Thanks for listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation this year! As a reminder, we’d love to celebrate the holidays with you at our holiday bash next Wednesday, December 14th. RSVP on our website for more details! Links for Context * Disclosure on Netflix * Lancaster LGBTQ+ Coalition Full Transcript 00;00;00;12 - 00;00;22;00 Jeanne From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the interim executive director at Equality Arizona and I'm the host of this podcast. It's one of my favorite things I get to do each week. Right now, we're looking for new guests to join the podcast, so if you're queer and you live in Arizona, I want to talk to you. 00;00;22;06 - 00;00;47;21 Jeanne Let's set up a time to record an interview! If you want to send me an email, it's just my first name at EqualityArizona.org, or you can use the form on our website at EqualityArizona.org/Stories. While you're there, you can find the whole archive of past episodes of the show. Today's episode of the podcast is an interview with Aeron, a film student at ASU and a recent transplant to Arizona. 00;00;48;23 - 00;01;15;06 Jeanne We ended up talking a lot about representation in a lot of different areas — education, social media, film, TV — and we also got into this idea of the utility of different labels: how we find them, how they help us, how we can add to the discourse around labels, by choosing them and by identifying with people and sharing our thoughts and our feelings. 00;01;15;17 - 00;01;48;12 Jeanne It's a really cool conversation and I really appreciated their perspective about that, particularly as it comes to the word genderqueer. I think there's always more to be said about all of that, and I think that this is a great interview to hopefully jumpstart some more conversations about all of those topics. So let's just get started. 00;01;52;23 - 00;02;11;25 Aeron So hi, I'm Aeron and I use any pronouns and I think I'm here just to really talk about the community and just expand people's minds and be able to start the conversation of LGBTQ. 00;02;12;07 - 00;02;12;18 Jeanne Thank you. 00;02;12;24 - 00;02;13;02 Aeron Yeah. 00;02;14;11 - 00;02;22;05 Jeanne So I think when we were emailing, you mentioned you had just kind of recently moved to Arizona, right? Aeron Yeah. Jeanne And did you move here to go to ASU? 00;02;22;18 - 00;02;28;29 Aeron I did. Everything shifted after college. So after high school, I was like, I'm going to come out here. 00;02;29;15 - 00;02;31;28 Jeanne And how did you make that decision? 00;02;33;15 - 00;02;48;01 Aeron Well, I was, like going into film and stuff, I was like: I need more of an environment that allows more film creators, something that had more like, what's the word… like connections. 00;02;48;12 - 00;02;50;18 Jeanne Oh yeah. So like networking kind of? 00;02;51;15 - 00;03;03;00 Aeron Yeah yeah yeah. And living in Pennsylvania, that was not a thing. I come from a small town in Lebanon. It's near Lancaster, so it's very hick-y. Do you know what hicks are? 00;03;03;11 - 00;03;05;25 Jeanne Yeah. I mean, I know what that area of Pennsylvania is like. 00;03;05;27 - 00;03;12;21 Aeron Yeah. So we have, like, some of the Amish, very conservative. And it was definitely not a place for film. 00;03;13;21 - 00;03;15;06 Jeanne Right. That makes sense. Yeah. 00;03;15;07 - 00;03;22;08 Aeron So I had to come somewhere different. And Arizona, I was expecting a little different because I was like, it's Phoenix, Arizona. 00;03;23;02 - 00;03;24;01 Jeanne What were you expecting? 00;03;24;07 - 00;03;46;05 Aeron I was like… I don't… It was this big city. It was like, it has to be like more liberal and just, way different environment. Which it was like I definitely experience less negative things here that I have at home. But it's still there's moments that I'm like still in kind of a red area, which can be negative, depending on who you are. 00;03;46;15 - 00;03;52;04 Jeanne Yeah. What are some examples of like maybe what you were expecting and then what's actually been the case? 00;03;53;00 - 00;04;09;01 Aeron So I think I was just kind of like, Oh, there's going to be more outlets and different like environment, it's going to be more of a positive, more of a liberal environment. 00;04;09;01 - 00;04;13;15 Jeanne Yeah, like being able to find like here's the center for this and here's this, or all of that. 00;04;14;00 - 00;04;36;02 Aeron Yeah, so I was kind of like, Oh, I'm going to go in this environment and it's going to be totally different than where I was because Lebanon was very conservative, which I mean, there's nothing wrong with being conservative. But some of the viewpoints that they had, some of the negative impacts that like the side of conservative they were, was negative. 00;04;36;06 - 00;04;40;22 Jeanne It can be really difficult to be queer in a conservative environment. 00;04;40;22 - 00;04;41;06 Aeron Yeah. Yeah. 00;04;41;09 - 00;04;45;01 Jeanne Even if people aren't hateful to you, it can still be really difficult, I think. 00;04;45;04 - 00;05;10;28 Aeron Yeah, our school, I mean, our school provided a lot of different outlets to support those people, but overall they didn't really like get down and kind of explore the negative parts of it, even talking to them. A friend and I were making a movement to change our caps and gowns because our caps and gowns are gendered, so the girls wear white and the boys wear blue. 00;05;11;09 - 00;05;38;00 Aeron And it was just us trying to change that because there's no reason for it. It was just a tradition that they had years ago that serves no more purpose anymore. So we were trying to change that and trying to get rid of that. And still with the two years like we started our freshman year, just talking about it and then brought it to the attention of administration my junior year and still nothing has changed. 00;05;38;10 - 00;06;06;00 Aeron I'm waiting to go back, so I'm going back in December and I'm hoping to go to like a board meeting and talk about it more and try to change that and get rid of it. Other than that, like, there's still other things. We have a gender neutral bathroom at my school, but it's kind of like you need to be careful going there because now kids use it to give an outlet for them to smoke cigarettes in our school… 00;06;06;06 - 00;06;34;09 Aeron …and they're like, Oh, the gender neutral bathroom, just go in there and smoke. Like, It's okay. And that's making them like, Oh, we're going to shut down the gender neutral bathroom. And it's like these people who are cis are going in there to take advantage of it when there's a bunch of other students who need that and find support in that and it's being taken away from them because of these other students. 00;06;35;11 - 00;06;50;03 Jeanne That's a really good insight. I never really would have expected that as the consequence of… like it's very… I don't think anyone would have thought, how is this going to get abused by just people who don't even need it? 00;06;50;18 - 00;06;50;29 Aeron Mm hmm. 00;06;52;26 - 00;06;58;13 Jeanne Do you know what people are trying to do to keep that open? 00;06;59;03 - 00;07;28;11 Aeron Definitely a bunch of the students, queer students, just going to administration, like speaking out about it and saying how we can't shut it down like that there was so much built up to allow that to even be there, and having that taken away is insane. And I was a part of the broadcast program within my school, so we did the morning announcements every morning and we made it a point to like include anyone or speak on anything. 00;07;29;15 - 00;07;56;01 Aeron So it was definitely like, make sure you're… we obviously couldn't pinpoint certain things or say certain things about it on the announcements, but we kind of like… be respectful and just be aware of what you're doing and how what you're doing, Could it be affecting other students in a negative way? And overall at the school, there's a lot of students who do negatively impact queer students. 00;07;56;01 - 00;08;33;26 Aeron There's, I would say I would — most of students would be just yelled at slurs within our school, daily. I would say at least once or twice a day, I would hear it negatively used towards not only me, but other friends and other students in school. I just remember there was one morning especially that 7:00 in the morning, I'm getting out of my car to walk into school and there's just these kids in their car screaming at me and my friends like, Oh, you F-slurs, like No one likes your kind… and we're just walking into school. 00;08;33;26 - 00;08;54;25 Aeron And I'm like, That's unbelievable. Like how people are able to do that. And we brought it to the attention of the administration. Nothing was done. We knew the exact place that they were and their car was, like their parking spot. Made it aware to the administration; nothing was done. 00;08;54;25 - 00;09;01;01 Jeanne What do you think motivates people to behave that way. I mean, do you think it's just hate or do you think it's insecurity? 00;09;01;23 - 00;09;49;10 Aeron I like a lot of the issues I see is done by education. There is barely any education within, especially Lebanon that has to do with queer or minorities in general. A lot of what we learn is completely whitewashed. People aren't learning. There's a teacher who recently went into our middle school who actually talked about these things. He brought up awareness and he got backlash from it, from administration, like he started this diversity club in middle school and it was on the verge of being shut down because it was "too radical," it was "putting things in the mind of students." 00;09;49;14 - 00;10;14;19 Aeron So that was a big thing that he had to stop from happening. He was like, It's a diverse club. Anyone can join, anyone can be there. It has nothing to do with radical, like, ideations. Like it's just to kee
