Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Rural Roots, Queer Truths: Finding Yourself in a World That Looks Away

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

In this episode of Unzipping Taboos, we had the honor of welcoming our friend and longtime listener, Timothy — a non-binary, queer human from rural Appalachia — for a deeply personal conversation about identity, belonging, and courage.They share what it was like to grow up in a small, deeply religious community where conversations about sex and queerness were kept behind closed doors, if they happened at all. From the confusion of realizing there were no visible examples of people like them to learning how to “blend in” for safety, their story paints an honest picture of what it means to navigate identity in isolation.We talk about the quiet survival skills queer kids develop — code-switching between accents, words, and worlds — and the constant calculation of how safe it is to show up authentically. Those early experiences have since shaped their work in academia, where they now advocate for inclusive spaces through small but powerful gestures of respect, like using preferred names.It’s a conversation that reminds us acceptance isn’t just an urban story — it’s one that needs to echo through every valley, every house of worship, and every family table.Whether you’re a parent, guardian, aunt, uncle, or chosen family, supporting a queer young person starts with connection and knowledge. Here are some trusted resources to help you learn, listen, and show up with love:PFLAG - ResourcesThe Trevor Project - ResourcesGLSEN - Resources  If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestionsIf you want to ask Dr Sue a sex question for the weekly Q&A you can submit it here: Ask a question

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, Candid Conversations About Sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to explore the questions you've always been curious about, but don't always feel comfortable asking out loud. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Before we get started, we have a really exciting episode today. But before we get started, we have now partnered with jackandjilladult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And because you're here with us, you get 20% off with code on Zipping20. So go check them out. So now that I've got that bit of business out of the way, today we have a very special guest and friend, Timothy, and our episode is going to center

around kind of the queer experience and that and what Timothy's experience has been. But before we do. I am also here with Dr. Sue. Hey, Dr. Sue. Hey, Charlie. How's it going? I'm excited because I don't have to do my intro. All right. You've got, should I time you on this one? Maybe just give you 20 seconds. Okay. Well, I was, I was given an hour at the beginning. I want to take it now. I should do a little bit of an intro. And if you want to hear a longer intro, good luck because I don't think they exist in other episodes, but I have a PhD in human sexuality I do the professor thing by day, so teach, lecture, speak all over the place, write textbooks. But then I also have my Dr. Sue outside of that, where I work with basically anyone in

the community who wants information on sex, and that includes you. If you are listening, we will put a link in the description. You can send me an anonymous question, and then every Sunday on my socials, I will answer one question. The answer comes out at 9 p.m. on Sundays. That may be my fastest intro. Yeah. All right, sweet. So there's my intro, or what you're going to call an intro today. I want to

get to Timothy. I know. But I got to detour to you first. So for those of you who do and do not know Charlie, she is our curious co-host who's always ready to talk about all these taboo topics that we talk about here. But tell us more. Love that I'm a detour. That's amazing. Yes. He's the mean thing right now. I know. You're like a rest stop. So yeah. So I'm Charlie. I'm the co-host but without further ado let's get to timothy thank you both you make me feel very welcome here um my name is timothy i don't have any of the credentials to go with my name but i do have the lived experience and that's what i wanted to offer to the podcast listeners um because sometimes i feel like that could be a little bit more enlightening than just data and whatnot

because i've lived through it all but like you said we do what we want to focus on the queer experience and give people a little bit of an insight into what that is like um as it relates to life in general as well as the taboo topics of sex because you know adding the queer layer to it makes it even more taboo and makes people more afraid to talk about it so we want to break that down yeah exactly and i go ahead just just to give a little background so um i got a message from timothy was like hey would you ever let a fan on who's also a friend um and we were like without a shadow of a doubt we were like absolutely um we think it's really important like you just said to highlight the lived experiences we just want to put a little caveat in that unless you

have been with timothy every step of the way it is timothy's journey not yours necessarily so if yours is similar hopefully maybe you'll get something out of it and if it's not yours is valid too um we are open to having people who are not experts on the show because you're experts in your lives so i don't know if this is going to open up you may start like a whole segment now of like fan but i'm fine with that yeah because uh i may not i in my personal life i did a thing where i noticed there were people in my professional life who were attempting to be allies is what i'm going to say but they didn't know where to start and so i i just threw myself out there i said i i'm not an expert but i have some answers so if you have questions or just want to

talk it out and we can learn together i'm going to do that and i thought this would be another opportunity to do the same just on a bigger scale you know outside the office to the world and so that's that's why I reached out and it seems to have worked out here we are yeah I'm excited about this you're gonna say something before and I cut you off nope okay so Tim I mean I we have some background I have some background on you we have some background on you I don't know if you want to you know but long long ago in a galaxy far far away I don't know how far back you want to start. But wherever you want to take us on this journey, we'll follow along. Sure. We'll just start with the basis of who I am, how I identify, where I came from,

and then we can see which of my many roads we go down to get to today. So I told Dr. Sue and Charlie before that I identify as gay male just because that's easy, but life is never quite that easy so if you really were to break it down um i fall under the the non-binary spectrum gender queer i um uh narrow that down to being a demiboy um which is someone who identifies as male most of the time but it does not always fit the bill so you throw that demi on the front just to give the caveat that it doesn't always fit and that's where i feel fit on the uh gender spectrum um but But since a non-binary gay male doesn't always work, so I call myself an androphile, which is someone who's attracted to masculine people or masculinity, and I'm also polyamorous. So that is me in a technical queer nutshell, but I'm also someone who grew up in a religious upbringing in the middle of rural eastern Kentucky, and so that was my beginning.

So that is sort of like the basis of the – I don't want to call it a struggle, but it was a struggle. that I've come through to get to where I am today. And I know that my story is not going to be the story for all queer people, but it is a similar enough story to most queer people that I'm hoping that people can relate and understand that they're not alone. And if you're not in the queer circle, maybe you can understand there are things you need to learn and we can help you do that. Excellent. So the struggle growing up, first of all, it's a struggle growing up, I think, for anyone who's different in any way whether it's just that they're not straight they're not the dominant population like if you you know your hair looks different like it always amazes me that

people survive middle school um yeah not necessarily unscathed either but that they survive but i don't know if you want to talk a little bit about what some of that struggle was especially being in rural kentucky i will tell you i know nothing about rural kentucky except what tv has told me uh well basically it's it's very isolated because you grow up in a small community people everyone knows everyone so if there's anything out of the ordinary good luck hiding it um uh if that's what you choose to do um especially with the religious background there are certain expectations um i think we mentioned in preparation for this meeting everyone starts off their life just having to go through the experience of the human experience of being a

And that is the basis for everyone. But then you add other caveats like your gender identity, your sexuality, and then things just become more complicated. So if you don't have to deal with a gender identity or anything like that that is not the – I'm going to do your air quotes – norm, then if you don't have to deal with that, everything is just handed out to you. You have a path laid before you, and you can just do it. But if you have anything that diverts from that path, well, then not only do you have to still be a human and make it through life, you have to then figure out what that means for you, and then also explain it to other people, and then fit into the society with those quote-unquote normal people, and that just makes it even more difficult. So when we come to topics like sex and other things that are taboo, you just have this extra layer of complication, and that makes it even more difficult for people to navigate. and so that that's that's the experience i have and i know that's the experience that a lot of other people had because in the rural kentucky people don't want to talk about sex they definitely don't want to talk about queer people um and so if any of those things come up well then it's a just don't talk about it push it down forget about it try try not to do that but we know that's not how it works i want to go to this uh what you were just talking about with

the gender identity, because I think that there is many of us may have similar experiences because we may present one way. And I think that's maybe a little bit what we're talking about, right? That you may present one way, but internally, you know, if you if you present as a feminine female, but internally, you feel like you can do all the things the boys do. And you, you know, you identify more with that clothing and that behavior. And that can be at odds. And I think that goes across the spectrum and i think that's a little bit of what you're saying too is that as you're coming into that um there are the way people perceive you and and then there's the the internal acknowledgement battle questioning um all of all those layers inside inside yourself

right that's right yeah so not only do you have to deal with it internally to figure out what you're feeling but then you have to like translate it into a way that other people are going to understand it or accept it and and if if they will at all yeah and leave you alone almost right right yeah you just you just want to live your life but then you have people like asking what does that mean you know how do you do this how do you do that and people like me are comfortable explaining it but not everybody is most people just want to live their lives as as who they are and not have to you know go on a podcast explain to the world what that means uh but that's why i'm here i want to do that so they don't have to i mean if if we're honest probably eight year

old me or 12 year old me wouldn't have been comfortable doing this podcast you know absolutely not uh 12 year old me would have saw it on the the roster be like oh i can't listen to that scroll past okay nope not allowed yeah so i i want to stay in your childhood but i also want to move past but i don't i'm all over the place here with what i want to say i know you're so excited i love seeing you like this i like do you because i i know you and i talked about the whole coming out thing that there's this argument now that people don't need to come out which is an incredibly privileged way of talking about that i want to save for later but that's kind of in my brain but do you think that the experience has changed at all like if there was a kid growing up in your

shoes right now in the town you grew up do you think it would be any better for them like do you think there's been any forward movement and i know it may be hard because i don't know if you still have roots there that you visit i honestly don't know i think that um with access to the internet the internal part definitely could be easier like you can find community easier than you can now because when i was going through this you know i had yahoo chat with the cousins and that was about the end of it i didn't have like the the full world to connect with um like people do now um and there definitely isn't media out there like my t-shirt is a cartoon that is very queer friendly and like that's not something i had you know uh so i think that kids now if they

were growing up where i'm where i grew up they have more access to things that i didn't have so i think that that's easier but i don't know that the community has changed much that's one thing about small communities and rural areas is they're slow to um modernize yeah so i don't think that the people around would be as except or any more accepting now maybe a little bit but not a lot so i feel like internally they could figure out who they are a little bit quicker but they would still have this like pressure from those around them to fit into a certain standard especially with as religious as the people are where i came from um i like to joke that if somebody has a like a discrepancy with somebody in their church they just build a new one next

door so they can do what they want to do um and like i grew up non-denominational and i think i said this before but uh we were non-denominational just so our church could talk about the baptist down the street so um like even within the communities that are suppressive they sort of like suppress each other too so there's just this very pressure like a very heavy pressure for people to conform um so even if kids now have access to things where they can see that there is more out there while you're stuck at home and relying on somebody to provide for you then there's not really much you can do that's the beauty of being an adult and being able to pay for things on my own i can i can do what i want yes but kids at home like who rely on their parents or their

caregivers don't have that same privilege yeah so that that may be that may be something that hinders them now i think we've kind of forget that i think we we assume that because everyone has access to all the information i i have to tell you i used to teach a class on sex and technology and when i would tell people that they'd be like oh like the internet's ruining the world and like the internet is saving lives in so many ways that you don't get um but i think sometimes we forget that i could be someone online i can find a community online but when i shut my computer i have to go right back out and talk to my parents and um for a lot of kids that's not they're they're trying to lead two separate lives and and it's hard enough at that age to live one

life so the idea of having to kind of divide who you are is exhausting um but hopefully they are finding community and if you are listening to this and you're like i want to find community for my child or maybe for me or someone you know let us know and we will get you some some great sources for information where you may be able to connect with others you can also just google search but we definitely have places that we like um in terms of helping to create community absolutely so you moved out yeah and you went to the big bad city oh yes i went i moved from rural kentucky to more to uh um a slightly less rural area for undergrad uh there was a college there so it was a little bit a little bit uh there were more people a little bit more openness

because it was a university and then from there moved to what my people would call the big city although most people especially from new york would be like that that's that's a little town but for us here that is the big city i wasn't gonna say anything no um so uh yeah started my adult life out in the quote-unquote big city um and with the people that i met in college and so i had formed a community and through there we we you know worked together to learn who we are and you know we could accept each other within our community and you know i didn't have to deal with the like the church from home or as much of the family stuff although it's still there because you can never really fully escape that um but then there's also just the people around you you're

always on alert and that's one thing like you say people are saying that you don't really have to come out anymore and my theory is that you're actually coming out every day so like you walk into a store with your partner and people are you know whether or not they're actually looking at you you're thinking about whether or not they're looking at you and how they perceive you they're like are these just two two people who happen to present as the same gender who are walking into the grocery store at the same time or is it oh those two they're together and i don't like that so those are things you have to think about all the time um on top of just going to work and getting the groceries so um there are all these layers to it that i don't think that most people

don't understand like the general public would would look at someone who's queer and say well you came out you did it congrats but it doesn't stop there that's just like the starting point yeah i have that problem with my students sometimes who are the there's here come the quotes here who are the norm um who do you think they think let's like you come out once and you get a card and that's it like you've done it and you're trying to explain to them exactly what you were saying and then just because we've alluded to it a couple times i was at a research conference a few years ago and this person who works at a very privileged university was saying that he's finding that his students don't need to come out and that coming out is an archaic process and

i'm like is it though like not everyone's living in this place where where you have so much acceptance and openness and actually one of the things that i'm seeing now in some of the spaces around us are people going back into a more closeted existence because it is becoming more dangerous again um so i don't know if you can talk to any but that that was kind of where that came from we had talked about that before that he had just made the side comment of like it's not necessary to come out anymore and i'm like you are obviously not living in a world where you worry about your safety right um but i don't know if you want to talk about kind of what that was like or how you make that decision or what others assume when you start talking about your identity

feel free to run with any part of that well for me personally it was um going to college was the sort of catalyst for me because then i'm still in a small community but not my original community so it's small but new people um and i was able to introduce even more new people into like my personal life people who identify either the same way or have some other similar experience so i was able to start getting comfortable with myself like i mentioned before figuring out internally who i am so i was able to throw some labels on it get comfortable within my small group of friends with who i am but then comes the realization that like if i want to be that person openly and not just within this small circle then i'm gonna have to tell people and for me the biggest thing was

i'm gonna have to tell my parents um and just for some context like i was 19 at the time so this was not an early experience some people are like oh yeah i've known since i was three and my parents just rolled with it and i'm like no i was living that dual life up until then and even then it was hard because i still like didn't i told them they knew didn't take it well and so we had to deal with that experience on top of everything and then it's still sort of a double life because they know but they don't know the details but i'm also not going to just stop living my life because now i found happiness so i'm going to keep trying to figure that out even though i have to deal with that on the side um and and that's the thing like we talked about how people

assume that it's a one and done you come out and you're done but depending on how people react or where you live or what your current experience is that that that's just the catalyst that starts the experience and then you have to i don't know live in it first of all you've made the decision to live as you are and not who people thought you were um so now you have to you got it you have to stick with it you can't really back up now you that's one of those things once you get started you can't really go backwards so uh that from that point forward it's just all the time dealing with having identified yourself as something other than what people expected you to be and then since you're now living openly every time you meet someone new you have to like explain

that in some way whether that is just saying oh you know hello so and so this is my husband that in itself is a way of coming out if people don't know that already and this is something that i deal with every day in my professional life because my husband and i work in the same sort of office setting and we had the same last name so if you're going to email us you might get the wrong one so i want to make it clear that you're looking for timothy and not my husband so it's like so if you see someone else with that last name don't be confused that's just my husband and that is a form of coming up because i don't know how this person is going to take it i've never met them before but i'm still trying to explain professionally that there are two people

with the same last name it is unique but be sure and pay attention to the first name as well so you're emailing the right person and that that's coming out and that happens on the daily yeah so it's not definitely not a one and done it's going to be for the rest of my life charlie as you writing i was gonna say do you find did you find that throughout uh throughout this the um also navigating code switching within like the different communities and and micro groups that you would encounter at work and new communities and um and going back a little bit uh you know with the example of the grocery store constantly assessing where how who's who's coming towards you what's going on with that um what was that when did you have that awareness i suppose

when that you were navigating code switching and and that constant assessment yeah um as someone who is hyper aware of their surroundings to a fault that the code switching happens a lot especially like if we're going to continue using the example of the grocery store if I walk into an aisle and there's someone coming toward me, I, I immediately like assess what they look like. And, and even though I try not to be judgmental, I'm not judging them based on like what I think about their life. I'm thinking about like how they're going to react to me being in the same space as them. Survival, right? It's that survival piece. And this is a constant thing that I do. And I know that all people in the queer community,

they have varying levels of this, but it is something I think that we experience more than people who are outside that community we have to assess every situation and every person and how they're going to react to us and like one specific example for me and this might just be a neuro divergence thing on top of the queer thing uh but um is eye contact so if i'm walking down an aisle and i see someone walking toward me in the grocery store i'm you know i see who they are i've made my assessment but maybe i'm just like they've got a cool t-shirt on so i'm checking out the t-shirt But as soon as they notice me looking at them, that's a source of anxiety. So I have to look away and make a different move because I don't want them to think that I'm looking at them and making a certain judgment because I know that they're looking at me and making a certain judgment.

And so I have to navigate that as a constant in my life, just trying to – always assessing the threat in every situation. Like, even if there is not, it's still like, well, there's a potential I need to, I need to be ready for this to be more than it is, I need to make sure I have an out, or just be prepared to confront it. And that's not always easy. And it's not, I make it sound pretty treacherous. It's not, it's not like this. uh i'm always on high alert um but there is always a little bit of that no matter where you are what you're doing because because you know that especially given the current climate that at any point somebody could just flip a switch and be like hey i don't like you and i'm gonna do something about that and then the code switching piece yes um what what can you think of um like an early memory where you were aware that you were like and maybe it might have just been with

your parents right you came out and then but you knew that you couldn't be your full self necessarily that you could be with your friends when you would go home for dinner with your parents or something along those lines yeah just as far as like the words you use around people are completely different and um since i'm from rural eastern kentucky like if i go back to visit family my accent changes so if i'm like in this setting i feel like i'm i've got a more i don't know you can call it a clean accent but if i but if i go home or if i'm just sitting at home by myself then it becomes more of what you would expect from an appalachian person um so the accent can change and because that that's just because i know what's expected or what i'm

comfortable with um the words I use when I'm talking about things change um so like if I'm just with friends or just with my uh partners then you know the RuPaul drag race vocabulary comes out and it'll be girl this girl that you know uh but then uh if I'm in a setting like at work I know that people don't speak that way on on the norm so I drop all of that and try to be a bit more professional use uh um use a higher vocabulary and that goes beyond the queer experience that this that brings in the Appalachian experience which is yet another layer I have to be aware of because if I speak with too much of an accent or use the wrong words and people perceive you as less intelligent so in addition to being a human being queer human I also have the

Appalachian experience so I have to be aware of that because I don't want people to think oh the dumb queer kid no I'm I'm here on the same level as you even if I use a different vocabulary or my words sound differently so in addition to the queer experience there is also the I don't know the geographical experience that you have to deal with as well yeah I just wanted to highlight all of that kind of going in line with the coming out is constant and evolves and it's not it is not a singular event it is um it's a it's a big event i'm sure the first time that that you choose to come out to whomever it is but it is it is constant and i i wanted to use the code switching to highlight that yeah and especially with code switching i feel like this is the part

this is a thing that people who are on any journey whether it's the uh societal norm or the queer experience the appalachian experience i feel like that's something that everyone does they just don't realize it because it sort of happens automatically usually so like if you're at the bar with your bros you're going to talk differently than you are at home with the kids you know you're going to code switch people just don't necessarily know what that is because it happens more automatically with them and it's not something they have to think about or hide it's just normal but when you add that layer of queerness to it then that's something that people are looking at as a taboo so you've got a you're code switching for safety right yeah you're code

switching to keep yourself safe not just to not just to be comfortable you're doing it on purpose to make sure that people don't perceive you in a negative way i the teacher in me really wants to make sure we're defining code switching because not everybody made me maybe familiar with it so i feel like i should be like a little pop-up in a video and be like code switching is um but for Those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, code switching is just when we change our language based off where we are. And Timothy, like you nailed it, I speak differently with my family from New York than I do the second I'm not in New York anymore. We see people do this at work. So I just, I think more people code switch than they realize.

We definitely know that some people may do it based off race issues. They don't want to sound to something. So I just wanted to make sure we had that definition out there. Because I think a lot of people do it. Like you said, a lot of people do it. i don't think they realize it's a thing like that's a thing and sometimes we just get so practiced at it we don't even realize that we do it right it's when it becomes a survival tactic that it becomes more obvious i think yeah when you're actually having to put in that conscious

thought i see my students doing this like trying to make that switch from sounding like they're undergraduates to sounding like they're you know as they're getting ready to go and teach their classes like you can watch you can watch them have that thought in their head it's actually really funny for me to watch but yeah i also work in academia and sometimes reading emails i'm like oh you you put in you got out your thesaurus for this one you tried to sound a little bit more intelligent than you are yes yes it happens quite a bit next year yes um can we stay in your childhood for a second absolutely okay because as a sex educator um i don't want to give too much away because i also don't know what order we're going to do these but at some point near

we're going to have someone specifically talking about queer sex ed right i'm guessing that if you had sex education at all that it failed you I I also think that we fail almost everybody regardless of their gender and sexual identity but did you did you have sex ed in school I know it's a while back so maybe hard to remember but oh it's hard for everyone's like tell me for eight I'm like I don't freaking remember when I was eight oh well that's another thing about growing up queer at Appalachia it's all traumatic so it's in there there you go I remember so we we did have sex ed but it's very stereotypical you know here are the parts here's what they do you know don't get pregnant go have fun there you go so so basically failed everybody do you think that if they had

done something on identities which i think that given your age and your location and just the quality of sex ed in this country i don't think that probably would have happened but if they had done like a hey like people are different and here's different identities and here's different gender is do you think that would have made your life any easier or do you think that would have do you think it just would have been something that happened and had no impact on you and i know we're playing a lot of what if games i think that it would it would have helped a little bit because at least i would have some information to like wander on and be like oh maybe this applies maybe it doesn't or i feel like it could go that way or it could have been um especially with the

religious upbringing and be like oh i don't realize this is me yet so you're bringing that up and that's wrong therefore i'm going to be angry at you and ignore it yeah so it would have been one of the two things um because we we didn't talk about uh gender identity or alternate alternate sexualities um i remember that in elementary school we didn't talk about sex or sexuality but they did do like a physical like when i was in fifth grade with a school nurse like making sure things are where they're supposed to be i suppose which i i as an adult now i think is weird that they did it with the school nurse and not like go to a primary care and then report back yeah so i think that that was weird so that's already traumatizing so my body has been like

analyzed by people and i don't know why yeah um and then get into middle school and we did have a health class which had a sex component but it was very much just this is the anatomy let's all giggle about it and move on and then in high school it was very much mean girls hey you're in gym class this is how sex happened or this is sex we're not really going to talk about it don't do it okay now go walk 10 laps and that's gym class yeah yeah and it's it's so funny because when i talk to people about those experiences um they're like well we didn't have sex ed i'm like but you covered sex stuff because i can guarantee that some point in that grades one to five you were told to separate by by gender yep and so you were getting information about expectations and

normality and like i mean you're not processing it when you're in second grade um but it's so built in that it's yeah yeah i mean as early as elementary school you're at least separated if nothing else just to go to the restroom like you know you have to line up boys and girls to go to the separate bathrooms and one thing i thought of just now is that they would line us up shortest to tallest for like picture day so like that may not seem like anything significant but as the shortest kid in the class that was pretty significant because i'm like well i'm always going to be at the front of the line because i'm little and i'm a boy and that's bad i've learned that that is a bad thing and so you're already putting me at the front of the line saying i'm

the worst boy because i'm the smallest um and so you have to deal with that at an age of like you know third grade yeah and people don't see that as a as a as an issue but way down the line if you have any sort of other body dysmorphia or anything like that going on that's something you're going to hold on to as a as a trauma going on that luckily for me i didn't really see it as a problem at the time but i can see how that could be a bigger issue for other people as a kid i was pretty oblivious to most things like yeah i'm the short one it's fine whatever now as an adult i'm like maybe may that may be linked to some other issues that i just didn't realize at the time because you know i'm six but um we really do start that early like dividing people by their

gender by their bodies by their identities and it seems normal but it really can lead to issues further down the road. It's one of the things that I get a lot of pushback when I try to work with elementary school teachers. They're like, it's not that big a deal. It's just separating people by gender. And I'm like, but why? I understand the bathroom. I mean, as much as I can understand the bathroom issue right now, I understand that maybe that's why you're separating. But if you're just walking down the hallway, why do you have to have a boys line and a girls line if you're just going to the cafeteria or an assembly? And there's just no thought about it for a lot of these teachers because they're just repeating what they learned. And I'm finding

i'm probably gonna get some hate on from my friends who are elementary school teachers um but i'm i'm finding that there's less thought about those than there are sometimes for the older grade teachers because they're starting to have some of those conversations in a different way but that's for a different fight for a different day so fast forward sorry hold on you got me all worked up um fast forward you've made it into the big bad city you've got a job i know you're doing some great work that you started doing some work in the environment where you are to like get people to be more aware i don't know if you want to talk about that if not we can move on oh no certainly because uh i mentioned that i work in

academia so there are rosters involved and so uh my husband and i they started including preferred names on the rosters that we work with um and at first the higher-ups are saying oh you don't need to do that that's extra work just use the roster name and we're like eh i don't know you know even if it's someone who goes by because i'm a timothy i'm a full three syllable name if somebody were to call me tim i'd be like that who so like if you're a jonathan you go by john we want to make that noted because if you're calling for jonathan to like come into the exam room and john is sitting there like are you do you mean me oh you mean me even if something as small as that is significant but someone who may have transitioned or they go by their middle name or they go by a

different name because their identity is different that's really important so we wanted to make sure that the the johns are acknowledged as well as anybody who may have an identity that difference differs from what they were born with because that's really important so we just we just we let the higher-ups think that we were complying and we would still include preferred names occasionally cut to now four years later where all these rosters are getting compiled into a new system and i was pulled aside to make sure all the preferred names are updated and correct in the new system because they didn't populate correctly or something like that but it was a priority like the people who created the new system made sure to include preferred name as a

category and so i'm just sitting here like yeah sure i'll do that because that's important and i'm glad you see that now i don't think you realize that we pushed you in that direction but i'm glad we're here yeah and i think people forget that i think that when we talk about preferred names everyone's like oh there's a trans issue i'm like no it's not we've you know i have students where like let's use the jonathan example like every other male in their house is named jonathan so they've always gone by chris because it's their middle name like they would never respond to that and i think we forget the trans hate right now is very confusing to me like why we're focused on such a small subpopulation and ignoring so many other more important well i

do know why it's for politics um but so often i hear people say like oh it's it's it's a it's a transition like it's not it's a human issue look at some of our politicians who don't go by their actual given birth names like this is something we have a long rich history of of recognizing who they are and it's a cultural thing i have students who i have students who were not born and raised in the u.s and they had their name anglicized for them when they first came here and now when i talked to them about their name they actually have names that are not their given name because they don't like pronouncing it and it's not the anglicized name because they hated it so much it's a name that they choose that reflects who they are and i think we forget the power of that

and and how much that brings with you but i'm so glad you're doing that work i'm so glad they don't even realize that like you had that little coup and you made it part of the norm it's even to the point that if I notice a student like in their email signature their name is different I respond like here's the answer to your question but also hey do you go by this or this yeah oh my god thank you so much I'm so glad you asked I go by this I mean I still want my legal name on professional documents but this is the name I go by if you want to use that I'm like great perfect I just want to make sure that if I am identifying you that I'm identifying you as you identify not as your birth certificate says or something like that and I cannot tell you how many times I've

in a number of institutions we get told we can't do that because the system can't handle it right like how broken is our system like which cheap version of the system did we buy that we can't put one more column on a roster yep so yeah i think one of our system calls it current name and legal name or previous name because they do it already for people who get married and change their last name that was one thing that bothered me we were we have systems in place to accommodate last name changes for people who get married because it's an expectation for women again with air quotes to change their name when they get married to a man but we can't call someone john instead of jonathan right it really makes no sense yeah agreed

charlie i didn't know if you had anything you wanted to throw in before i push us in a completely different direction go for it timothy i want to check in with you is there anything you want to make sure we're getting to before i push us somewhere different uh i would back up to the middle school thing back onto sex ed again uh because please give given that sex ed technically was there but was really not you know significant uh my experience was i had to sort of then put the puzzle pieces together on my own so like you know middle school boys are making jokes like this is funny we're talking about a penis it's funny i'm like but i don't understand why that's funny because i don't understand the social connections because this is rural kentucky i

don't have that sort of access to media that you have that people have to now so i don't i don't get the popular joke but also i haven't been taught about how these pieces work so i don't know why it's funny because of that and then so i like growing up i had to like put two and two together after i've heard you know haha yeah that's really funny and then maybe after they've said it three or four times like oh okay now i understand why it's funny okay i'm with you now uh but even just with like anatomy and how things worked as far as like how pregnancy works how that happens like i never really got a true birds and bees conversation it was just a we don't really want to talk about it though my family would boast about how open they are about things and how understanding they

are as far as like anatomy and how things like that work and i'm like you've never like set me down and told me about this you just assumed that based on conversations we've had around the topic that i understood it was never fully explained um and so it was never very explicit i was just sort of expected to fill up the gaps myself and so that was sort of another piece of my personal sex education i don't know if anyone else can relate to that but like since it wasn't taught in school family didn't want to talk about it we're definitely not talking about it in church i just kind of had to figure it out yeah and being a queer person i was like not only do i have to figure out how your stuff works now i have to figure out like how my stuff works and

it's not the same yeah and then we wonder why kids turn to porn to try to figure out the details of how things work right like at least you're getting obvious answers there yeah i always joke i don't know charlie i don't know if you can remember back in the day i don't remember i honestly don't remember middle school so I don't remember if we had sex ed I do remember sex ed that it was such that it was though I love my teacher um I was I was in school during the HIV epidemic and so like that fear was overwhelming and I had health for one semester and it was all about don't get pregnant and don't get HIV like the other STIs didn't exist anymore it was just about HIV and AIDS um and so a lot of it for me was a lot of fear-mongering but in thinking about it I also

don't think we ever went over anatomy like now that I'm going back I don't think we ever did anatomy but I also don't remember middle school very well so I may have gotten it there um Charlie did you're you're in like I would like to think I'm in California yeah I was gonna say anyone I don't know if we'd actually said that out loud ever yeah I know what you have now but like do you remember your experience yes was it it was bad it was no it wasn't it wasn't um I mean there was the typical so in elementary school it started in i want to say um fourth grade that was like the split so up through third grade and then fourth grade you start um and we did do the boys go on this in the multi-purpose room girls go in the library but that was only for the first one

the second the second year um we it was all co-ed good so we were all in one space and we watched the video and it went through it there was some anatomy and then also um my my parents bought me the what's happening to my body book i had the what's happening to me book too yeah um and so so yeah i i am a beneficiary of the um progressive policies of california did you ever get the gender that there's more than i don't see i don't know when we started No, not back then. I feel like we're too old for that. Yeah, not back then.

Because although I am younger than you, there is a bit of that overlap from the HIV pandemic or epidemic. So there was a bit of that, but there wasn't anything about the spectrum of gender identities. What's fascinating, I don't, like growing up and getting most of my health ed during HIV, you know, like right in the middle of HIV, we never talked about orientation, which I think in some ways may have been helpful in that we weren't slamming gay folks for, I mean, that's, we named it GRID. When AIDS first came out,

it was called GRID, Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease. I mean, there was plenty of fodder there to blame one population for the disease. And in thinking about it, I don't remember ever learning about orientation, which may have actually helped people who were gay not get attacked for at least in our school system for like being the people who were causing hiv none of that is true by the way gay people don't cause disease just want to make sure i'm saying that in case that becomes the soundbite um but now looking back like it's fascinating that that that never came up in the in the highest point of hiv we were never talking about orientation in school see so it wasn't just you timothy me and you we both had crappy sex ed so right and now that you

mentioned charlie the separate room thing i remember we did that too but it wasn't it didn't come down to sex or or even i think anatomy at that point it was like yeah we're going to separate the boys and girls we're going to talk about growing up and then it was basically just you know like hygiene your your bodies are changing so you're going to want to wear deodorant and it was that was pretty much the experience for the boys i can't speak for the girls because you know they did separate us at that point i don't know if they talked about menstruation and what that means or if it was just uh you're gonna get hairy and stinky at the top yeah we did get that so in california we got the hygiene and then we also got the okay here's here's what's gonna happen

anytime you hit like 12 or above at any moment this is this is what's going on inside and then this is what's gonna come out demonstration what we usually actually hear is like girls get that they get the hygiene and then they get um they get the menstruation talk and the boys just go play basketball like they don't even get the hygiene time so you actually are okay we're advanced believe it or not even to this day that's the joke is that the girls go learn and the boys go play basketball so all right so sex ed failed two out of three of us that's uh that's at least we're on par with expectation there we go hey it got to me it got me to where i am today so it was more like no one else is going to go through this and i'll fix it myself

if i have to that's that's how we got to today yeah we had terrible experiences so let's make it better for everyone else absolutely so that brings me to one of the questions i want to close with i don't know where you i don't again this is your drive so i want to make sure that we're hitting everything you want to hit we can always do a part two if you're like i forgot to say something i guarantee that will happen as soon as we hang up i'll be like oh wait there are these three other things but at the moment no i don't have any sort of expectations for where the story goes i just it's it's my life so it seems all bundled together so i don't know what i what specifically i need to pull out um like i said at the beginning my main goal today is just to let

people know that whatever you're experiencing you're not alone yeah well and that was going to be my question like if you could talk to little you um you know whether it's rural rural area where you're from or like middle of nowhere country like if since since these podcasts didn't exist back then like if you could talk to the the younger version of yourself right now if they were listening or if there's a parent who's listening to this thinking like how do I keep my kids safe like what I guess yeah just what would you want to tell them um younger me I would tell that um you don't need to be so scared because your situation right now is not great but um what as cliche it is things do get better um so just hold on but for parents listening to this

parents of queer kids or just parents of kids in general just just listen to them because uh one of my friends i like if i were growing up as her kid i would feel so comfortable because the way that i watch her parent her child because um their child came out as um originally by i think they identify as pan now but it was just a hey mom i think that person over there is hot cool kid let's talk about it you have any questions you know does that bring up any questions that you need to ask mom no just wanted to say that all right cool let's talk about dinner now and that's the really the way it should go it shouldn't be a thing so the people who think that coming out is not a thing anymore it is um but it shouldn't be is this the way i want to put it so like i

don't know if someone who's going through the quote-unquote normal experience and like yeah little little bobby at school i think is cute he took he stole my lunch earlier and we flirted it was whatever that experience should be the same as like a boy coming home and saying oh little bobby i think he's cute and we played on out in the swings together at recess today i think that it should just be the same experience so for parents of queer kids out there if they mention anything just don't make it a big deal it doesn't need to be a sit down conference experience um i think that actually someone mentioned that and i think was used dr sue mentioned in a recent episode about someone who set their child down i was like let's talk about this and that just

didn't go well but but you know let's call it dr sue is like what's your question here's the question here's the answer okay done and it really should be that simple it shouldn't be a big deal i think that making it a big deal makes it into a big deal and it shouldn't be like we inflate than it needs to be yeah we over inflate these things as they as they say around these parts you're making a mountain out of a molehill we don't need to we don't need to make it bigger than it is it is important but it shouldn't be, I don't know, dramatized. I think that's an awareness for parents listening

is that the layers that you're bringing to that situation when you hear those questions or those comments or the coming out or the acknowledgements is that really try to have an awareness of what's going on inside your mind. It's your fear. It's your protectiveness. It's it's a layer of things. But don't try not to burden your child with that and just be present for your child.

Yeah. Yeah. That moment's not about you. Sorry. Go ahead, Timothy. Oh, no, I was gonna say for the parents of the queer kids or grandparents, if you are struggling, then you don't need to rely on your queer kid for support. You need to find that elsewhere so that you come to your kid as support. This actually happened to me with some family who were like, oh, can I have my grandchild come talk to you because they're going through this experience? I said, no. They're like, wait, but why don't you care about them? I was like, I do, but I need you to talk to me so I can give you the tools to help them.

If you say, I don't know, grandchild, go talk to this other queer person, that is creating a separation. So you need the tools to talk to them. So if you are, you have a child in your life who is going through this experience and you don't know what to talk to them, then you need to talk to somebody to figure out the answers so that you can help the kid. Don't send the kid off to talk to somebody else because that just elevates the othering experience and from family, which makes it worse. Yeah, it's how the child's going to perceive that stepping out of it and being like, well, it's not, I don't know. so here go over here and then that you're the child may internalize that as oh well they don't accept me because they're not right they're not communicating maybe their fear their uncertainty like i have so how how can we find ground together yeah because especially depending on the upbringing

of the child they're already being very brave by bringing it up to begin with so if you immediately say i don't have the answers i'm going to send you to someone else they're not going to bring it up to you again yeah now you've already you've closed that door but there is a power in saying i don't know and i think parents sometimes are afraid to do that so the answer is not i don't know here go talk to timothy the answer is i don't know let's see if we can figure this out together because i want to be here for you i don't know the answer but we'll find it together that is way more accepting and now that kid's going to keep coming back and talking to you but it's okay you don't have to know i just don't want parents to be like but what if i don't know it all you're

not supposed to yes but you can you can work through that journey together so yeah and we might we might link some some of those resources just kind of some beginning resources for any parents listening that or grandparents or caretakers um of of queer children if you want to if you want to start to find that language and find those resources for you so that you can show up the way you want to right and i definitely want to emphasize what you said dr sue about that i don't know is an appropriate answer but i don't know we're not going to talk about her i don't know you go talk to someone else is not we'll get through it together great or let me look it up and i'll come back to you that's great yeah yeah i always love when parents look up things with

their kids together because then they can also because to me it's always like how do we do as much as we can then you can also do some digital literacy piece of like oh that's not a good site let's get the hell off this website that's saying bad things um but yeah i there's no possible i know i talked about this recently in episode there's no possible way as a parent you can know everything like why oranges are orange and where like the weather comes from and you're not going to have answers to like how do i deal with my you know kids are being mean to me at school because i'm different how how do how do i deal with it let's figure it out how let's figure out how to do how to take care of you yep and this topic like every other topic it comes down to communication

and consent there you go dr c that's your thing there's the thing someone told me that i should of a button like an easy button that just says communication yep when it boils down to it we'll have two yeah go ahead there's oh no i was gonna say there's the experience i had but you don't have to have that experience if you just communicate yeah even if you're not on the same page you don't have to be yeah i i do just i know we're wrapping up and i don't want to like close your episode but i do just want to say from the number of parents that are reaching out to me now with concerns about their kids and the words they're using are that they're going backwards like communities are going backwards it is now more important than ever that you are supporting

your child um it is becoming a a more dangerous situations in some in some places in the country for kids to be queer in any capacity and so i when that that your kid needs safety and so when your child comes to you even and if maybe it's not your child maybe it's like you're the aunt or whatever but when that kid's coming to you and saying help now more than ever i mean you should help anyway but now more than ever we're seeing we're seeing people who are hiding more because they feel unsafe so now more than ever it is important that we're taking care of everyone but also the kids so but i didn't want to be the last voice on that i mean charlie i know you get to be the last voice always but any last gems timothy before we close out uh i just will

reiterate that this is a conversation about my experience and that not every experience is the same, but I want people to know that there are people having these experiences on top of my new favorite quote that we came up with, the human experience of being a human. And it's just good to quote John Green to consider people complexly. What you see on the surface is not everything. And that's okay. You don't have to know everything about everyone you meet. And it's okay to recognize that you don't know things because ultimately you don't know what you don't know. and that's why we're here to help you learn the things that you don't know and hopefully my experience can at least guide somebody to learning a little bit more about themselves or their loved

ones so that they can avoid the experiences that some of us have had in the past i think i think that's a great um note to end on there is that uh when you when you come across people or just people in your life come to you maybe scared or uncertain meet that moment with compassion and curiosity. You know, that's, I think, um, that's unfortunately right now, kind of a lost art, the compassion piece and even the curiosity piece. Um, but if you can find space to just be curious about the people that come across your, um, come into your life or those coming to you with uncertainty, I would just say, and I love alliteration. So compassion and curiosity should lead the moment. And with that, I want to thank you all for joining us on Unzipping Taboos

today. And thank you so much, Timothy, for volunteering to come here and share your experience with us. It was one of those moments that was total kismet because Dr. Sue and I were talking about we need a queer episode, but it was important to us to have someone who has the lived experience be the lead in the episode. So I really appreciate you coming and sharing your story with us. This was incredible. And we hope so with that, we hope today's episode sparked new thoughts, and we'll open up conversations worth having. Remember, as I just said, your curiosity is really the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships and people around you. So if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review

and share it with someone who you think might need to hear this. If you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into, reach out to us via the link in the episode description. A huge thanks to jackandjilladult.com for supporting Unzipping Taboos. Don't forget you can get 20% off your order with code UNZIPPING20. We want to give a very special shout out to Allie O'Brien for our incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Allie. And until next time, keep the conversation going, keep unzipping those taboos, and everyone, take care.