'A beautiful little bubble of diversity': LGBTQ+ locals talk coming out, Trump, and being gay in Lansing

The LGBTQ+ community is anything but a monolith. This Pride month, City Pulse spoke with six LGBTQ+ locals to shine a light on diversity within the rainbow. From Lansing’s poet laureate to an up-and-coming trans activist, these panelists discussed coming out, Lansing’s queer scene and how to react to the Trump administration.

Ruelaine Stokes, 80, is Lansing’s poet laureate. A longtime arts organizer and activist, she spent her career teaching English as a second language at Lansing Community College, MSU and in other community programs. She identifies as bisexual and a lesbian.

Cheryl VanDeKerkhove, 60, is a local lesbian activist and former co-owner of the Real World Emporium, an LGBT bookstore from the 1990s. Around the same time, she worked on a civil rights ordinance that would have included protections for both sexual orientation and gender identity. She is the co-organizer of the LGBTQ+ group the Crowded Table Coalition.

Florensio Hernandez, 41, is a gay and Latino activist. Alongside working as the outreach and engagement manager for MSU’s DEI office, he serves on the city of Lansing's DEI board.

Drew Birchmeier, 28, is a local drag queen and serves on Lansing Pride’s Board of Directors. As a drag queen, they go by Trifecta.

Olivier Stroud, 23, is a Lansing Community College student, community activist and the co-founder of the Lansing Queer History Guild. He is transgender.

Lili Harris, 23, is a behavioral technician working with autistic individuals and is involved in local activism. They are nonbinary and identify as queer.

In this issue, we are running coming-out stories. For a long time, coming out has meant a lot to the LGBTQ+ community, but in different ways to different people. What is your relationship to coming out?

Stokes:

When I think about my identity, I see the complexities, rather than a single identity. I identify as a feminist, as a lesbian as a bisexual, as a poet, as a teacher, as a learner.

My story is a little complicated and I've never felt I fit in the politically correct “gay boxes.” I came to the Lansing area in 1967. I fell in love with a woman in 1968 — I fell in love with a man first, and then I fell in love with a woman. And so I identified as lesbian and bisexual. And then, with the coming of the gay rights movement and the lesbian movement, identity became more complicated, partly because there was a strong separatist thing, and bisexuals were in the uncomfortable middle.

And that made it clear to me that one by that identity was more complicated than I thought, and that I wasn't comfortable in the conceptual boxes that other people seemed to be.

VanDeKerkhove:

I was working at Lesbian Connection through the ‘80s and ‘90s when outing was a thing. And I think that coming out can be a political statement, and outing someone against their will was definitely a statement that was very controversial.

There were those who felt that if you were someone who was making anti-gay policy and was themself gay or a lesbian — it's mostly gay — that it should be known that they were a hypocrite. And so people would out them.

Personally, I always knew I was a lesbian. But even then, there was a time in high school where I thought, “Well, I don't hate men, and I heard that lesbians hate men, so maybe I'm not a lesbian, maybe I'm bi.” But it turned out that, no, I'm just plain old lesbian.

And claiming that identity in a world that assumes you're something else was really quite important when I was coming up. I'm fascinated to know how it is now where that assumption isn't so ubiquitous and people might actually assume your real orientation. When I was coming up, when Ruelaine was coming up, certainly you were assumed to be heterosexual and cisgender unless you said otherwise. And even in circumstances where you were clearly not, people would do a lot of mental gymnastics to put you into the box they thought you were supposed to be in. So it was a proactive step you had to take to say, “No, that's not me.” And I did that pretty early and it always felt powerful for me. It felt self-affirming to be able to say who I really was.

Hernandez:

My coming out story is a little bit different than most.

I've always known, and my family always knew, that I was different — since the age of six. So it's something that we never really needed or felt like we needed to talk about just because within the very tight-knit Latino community, there's a cultural and religious and machismo aspect to it.

For my mom, it was more that she knew who I was, and she knew there and then that her job was to protect me. She never forced me or anyone in my family to come out or tell people who we were.

We have this thing that we believe in: Lo que se ve, no se pregunta. What the eye can see, you don't question. For us, that was growing up with no labels because we had a lot of labels already. placed on us as Latinos in the Lansing area. And so intersectionality was something that I had to learn quickly, early on, and be okay with as well.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is community. The community is what really supported us. The community is the backbone of everything we did, and of making sure that I felt like I belonged. I'm not gonna say I never had instances or situations where someone might have made me feel different or lesser. But I was always raised by a single parent that always taught us our value and our worth and that we’re all people, that we're all human.

Actually, my mom had a very close best friend when I was six or seven that lived on the North Side as well. And he was also Latino and he was also openly gay and queer. So he would come over, spend weekends at the house, and hang out with the family. He was just like family as well.

So I remember that my mom was very open, although people around us might've been less receptive. We were always taught that you should treat people how they want to be treated, but most importantly how they treat you.

And so we never really saw that having to come out or having to make a big party and say, “Florensio's gay, everybody come out and celebrate him.”

For us it was like, if you know me, you know me. And now, it's like that at work as well. People that know me and are close to me know who I am. And so that is kind of my story. It's a little bit different — it's not really a coming out story. It's just kind of embracing who we are as people and not putting labels on each other.

Birchmeier:

So my coming out story is kind of a two-parter.

So there were two instances where I had to come out. First, when I came out as gay to my friends, my family, to my community; second, coming out as a drag queen and as a gender queer person, which I found out later in life.

The first was when I was 15 and a freshman in high school. I had known I was different my whole life, but I finally worked up the courage to tell my community about it about two weeks away from my Catholic confirmation. They give you these pamphlets that tell you things you can go to confession for, and I looked at that list and just thought, “I am guilty of all of these things.” But the biggest one that stuck out to me was homosexuality.

I had a lot of intense guilt about being confirmed into a religion that I'd have to constantly be going to confession for. And so finally I had a conversation with my parents and I said, “Mom, dad, I can't get confirmed into the Catholic faith.”

They asked why, and I said, “Because I’m gay.” And it was a lot. I probably dropped too many things in one conversation. Fortunately, my mom was very supportive. She gave me a high five. She already knew. She was just waiting for me to come to terms with it.

But I did have to manage a difficult conversation with my priest, just to have him understand why I was leaving the faith. And we both kind of parted ways and he left me with, “well, if this is where we stand, then that's the way it is.”

And I have never looked back or questioned who I was again after that. I have the utmost respect for people that follow any kind of religion, I've just learned what works for me and what doesn't. After that, everybody was really supportive because I was very proudly who I was. I always have been and always will be.

Then, about two and a half years ago or so, I had the privilege to be cast in a wonderful musical called Kinky Boots, which has these chorus members who are all drag artists. I was cast with some really wonderful friends, and we got to all learn about drag together.

And realized the high that we were chasing being on stage was through drag. And I realized at that moment that I really liked how I felt in my masculinity, but I was also really comfortable embracing my femininity. And why do I need to pick and choose? Can I be both at the same time? Can I be neither?

So I started realizing that, while I live my life as very male-presenting, on the inside I'm very genderqueer. All pronouns seem to work with me. And so that’s why my drag name is Trifecta, because that is the unity of my masculine, feminine and androgynous presentation. I’ve adapted and embraced that through my drag journey.

Looking back, it was very tough at first having to come out, but I'm very happy to see that coming out is a little less necessary these days. It's just as common as do you prefer blondes, brunettes, redheads, men, women? It’s becoming a little bit less stigmatized, and I'm really happy to see something like this happen.

As far as my coming out for Trifecta, this is actually the first time I've ever really got to say that out loud in front of other people and for an interview. So I guess people on Facebook and everywhere else are going to hear about it soon.

Stroud:

My relation to coming out is not as positive as others I often hear.

I also had two coming-outs. The first one was the fact that I knew that I liked women or I thought that femininity was a very beautiful thing, that I always appreciated how inclusive it seemed to be.

Secondly, coming out as a trans man is very difficult. I'd say that things have not improved as much as you might hope.

If being queer is all about language and the accessibility of language and finding the words for who you are, the language surrounding trans men or trans people is often that the loudest voices are the most harmful or hateful.

Because of that, for a long time, I did not know I was trans. I was told that you had to look like this, think like this, speak like this. And I thought “Oh, well, I’m not that.” I didn't want to take away from someone else’s story. 

But by not going on my own journey, I was taking that away from myself and anyone who was like me in the future.

Again, the importance of language is that, when people don’t know how to talk about something, they quite literally don’t. Just because you don’t talk about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

How do I feel about that? Honestly, I feel really sad about that. Every day is me trying not to be sad about it and living in an active defiance, trying to find joy in the world because it's there. It's just that people don't want you to find it, sadly. Whether that's their own opinions, I'm not sure.

And that’s my favorite thing about queer culture in general, is the fact that we are constantly evolving and learning different ways to define ourselves — or not define ourselves. There’s simply no right answer, whether across race, religion or culture. It’s a very beautiful, complex thing.

Harris:

My experience coming out was pretty bold, if anything. I do have two coming out stories as well. 

At first I came out as a lesbian, and I came out on Facebook in front of all my family. I just thought, “you know what? I might as well just do it.” And I had mixed reactions. Mostly concern, especially from my older family, who lived in a time where LGBT people were more discriminated against. They were really scared for me.

But on the other hand, I had family members that were congratulating me. I feel like the younger generation in my family accepted it more as a celebration, whereas the older generation took it as a dangerous situation.

And now, thinking back on myself as part of this community, I feel like I've evolved.

So I was lesbian. Well, first I was pansexual, then I was lesbian, then I was questioning for a little bit and now I'm just queer. And now that I'm queer, I don't necessarily care about the boxes that I'm put into.

I feel like, and this goes hand-in-hand with my gender as well, I feel like the way that I lived my life is just very fluid. I'm an air sign — I live by that life. I’m here, I’m there, I’m everywhere. There’s no way to contain me.

My gender was hard to come out about. I have not come out to my family about it, but my boyfriend knows. And when people meet me, they get my gender. But work-wise, I do not tell people that I’m nonbinary. I work with families and as a therapist, I'm supposed to stay neutral.

And it's for my safety as well, because even though these families perceive me as a healthcare provider who is helping their kid, I don't want them to ever feel like I'm pushing something on them.

And that’s an internalized thing for me as well. But I just want to be a neutral person in my profession. I love what I do, I love being with my kids and seeing their progression — but at work, I’m like [Popular children’s YouTuber] Ms Rachel, and outside of work, I’m Lili, I’m nonbinary.

There are things that are defining about me, but not necessarily part of one gender or the other. I just feel like a neutral being in general. So my coming-out was very neutral, too.

This is not just a panel of LGBTQ+ people, but LGBTQ+ locals. How do you feel like your LGBTQ+ experience has been impacted by where you are? Those who have spent significant time outside Lansing or even outside the Midwest, what is similar and different here?

Stokes:

I came to this area in 1967 to go to grad school at MSU, So I was 23. I'd grown up and done my undergraduate work in California. And I came from a pretty conservative family, so it was a surprise to me when I fell in love with a woman and tried to make sense of it.

In the gay world then, there wasn't this emphasis on, you know, which particular box you fit into. I experienced both being in love with a woman and knowing that I was also attracted to men. I didn't feel any contradiction in that.

The gay and lesbian movements started, and there was a very strong interest and emphasis on lesbian separatism. And I totally get that. I get how people want, as a group, to define their own reality, how it's been enormously helpful and empowering for women to begin to define our own reality apart from male and sexist definitions of who we are, which can be very narrow.

And so I understood that, but it created this tremendous personal dilemma for me, because at the time it seemed like being a lesbian and being a bisexual were incompatible. But they existed within me, and I couldn't divide myself.

That was the first time I really encountered this whole conflict between, you know, conceptual identities that seemed to all have their own logic, that I wasn't fitting within. I thought a lot about that, and I can tell stories where it was really, really uncomfortable.

But I'd say not quite fitting in those boxes is part of what I've integrated into my own identity and sense of myself — becoming aware that my identity isn't simply a social category. It's my work, it's how I live my life, it's my friends, my community, the people who know me.

I identified with what Florensio was saying about the people who know you coming to understand you and who you are. And that feels very comfortable for me.

Back in the day when I was young, probably the ‘70s, I read an article by Margaret Mead, the cultural anthropologist, and she said that society had social roles and structures for heterosexuals and heterosexual behavior and social roles and structures for homosexual behavior. And that therefore, bisexuals were either perceived as acting out heterosexuality or homosexuality depending on what they were doing, and in fact, the majority of people in society could be bisexual and nobody would know it because of the difference between the social constructs and paradigms, and people’s actual inner experience.

And the other thing I came to understand is there's a tremendous difference in the reality between a real, living human being and a social construct based on social patterns. So if you talk about a non-binary person, that's a concept. But then there are individual non-binary people who may have really complex situations. Or people can change.

So I just think there's a complexity and maybe a fluidity that society hasn't really found the language for or is struggling to.

VanDeKerkhove

So I would say Lansing has been pivotal in my growth and identity. I left for Pittsburgh for a few years and did not achieve escape velocity. I came bungee-cording right back to Lansing.

I moved here at about 19 and found community instantly. The lesbian community here is robust, and especially in the 70s, 80s and 90s was phenomenal. I was completely spoiled by it.

And there was culture here. I came from the Detroit area originally, so I found a community here that offered everything  I could find in the big city, but smaller and more accessible. And I could create it here as opposed to just trying to consume it somewhere else.

This is old information now, but at least in the 90s and early 2000s, 48912 had the largest lesbian home ownership per capita in the entire country. And, Working for Lesbian Connection, we had subscribers in 48912 — we called it Dyke Heights. In fact, I'm interested in finding out if we can get those little neighborhood signs in 48912, because it's a legendary neighborhood.

Last year on the 4th of July, I went up to Grayling for the 4th of July parade up there to meet someone, and it was really obvious to me that I was in a crowd of all-white and all-straight people.

And when I came back to Lansing that evening for the fireworks themselves, and I was standing on the bridge watching the fireworks, and I looked around me and the gentleman next to me was speaking Farsi to his daughter, and there was a black guy behind me here and a Hispanic couple over there and a guy in a wheelchair over here and an old person and a young person and Asian people just down the road, I was like, “Yeah, this is home.” This community is so diverse. It's a beautiful little bubble of diversity. 

When I started doing the store, I knew I was vaguely aware of the gay men's community. We had two bars, they were right next to each other, Joe Covello’s and Trammp’s. And I knew there were gay men here, but we didn't really interact and decided we needed to.

And we opened the store and said it was for all of us, the whole LGBT community. And we did the PRISM awards so we could celebrate ourselves, because the other thing that we're really good at is tearing each other down.

But in Lansing, we had the PRISM awards for over 10 years, we would honoring each other in our community for doing the work of building community or being activists or running softball teams. Whatever we did  that was good for each other, we made sure that we celebrated.

I've traveled all over the world and there's nothing like Lansing. I think that this community is a beautiful place to grow and thrive and to be your full self.

Hernandez:

I think that what the question is really getting at is how the Midwest culture has allowed us more freedoms and liberties as LGBTQ folks.

I traveled around the world for work for over 18 years, but I have also spent time in Texas. Being Latino, my grandparents’ heritage is in Mexico, and so my parents are from Texas. So we travel there every year to visit family, and the differences between the Midwest and southern state such as Texas is ridiculous.

When we go down there, my mom is like, “just make sure you do this, make sure you don't say that, make sure you use proper etiquette, make sure that you're not saying things that people are going to take as you being free and expressive.” Because of that cultural aspect.

So I understand the differences when it comes to traveling within the US, and the Midwest is a great place. And Lansing, specifically, is a great place for anyone and everyone to be themselves. I would echo everything that has been said. It's a great place for folks to be themselves, but most importantly is the community.

Lansing has always been diverse, very welcoming. I also serve on a couple of different DEI boards for the mayor, and on the Hispanic/Latino commission of Michigan under the governor. So those are organizations at the state level as well that allow us to be who we want to be. And then I also work closely with a lot of the folks that are on the LGBTQ commission of Michigan, which was a newly established commission a year ago under Governor Whitmer.

And so I'm happy to also have a lot of allies, friends and people living in Michigan who do that work. And so the Midwest is a place where, we have the liberties and freedoms to do mostly what we want as LGBTQ people. Not everything, I'm not going to say we have all of those rights, but if you look at other folks in different states and you look at what they're facing today, you'll see that we're not in a bad place at all, especially because we have some strong leadership from the governor all the way down.

Birchmeier:

I’ve lived in Greater Lansing my whole life, with the exception of three years that I lived in Kalamazoo to go to school. I wasn't really as involved in the queer community over there because I was working three jobs at the time and didn't really have an opportunity to get out there, so I can't speak for the second half of that question, but I can speak to the first.

I grew up in Langsburg, Michigan. I would have graduated with 84 kids in the small rural town had I stayed there, but I decided to be adventurous my senior year and I switched to Haslett high school. Now, strangely enough, had I stayed in Langsburg, I would have graduated with four or five other people who were somewhere in the LGBTQ+ community.

So when I switched to Haslett, you’d think with 1,000 people in the building there would have been more. But no, I was the only person there and I was very out, I was very proud, and a lot of people were taken aback by that.

But strangely enough though, they did have a gay-straight alliance club that met once a week and just played board games and hung out. Once I was a little bit more visible, I started asking if we could do things to get in touch with the queer community like learning a little bit more about the AIDS crisis, and anything else to culture ourselves.

By the end of my senior year, I had the honor of being able to talk through seven or eight different queer people's experiences, who came to me confidentially and by the end of the year.

Now, it was not part of my agenda to push people's experiences out, but it was really wonderful being part of somebody's comfort and helping them make the next step in their journey. 

So when I think about how you’re impacted by where you are, my takeaway is that if there isn't any visibility in a community, there isn't really anything for you to go off of. It’s up to us to establish that visibility so we can make sure that everybody knows who their family and community is.

And if there isn't one already, dare to be a leader and do it for yourself.

Stroud:

Well, I live in 48912!

Earlier this year, I had a surgery and it was really, really difficult to compare the helplessness that I was experiencing. I quite literally was laying down, unable to go anywhere or do anything other than listen to the news or watch things. And it was really easy to feel helpless and out of control.

Part of what gave me hope, and why my friends and I created the Lansing Queer History Guild is the fact that Lansing has an extensive amount of queer history,and it's always comforted me knowing that I'm not the first or only one dealing with this.

And I can at the very least attempt to be the last one to have to deal with some of it.

For the second part of the question, in 2020, I took a trip to Arizona. I just needed an escape from the situation I was in. I was just in a car alone driving and it gave me hours and to listen to trans people while I was driving and realize I wasn’t the only one who's dealing with the state of the world or their identity.

Most trans people I know just want to have a tiny house and be left alone. And I think the result of that is that most of us just end up trying to move away or trying to find a place where we fit in. But like people have said before me, that really doesn't exist for most of us. We have to kind of dig our heels in and say, “No, I want to be accepted here. I want to be acknowledged and respected here.”

And that's also part of why I picked my name. 

I was lucky enough to be able to save up my own money and take a trip to France when I was younger. And my name, a French name, is a reminder that American culture is not the only one that exists.

There are a multitude of different ways of living and thinking. And if the one that you're in is not accepting, there's no reason that you can't create one for yourself.

Harris:

I was born in Detroit and raised in Clinton Township. In Clinton Township, people didn't necessarily care. There weren't any clubs or anything like that at my high school, even though there were kids that were LGBT.

Going to school with kids that are part of the community, I felt that we were very separated, very disconnected with each other. I feel like the only time that I did get that connection was in my own friend group. But even though we were kind of separated, we had each other's back in a way. Like, if a student was to say a slur, someone else would ask, “what did you just say?” We had that type of alliance with each other. Because we knew our struggles that we were gonna go through in life, that we were gonna face when we got out of high school, essentially.

I do agree with what almost everybody had said about the Midwest. I feel that there's a revival coming, an insurgence of community, especially now under this presidency.

I've seen people organize parties to meet people who are just like them, or who are different but who know the struggles that they are going through. I've seen a revival in ballroom culture, and I’m very excited for that because we all know the impact ballroom culture has had within the community.

And I feel like this revival is beautiful, quite honestly. It almost makes me feel comforted that anywhere that I can go in Michigan, I'm going to have my back covered, and I'm gonna do the same for others.

We’re in an era right now where a longtime, consistent gain in progress for LGBTQ+ rights has turned around, with the federal government rolling back protections, especially for transgender folks, and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments having a renaissance. How has that impacted you? Have you seen anything like this before, and how do you think the community should be responding?

Stokes:

A really repressive or fascist government, I think, looks for scapegoats. It tries to gain control over the whole population by targeting certain minority groups and attacking them — and by targeting those groups, they scare everybody else and try to get them to conform to the government’s lines.

I think it's a very, very deliberate, very harmful, incredibly toxic environment and it's alarming to see LGBTQ people targeted. And I think we really need solidarity. We need to build bridges, not only in the LGBTQ community, but with other sectors of the community.

We need large numbers coming out for really big demonstrations, I think we need to build toward a national work strike that can have real economic power and can force people in positions of power to see that we really don't want a cruel, mean-spirited, vicious government.

It's horrendous to see. I've worked all my life with immigrants and refugees, who are some of the most beautiful, bravest, finest people in the world in their communities. They’re extraordinary. And to see them maligned and targeted this way is profoundly disturbing and horrible.

But I think what we have is we have large numbers, and the more we have large numbers, the more we can affect public opinion, the more we can gain power — partly through the courts, but also through public action. People's power is really important.

VanDeKerkhove:

I was shocked when Roe v. Wade was overturned. I haven't seen this kind of backsliding before. I've always been warned that it can happen, but the arc of moral progress is always forward, right?

But when you live in the U.S., apparently it’s not.

This is exactly why my response was to organize. The Crowded Table Coalition, the group that I lead, is trying to build that community and build that world that we want to see. And it was a reminder, both very personal and very universal, that we can't just rest on our laurels. We can't just assume that the world will stay the way it is. We have to keep working, we have to keep organizing, we have to stay in communities.

One of the largest benefits of being a lesbian, in my opinion, has been that I've met lesbians from across different races, religions, educational backgrounds, classes, abilities and across all the other lines, learning how to navigate that and to understand, respect and celebrate each other's differences. It has been a profound gift.

As a result, I think LGBTQ people in general are better positioned to see this for what it is, to unite folks and refuse to allow the progress we've made to be undone.

Hernandez:

Being someone who’s always had to work 10 times as hard as others, having always needed to prove myself and having multiple identities, I have experienced a lot of what we're now going through just because of the color of my skin and because I'm Latino.

But I also want to say that a lot of this is because of ignorance, and because of folks not really being educated and understanding the community. So a lot of it is educating folks, trying to make sure we build that community and that we're in this together.

What it's going to come down to is making sure that we work together, that we see each other, that we continue to do coalition building as has been done here in Lansing with a lot of great organizations.

But a lot of it is just the intersectionality of our varying identities that we all carry and just learning about those things, right? And so in my experience, I have found that we take 10 steps forward and maybe three back or four back, but we continue to show each other grace and continue to work hard.

That's the one thing that folks can never take away from you. If you're someone who's out there and always making an effort to connect folks. Lili said they’re a connector earlier, and so am I. I love doing that. I love connecting different organizations and groups of people that might have a similar mission or vision, and building those coalitions as we move forward.

But the biggest thing here is to make sure that we continue to uplift and inspire our youth and continue to move forward with togetherness, coalition building, learning about each other and supporting each other when we do have events.

Because it's important for us all to continue to be out there and continue to lift our voices, but also continue to learn about each other.

Birchmeier:

I think you're completely right, Florensio. A lot of this is rooted in ignorance, and I think us being a bridge for those people is going to be the big thing.

I have the privilege of being able to work within Lansing Pride to build relationships with our community and see how we can all band together and be part of the change we want to see in the world.

Not to be that guy, but in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, when they have the pitchforks and torches and they’re singing “We don't like what we don't understand. In fact, it scares us.” — that’s so true. People don't like what they don't understand because they don’t know if it’s going to threaten them, or how it’s going to impact their lives. And a lot of it is not threatening, but people don’t know that. So if we can try to be part of that change and try to help people understand, that's huge.

So I think how our community should be responding to this is to make sure that we have concise facts to discuss with people. Because if somebody is not just appealing to their emotions, but actually wants to engage in a discussion, facts are hard to argue against. Draw conclusions, be a good communicator, try to be that bridge.

On my social media, there are a lot of people who are shaming other people for not understanding, not knowing, and you know, just being bigoted. I like to take the opposite approach. Instead of shaming the people doing things wrong, I’d rather praise and uplift the people doing things right.

So praise your community leaders, make sure that they know that this kind of stuff does not go unnoticed. Because it's sometimes a thankless job, and trying to talk to a brick wall is just exhausting.

In terms of current impact, as a drag artist, I am impacted a lot. I’m an empath, I feed off of the energy of other people and so when I see other people's souls dying, it rips to shreds.

Drag is a love letter to the trans community, and that's why I love drag so much. So there are a lot of drag artists that are on my feed, on my timeline in my community that are scared. They don't know how to react to all of this. Are we all going to be criminalized?

Let's be real here. It's not just drag that people are taking this stuff down because of — it's the trans community. We need to stand together. We need to be visible. We need to fight back. Offer resources to your community, and please engage in discussions with people who might just not like what they don't understand.

Hopefully, we can be that bridge to connect everybody.

Thank you for that question.

Stroud:

The administration we have right now is quite literally, at a large, national scale, how it feels to grow up in a Republican, white household. It doesn't matter what you say, if you're right, how many people or how many voices there are. It just doesn't matter.

That being said, it’s given me a sense of freedom. As strange as that sounds, I know that there’s no right answer or mold that will provide safety from a fascist state, and that it’s our differences and inability to be put in a box that makes us strong. 

Having multiple different perspectives is the best possible thing. How could I possibly understand what would be best for someone else? Obviously, I want to hear and uplift their voice.

Have I seen this before? Ever since I first came out, I've been an activist and I've seen what's happening right now. I could have told you that this would have happened two, three, four, five years ago, because TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist] ideology has gained bipartisanship. 

My advice for youth is that you don't have to know everything. No one expects you to know everything. You have well-educated, experienced, strong elders who will protect you on every step of your way.

And that means you'll be wrong, you'll mess up, you'll say the wrong thing, and you won't have all the facts. But someone here or in your community can and will protect you.

Harris:

Since before the start of the current presidency, ever since it was announced that he was running again, I had a feeling these rollbacks were going to happen.

And as much harm it has brought onto the community, it has also brought on positivity. Growing up changing identities over the course of time, I've always had a community behind my back and now it's stronger than it has ever been.

And yes, I feel like I have dealt with negative sentiments as well throughout my life and especially having intersectionality between being Black, being queer, being non-binary and also being autistic.

I feel like the sentiments have just put a chip on my shoulder.

With the community that I have been provided throughout the years, as much as it is hurtful, it's just — I don't give a shit. I'm me, I'm who I am and these people are going to back me up.

So how has it impacted me?

I feel like being in a T4T relationship — my boyfriend is also trans — and having friends who are trans, I take the role of being a protector so much seriously now. You never know what anybody on the street is going to do. And that's the scary thing.

And, this might be controversial, but in the straight community, it has become a trend to, for example, wear the “protect the dolls” shirt. But the “dolls” [a slang term for trans women] are still being killed in the streets, they're being assaulted in the streets, they're going missing.

So are you genuinely serious about protecting the “dolls” and other trans or LGBT people, or are you just trying to join a trend?

But again, there are positives. We are in a renaissance of hurt, but also a renaissance of communities coming together. 

Like I've said before, I am a connector. So when there are events, information, resources, I love when people pass it onto me — because I want to uplift and inform people who feel like they are missing something in their life, like they’re not being protected.