be done.

Karen Yates 
Thank you. Thank you. So you know, we could, this could be a very long conversation, and I kind of hate to move it along, because we could. We could sit here for quite a while, and I would love to, but let's talk about some solutions. How can people connect within a community, within their group to build a community. Are there social groups or opportunities? I mean, Rowan tree was just talking about some of these get togethers. Social groups are opportunities that naturally allow for people to break down divides like class or ethnicity.

Jordan Dunmead 
I'm going to answer this sideways. I think part of this is like, yes, what are the resources? What are the spaces? But then there's also the, how are we listening to each other? Are we being curious? Are we being open? Because I have found, I think someone was naming this, or maybe you were talking about it, I'm not sure, but the yes, the policing right that can happen if we can open ourselves up to community in this way and be creative about that, have the voices at the table that need to be at the table in order to create those spaces and have the resources available to be able to have those conversations. So my focus, in a lot of ways, is on the how this is a topic that comes up over and over and over again with clients of like, how do I find community in this way?

Jordan Dunmead 
Is it about vulnerability, though?

Jordan Dunmead 
One hundred percent, because there's this piece around, if I say the wrong thing, if I say it in the wrong way, if I don't use the right language, I'm going to silence myself, right? And so if we're silencing ourselves, it becomes this echo chamber. But then we're not curious, we're not growing we're not coming together.

Karen Yates 
Luke or Channyn?

Luke Romesberg 
I'm from a very small town in Pennsylvania, and for me, it was, you know, getting the fuck out of my bubble, right? Like I'm very it was very white-centered. I moved to Pittsburgh and started to meet different people. And, like, whenever I was young, I didn't even know a single queer person at all, and so whenever I went to Pittsburgh, I found a theater school and I went for journalism, but it was all queer people, which is why I went, you know, and experiencing that helped me find my community. And if I didn't be vulnerable, as you said, if I wasn't, didn't have some kind of sense of bravery to get out of my bubble, I wouldn't have found that community. And then from there, it was still just growing from there, moving from Pittsburgh to Chicago and then again, adjusting those comfort zones. Chicago is vast. It's diverse, but it's very segregated in a lot of ways. I think it's one of the most segregated cities in the entire nation. And you know, I live on the north side. My work for the last decade has been on the south side, and there goes my voice. But, you know, it's been trying to push myself and experience different people, different things. Again, getting out of that bubble will help you find your community.

Channyn 
You know, I simply say, get uncomfortable. Yeah, get uncomfortable, you know? I mean, I'm telling you like, I mean, comfort is a killer,

Karen Yates 
yep.

Channyn 
And we all seek it, right? I mean, humans are comfort seeking. Beings, it's insane to not want to be comfortable. So you're perfectly normal seeking comfort. But trust me, anything that lays down too long is going to atrophy, you know. So you've got to get up. You've got to challenge yourself. You got to interrogate yourself. And like I said, again, be okay with being uncomfortable. And you know, the two folks up here said it better than I could, you know, they hit it on the head.

Jordan Dunmead 
Something I often think about and talk about is the difference between comfort and safety, right? And so there. Comfort or discomfort is where the growth happens, is where the vulnerability happens, when we can be brave, right? When we can step out of that, that's where community can happen in an authentic and full way.

Karen Yates 
Because queer folk have found bars in the past as the first meeting place, let's talk about bars. You know, there's been a lot of stories right now about, like, how lesbian bars have closed down. There's very few lesbian bars, but there's also a, you know, this new story that's emerging about queer bars. You know, gay bars are starting to revision themselves, or they're starting to be closed, and some other types of community building is happening. Can we talk about bars as the pros and cons for a second, just a second.

Jordan Dunmead 
The thing that comes up for me around this is, what are the constraints for people to build community in that way? Right? So if we talk about someone's sober, right, someone's disabled, and it's not accessible to them. It's not a welcome space, right? Like, as a queer person, I identify as agender. If I go into a space and I see a bunch of like, cis men there, I'm like, This is not a spot for me. And then all the lesbian bars are closing, right? Like all of that too. I think there's huge strength in like kind of queer party culture, like bars or what have you I know there's a deep kind of root to that with, you know, the AIDS crisis and the 80s of what are the safe space? Safe spaces we have to go into to be in community, to be together. And that kind of being a legacy in some ways, I think it depends on who you're talking to about like, if it's inclusive, if it's accessible, if it's open, and it's hard, it's really hard, depending on the identities you hold and how your life looks in general.

Channyn 
You know, I mean, you said it beautifully. The only thing that I can actually add is access to pride is a privilege. And that's not me waxing poetic, but that's me thinking about the fact that I hold our spaces sacred because folks fought so hard for us to be able to access pride, and they curated and created those walls and those floors and those ceilings, aka Stonewall and so on and so forth, because we didn't have access to be Proud in any other space. And as we become fancier and evolve and, you know, merge into the status quo, we believe ourselves to not need those spaces, but I believe that there is a movement afoot that's tricking us into believing that. So once we let go of those spaces and when we need them again, where will they be? Wow. So I say, defend your terrain as much as you can, because you may need them more than you believe you do.

Luke Romesberg 
I was actually going to say something very similar, because when I think of bars too, it often depends on your geographical location, of where you live, right? I mentioned being in a small town where I grew up, we had one gay bar. There was nothing else. I mean, I wasn't even old enough to go to it, but I knew it was there. And like just having that was a sense of pride and a sense of safety knowing it was there. But there is a downfall to the bar life, sometimes depending on who it caters to. But it is important to keep in mind, when we talk about gay bars or queer bars. There's variations of those, right? There's club scene. There's, like, dive bars, where you can have actual conversations and get to know people. There's sex clubs, you know, it's really, there's a plethora of those. So the idea of us not needing them, or, you know, us not having them, is a little scary. I think it's important that we do migrate a little bit, right? We have more resources than just bars. But as you mentioned, Stonewall, I think it's today. It's 55th anniversary of Stonewall. So you know, we are sitting here on this stage because of those people that were at that bar, fighting for our rights, and it's important that we have to continue to have those spaces.

Karen Yates 
Wow. Thank you so much. Finally, final question, and we can talk a little bit more in act two, when we come back together again for the Q and A and if you have any questions, definitely put them in the box over there we can answer them. What are good volunteer initiatives that folks can get involved in? You're all probably involved with them. Two of you are involved in nonprofits, but yeah,

Jordan Dunmead 
I'll name the first thing that comes to mind for me. I am an anti Zionist Jew, and JVP, Jewish Voice for Peace is a really great organization to get involved with, specifically with what's happening right now. I think. There is a way that just to mesh the two things together, that the community can also come together through shared interests, but also like shared passions when it comes to like, what communities are we supporting and what have you so just shout out to JVP.

Luke Romesberg 
I mean, I'm gonna be generic here. I have to give Center on Halstead a shout out. I mean, I've been working there for almost three years. As I said, we have almost an infinite amount of programs. If you want to find something to volunteer with a certain group, you know you can find that at center. Go to our website center on halstead.org, and there's a volunteer page on there. You could reach out, send an email. His name is Joey, that's who you'll get in contact with and he'll find the right direction for you. At center, again, any age, any gender, any race, ethnicity, you can find it at center. Center does have a history of catering to white, cis gay men. There is no secret about that. We have a new CEO. I want to shout that out. Her name is Julie Robinson. She's fucking amazing. Center on Halstead has been very intentional about changing our messaging and who we've been catering to. We have just expanded into the south side to center on Cottage Grove. So if you live in the south side, there's opportunities for you to volunteer down there as well. We always need folks for drop in. We do drop in every Wednesday from 10 to 1pm youth, 18 to 24 year old, primarily bipoc, trans, non binary, gender expansive youth who are unhoused, if you're interested in serving food or doing art or writing or anything with them, please, please reach out to us. We need all the help we can get all the time.

Karen Yates 
Cool. Thank you.

Channyn 
You know, similarly, obviously I'm going to say Brave Space Alliance, right? We always need support in our pantry. We always need support in our housing programs. We need, I feel like this. There is the donation of talents, time and treasure, right? We need all three of those things. But I'll say something a bit more narrowly. Don't forget the power of mentorship. You know, there are always organizations and companies and things that love your time and your presence, but there are individuals who will never step foot in Brave space since Center on Halsted, Howard Brown, Chicago House, they're they're your neighbors, right? They you are possibility models, mentor folks you know, spend time with individuals you know, find those young people who just need you, need your presence. There are individuals who need a drag mother. There are individuals that need a gay mother. There's individuals that need a house parents, so on and so forth, right? So don't forget those things as well, please. That's the best type of volunteerism you can do.

Karen
[to listener]
Now we moved on to questions from the audience.

Karen Yates 
this question is for Luke, can you please tell the story of outsmarting your conversion therapist?

Luke Romesberg 
So I came out whenever I was 13 years old. Like I said, I didn't know any queer people. The reason the way I came out was I had bought like a, I was a lot smaller back then. I bought a, like, extra small, bright pink shirt, and it really infuriated my parents, and it became the catalyst to me coming out. One night, they called me a faggot, and my my dad did actually, and or he said, it made me look like a faggot, is what he said. And that just enraged me. And I had this letter written ready to go, and I took it and kind of threw it at him. And even at that point, at that age, I really didn't care. And I also thought, you know, they would get over it. That would be the end of it. But that wasn't the case. I was very, like I said, very small town, and we had to drive to Philadelphia, which was like six hours, and I met with a conversion therapist who was a super weird. He was just a total weirdo, and I not sure, but I would think maybe a pedophile at this point, and I met with him in person. And luckily, the good thing about being from such a small town was that there was no conversion therapist in my town, so we had to try drive back to Johnstown, where I'm from. And I then proceeded to meet with this guy on the phone once a week for an hour, and he would say really strange things to me. Tell me to, like, take off my shirt and describe my body to him. And, you know, I'm 13 years old, going through puberty, and would tell me to just like, describe the insecurities of my body. And those reasons were making me feel emasculine, and that was causing same sex attraction. So he was using that to separate myself from my identity too. You're not gay. You're suffering from same sex attractions. And I had the power of the internet at that point, and I got on the internet, and I did all the research I could on conversion therapy, so I learned about the gray areas they would talk about. I studied this actual guy's work. He had books and things on it, so I began reading up about him. I learned how to tell him everything he wanted to hear. So even at 13, I was able to outsmart him. He was like, Oh, wow, you're really progressing, you know, like this is like you're making waves, like you're my All Star client, you know. And I was just lying to him constantly. And within a year, I was healed, I was fixed, and a big success story for him. So it was just making sure I read up on everything, and I outsmarted him, and eventually it led to me having to come out to my parents again. So yeah and yeah, at 18, I came out again, and that's whatever Cindy reminded me of, what you said. It was like, Fuck you guys, I'm 18. You can't really do much at this point. I'm going away to college. And that was it.  Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that.

Karen Yates 
We got a question. "Cancel culture is so 2020, what reparative actions can we take? And the underlining actions can we take?"

Channyn 
What underlying... what actions can we take, always remembering that it's no fun until the rabbit has the gun. If that makes any sense, right? It's always so easy for us to project canceling someone when it's somebody else, until we make the Oops and Ouch, and then all of a sudden, it's, well, wait a minute. I thought you guys believed in restorative justice, but you didn't believe it for that individual. So you know, the thing about believing in restorative and transformative justice and all these premises is we have to believe it for everybody, and that's what's hard. We can't say lock him up in the same breath that we say abolish prisons. That's hard, that's hard, that's hard. You know, so again, right? We have to be practitioners of introspection, and we have to ask ourselves, do we just say these things for catch phrases because they sound good? Are we prepared to live them? I I think about the body that I hold, and I think about in this body, I am the descendant of the harmed and the individuals who have caused harm, and without either one, I would not exist. So within my body, I hold that dichotomy and make a commitment to recognizing that we are all victims in some way, shape or form, and we all are owed space and grace, with the exception that you want to get it right.

Jordan Dunmead 
What actions? I think a big thing is coming from a place of love and like an actual desire for growth and healing and coming together. I think a big thing with cancel culture is it cancels out the ability for accountability. And Shannon to your point, yes, like we are all victims and we are all perpetrators, and if we can look inward and see that, it perhaps gives more space right for conversation, for curiosity and for openness, and that is not to say people who harm shouldn't be held accountable. It is not to say that at all. It's more right the actions, like with the how. I don't know if I have a good answer to that, but I it's hard right and like, but I do know that what cancel culture does is it silences people, and so that prevents us from seeing that harm is happening. It prevents us from growing and looking inward. And it also just doesn't leave space for change in that way. And so I think again, with like the actions, I think it is something about, being able to be together in our humanness around right? That dichotomy you were talking about, whether that is through restorative justice practices or whether it is through one to one conversations or bringing you know, first of all. Person who has been harmed needs to be at the table for that, right? There's no like, one size fits all. But yeah, I think if we can also bring all of our humanness into that, that then allows change to happen. And I wish there was a better answer for like, the exact actions of that, I think it depends, but I think us closing off in the way that we do doesn't serve anyone actually,

Karen Yates 
You know, talking about, I've been thinking a lot about the victim- perpetrator dance. And one thing I've been thinking a lot about is how, when we say the word perpetrator, you know, we always think of like the capital P or all caps, perpetrator, of like the worst harms we do to other people. But you know, we can be perpetrators in exactly this way, of just silencing people, of being dismissive of and not recognize this is a perpetration that comes from victimhood. And this idea of like both of you are talking about becoming aware of self, more aware of self. What am I doing, what act? What am I doing? And can I talk out of both sides of my mouth? You know? Yeah, Luke, do you have anything to say?

Luke Romesberg 
Want to also touch like whenever we think of cancel culture, too, we think of this like grand scale, right? I think it can happen in smaller levels, like within family and things like that too, you know, like with my parents, for example. This isn't like, I didn't cancel them, you know, but I I worked with them, and I helped them to learn. And not everybody can do that, not everybody should do that. But, you know, my parents are out here visiting this weekend for pride. And you know, it's we've come a very long way, and if I wouldn't have had those conversations with them or given them the space to learn, and, you know, we learned together. And I think that echoes into like a much bigger, bigger scale as well, that, you know, it's not the job of the victim to do that always, either I was able to do that, and it worked for me, and it worked for my family. It won't work for everybody, but just, you know, it's, I think it's our job to also, you know, we pride ourselves on keeping an open mind. And the people who harm us, they often have a lot to learn, and we know that harm often comes from ignorance and fear. So without them knowing, like I said, my parents are from a small town, we didn't know any queer people. They didn't know any better at all, and it's their fault to a certain point, their ignorance, but it comes to a point where, yes, I had to educate them, and I did that

Channyn 
For me, and this is just me personally. I don't hold anyone else to this. I find joy in educating. I never get tired of educating, and I absolutely understand and honor people who are just like I don't have it in me to educate anyone else, because I 100% agree. But for me, so long as you're willing to do the hard work, so long as you're willing to get this right, then I am available. Because the fact is, is that I want you all to come to the cookout. I just want you to leave your toxicity out the door. You know, that's the whole thing. Is, none of us are getting out of this life alive. You know, life is a terminal condition, I tell you that. So for me, I want us to all. I want to create a big enough wagon for none of us to fall off, you know, because we all need to journey together and get to this place, and we all have something to bring to each other, so I need you to pull it together, because there's someone who needs you, but they just need the best version of you, you know. So that's my own personal life philosophy when it comes to this

Karen Yates 
Wonderful,wonderful this has been a great conversation. Thanks everyone. Channyn Lynn Parker, Luke romesburg and Jordan Dunley, thank you so much.

And now we’ve come to the end of the episode with my Sermon on the Pubic Mound.

Karen Yates 
Glitter. I love it. I sadly don't wear a lot of it, but I do love it. I was looking online about the history of glitter, and saw that modern glitter. Here's another history moment, was invented in 1934 by the machinist Henry rauschman, then the fat famed drag troupe the jewel box review, from the late 1930s to the 1960s often worked glitter into their beauty routines in the 1970s glam rockers like David Bowie and his sparkling alter egos, again. Stardust made it cool for disaffected gender bending youth to adopt it. Moving on from there, the gay movement embraced it, and it became a multifaceted symbol. As one writer said in a recent article, glitter isn't only about euphoria and performance, it's also deeply tied to protest, to protest and defiance, and that like love, it is irresistible and irrepressible and never gives up. And it sticks to every fucking thing you put it on, gets into everything, clothes, shoes, rugs, pets, beds, tubs and culture and society. Politicians in the far right and the middle right and the center right might have issues with queerness, but glitter is irresistible and irrepressible and never gives up being gay or lesbian or trans or non binary or gender fluid, or queer or bisexual or intersex or asexual or Two Spirit might seem right now, like being on the edge of society. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe we're in the center, pushing out, as James Baldwin said, quote, the discovery of one's sexual preference doesn't have to be a trauma. It's a trauma because it's such a traumatized society. End, quote, The World marginalizes the pride community because of its own unhealed wounds, wounds that keep people from experiencing their fullest selves and keep people from uniting with their bodies, thus furthering disassociation from their deepest selves. Hate is never going to win, because as organisms, we will always move toward healing. Maybe glitter is more than shiny face paint. Maybe glitter represents stars, tiny pinpoints of light to guide us through the morass, a way to remind ourselves of what's important being irresistible and irrepressible and never giving up. Have a good one. Folks, Happy Pride. Thanks so much for coming.

Karen Yates: [music, to listener]
Well, that’s it. Folks, have a very pleasurable week. 

Wild & Sublime is supported in part by our sublime supporter, Full Color Life therapy. Therapy for all of you at fullcolorlifetherapy.com Thank you for listening. Know someone who’s liked this episode? send it to them. And follow us on Facebook, Tiktok and Instagram @Wild and sublime, and sign up for newsletters@wildandsublime.com Got feedback or an inquiry? Contact us at info@wildinsublime.com and we’d love a review or a rating on your podcast player. I’d like to thank our design guru Jean Francois Gervais, music by David Ben Porat. This episode was produced and edited at the Lincoln Lodge podcast studio as part of the Lincoln Lodge Podcast Network.