Ain't That Some Sh*t ~ Episode 1 ~ A Scared Queer: Defining A Monster

This is a podcast called "Ain't That Some Shit" that focuses on queer-related content. The host discusses how conformity was a fear for queer people in the early 20th century. They mention books that explore topics like violence against queer people and conversion therapy. The host also shares personal experiences of being a queer homeless youth and the challenges faced by the LGBTQIA+ community. They highlight the hypocrisy of society's treatment of queer individuals and the harm caused by conversion therapy. The host gives shout-outs to authors Doug Meyer and Douglas C. Haldeman for their work on these issues. Conversion therapy is described as a harmful practice that tries to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. The host shares a personal story of someone who went through conversion therapy. The episode concludes with a call to end the mistreatment of queer individuals. Hello everyone who is tuned into Ain't That Some Shit. My name is Niomi Dylan Sass and this is a new podcast that is everything queer related from history to gay news, current debates, and pop culture. I know what you're thinking, does the world really need any more queer related content? And the answer is simply, duh. That's why you're listening. Today's episode we will be going through how conformity was on the horizon at the dawn of the 20th century and that is what was to be feared as queer people during this era. We talk about a few pieces of literature like Caring Cures, Mental Nurses and Their Patients 1935-74 by Tommy Dinkinson. Secondly, The Case Against Conversion Therapy, Evidence, Ethics and Alternatives by Douglas C. Haldeman. Third, Violence Against Queer People by Doug Meyer and other forms of literature that I'll post a link to in the description. The mistreatment of fellow queers is something that is always on the forefront of my mind. So, shall we embark on this journey on my very first episode of Ain't That Some Shit. What queer means to me is somebody who doesn't want to abide by the standards that is set by society to be simply heterosexual, man or woman. This means that you're somebody who's non-binary, transgender, gay, bi, lesbian, intersex, anything that falls under the umbrella of the LGBTQIA plus community. Being queer is something powerful, to me at least. Over the course of the semester, what I've gathered in my research is being someone of the queer community has never been a choice. Yet, queer people have been punished by family, friends, society and themselves for their sexual orientation or gender identity. Being queer is nothing new. Being homophobic is something more modern and with that being said, hate crimes begin. Someone living in their most authentic self and loving another person who accepts every part of them comes with a potential price to pay. That is all someone who falls under the umbrella of the LGBTQIA community desires to be accepted without any modified interpreting. Like I had mentioned before, conformity was on the horizon at the dawn of the 20th century and that is what it was to be feared as a queer person during this era. However, that is not the case. People from the gay community were the ones the public feared and people enacted medical harm, violence and even death upon someone solely based on their gender identity or sexual orientation. The queer community has been labeled monsters for a quality that is unchangeable by the very same people who allow and commit these atrocities. In my own personal opinion, this just sounds a bit like hypocrisy. Claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior just doesn't simply comply is exactly what's going on here. We're being labeled as monsters but we'll see who really is the monster. Okay, back into the research. Depending on a queer person's social class, it would have a significant factor in how much violence one comes in contact with and in most cases, unfortunately, the less money one has, the fewer resources are available for one to seek out help. Opportunities to be harassed and harmed multiply. In his book, Violence Against Queer People, Doug Meyer exposes why there are more complications for a queer individual that does not have financial stability compared to a higher status person. He writes, when low-income queer people were kicked out of their home, they usually experienced homelessness. Middle class LGBT people, in contrast, did not typically become homeless because they had resources, wealth, and formal education they could use to find work and avoid homelessness. Meyer, page 143. If someone isn't able to support oneself like most queer youth, then the chances of becoming homeless because they were not accepted for their identity or sexuality are more likely. Living on the street and having to learn a different way to provide for yourself may lead to one experiencing some of their time being spent in unsafe shelters. Meyers exemplifies some conditions being faced in shelters. Quote, a few transgender respondents even chose to remain homeless because the streets were safer than the conditions they faced in homeless shelters. And these respondents especially experienced little help from the law, with one respondent being told by a police officer that she couldn't be raped because she wasn't a real woman. End quote. Meyer, page 144. The cops saw this transgender woman as a male and disregarded the fact someone sexually assaulted her. It is no surprise that law enforcement would go out of their way to not help someone from the LGBTQIA plus community. But at the same time, there were government funded practices to dehumanize queer people? No. Ain't that some shit. Now this is the only part of my research where I can personally identify with because I was a queer homeless youth when I was younger. I didn't live at home for personal reasons, we'll probably get into that in a different episode, but I was living either on the street in abandoned houses, at friends' houses, but I never went to an actual homeless shelter because I was personally pretty terrified of what could go on during the middle of the night if no one was there to watch. And not only that, I didn't know if the people who were there to watch were also going to be people who were there to harm me. Being young and unhoused is a whole other atrocity that people shouldn't have to face, and the reason for somebody to be homeless shouldn't be because of their gender or their sexual orientation. I mean, I'm just saying. I would like to give a shout out to the author Doug Meyer who has obtained a PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York and is a guest instructor at the University of Virginia. He has many articles published in various academic journals with his special interest in sociological approaches to violence. Everyone should go check out all of his work. You can just Google him and everything will pop up. Now, back to the research. If you are not a gay person living through the fears of life on the streets, then there was a good chance the sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts known as SOS and GICE reached out to queers after 1892 when homosexuality was censured by the psychiatric community. It was with high hopes, or high delusion, of converting one to not believe their true identity, which began torturous in the 1940s with electroconvulsive therapy, but has been mildly retracted in modern times into performative actions on converting someone. However, conversion-affiliated institutes may not enact logically violence in their programs, but still practice other mentally harmful interventions in pursuit of curing a queer person's sexuality or identity. Douglas C. Haldeman wrote the book The Case Against Conversion Therapy, Evidence, Ethics, and Alternatives, which dives into the life and ethics institutions would believe and abide by in search of a, quote, cure for homosexuality, and establishes that conversion therapy only strengthens the ideology that being gay in any of its forms is bad. Haldeman writes about what one patient had undergone, quote, this material, gay pornography, was made into slides, which were then presented to Mark at the same time that an electric shock was delivered to his hands, testicles, and penis. At the cessation of the shock, the slide image changed of that of a nude female in a seductive pose. Haldeman 3, end quote. The material that aroused Mark, involuntary to him because of his sexuality, was followed by basically being tased with the intention of tricking his brain out of the arousal. Once the shock ends, a picture of what a heterosexual man would find appealing like a naked woman would be displayed to continue the deception. According to Haldeman in regard to these organizations, quote, the William Institute 2018 estimates that every year some 20,000 youths will undergo a form of SOHC or JAISH with a licensed mental health provider before the age of 18, and that an additional 57,000 will receive such interventions from a pastoral counselor or clergy person, end quote. Haldeman, page 250. The author is saying that families are still putting their queer youth in these situations to find some form of cure, as if their child was battling a terminal illness. Ain't that some shit? Personally, this didn't come to no surprise when I found this out in my research. I'm a fan of the show RuPaul's Drag Race, and in season 10 there was a queen named Dusty Ray Bottoms, who was 29 at the time. Their story consisted of their relationship with their family because their family, his parents, didn't approve of him being gay. They actually tried to have him exorcise. They thought that he was possessed with a gay demon, and he went through total forms of intervention that are still going on today, where he had to list every sexual partner that he's ever been involved with. Basically, humiliating, dehumanizing stuff in order for the church that their family was enthralled with to repent and get rid of this gay demon that was living inside of him, taking over his life, and not allowing him to live up to his full potential, in the words of his parents. His parents told him that he would never live a truly happy, prosperous life if he was to date another man. Ain't that some shit? Shout out to Dusty Ray Bottoms and his story of perseverance. You can follow him on Instagram, at Dusty Ray, that's at D-U-S-T-Y-R-A-Y. And another special shout out to Douglas C. Haldeman, PhD, who happens to be the chair of the doctoral program in clinical psychology located at John F. Kennedy University. He had experience with SOCH and JICE with over 40 years under his belt, presenting lectures and workshops on sexual orientation and gender identity. You can Google him as well, and look at all the work that he has done. Now back to the research. Conversion therapy was what queer people endured inside the confined walls of an institution, but outside the walls, the queer community was being demonized and feared when the spread of HIV and AIDS epidemic rose. The disease was often referred to as something improperly gay, until they found its scientific name for it. In Tommy Dickinson's book, Caring Queers, Mental Nurses and Their Patients, 1985-74, he highlights how much of a challenge the LGBTQIA plus community has struggled with being labeled as having a mental illness and faulted for spreading immune compromising variants such as HIV and AIDS. He wrote, before the term AIDS was first coined in 1982, it had been labeled gay cancer or GRID, gay-related immune deficiency, and there was a strong sense that the condition was associated with sexual identity rather than the sexual practice. Dickinson, Mental Nurses and Their Patients, 1935-74, end quote. If a queer person wasn't labeled as mentally ill, then they were correlated, if not labeled, as a disease. In our current time, HIV AIDS is not a death sentence like it was in the 80s, but that disease is still seen as something only a gay person can get. When it came to saving the lives of queer people, the medical community was nowhere to be found. If it wasn't for the LGBTQIA plus activist organizations like ACT UP that stood up for the queers to have the human decency to acquire some form of government aid like searching for medicine, then that virus could have killed thousands of more people. Those organizations and charities additionally assisted in the efforts of the queer community to not have their sexuality be identified as having a mental disorder. Dickinson writes, on 17th May 1990, the General Assembly of WHO, World Health Organization, decided to remove homosexuality from their list of mental disorders. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association argued that this action served to end more than a century of medical homophobia and constitutes a historic date and a powerful symbol for the members of the GLBTIQ community. End quote. Dickinson, mental nurse, and their patients, 1935-74, for that reason the queer community took a huge step forward in progress. And with progress comes resistance. And with resistance that stems from the people who don't agree with such verdicts. Ain't that some shit? For my personal input, I feel, people who finally get accepted by others seems to trigger oppressors to double down and try to get people to conform in even more ways than what was previously the issue. Typically the phrase is, if you can't beat them, join them. But for oppressors like these, if you can't beat them, beat them harder. I would like to give a shout out to Tommy Dickinson, who is an associate professor at the Nightingale School of Nursing at King's College in London, where he is the head of the department. He was awarded the prestigious endowed Talbot Visiting Professor of Nursing in the United States at the University of Virginia, and honorary professor of nursing at Queen's University in Belfast. Thank you, Tommy Dickinson, for your research. If y'all are interested in other work he has done, go ahead and Google him and you'll find everything there. Now back to the research. Acceptance can only lead to some form of love, and resistance can only lead to some form of violence. Unfortunately, this community that has only been asking for acceptance in order to receive its love has been given violence in the form of murder in an act of resistance. The horrifying murders that have occurred with the motive for each and every one of their deaths is the victim is being someone of the LGBTQIA plus community. Yet, queer people are the ones getting their rights restricted and relinquished. In his novel, Losing Matt Shepard, Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder, Christopher Wells portrays one horrifically gruesome instance of individuals with resistance ideology killing a homosexual college student. He writes, quote, During the early evening of October 7, 1998, on the outskirts of the town, a mountain biker saw what happened to be a scarecrow tied to a fence. Upon closer inspection, he found the brutally beaten body of Matthew Shepard covered in blood and fighting for his life. End quote. Wells, page 77. Shepard died a few days later in the hospital in pursuit of recovery, but the damage the two now murderers have done was fatal. It was classified as a hate crime and it sparked worldwide news coverage only for more brutal fatalities to occur to people of the queer community in the future. In Pam Schwartz's article, Rapid Response Collecting After the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, she writes, quote, Our staff awoke the morning of June 12, 2016, to the news that a homegrown terrorist had murdered 49 and injured 68 people after last call on one night at Pulse Nightclub, a popular gay club. Schwartz, page 105. End quote. This attack was not only homophobic motivated, but racially motivated as well. One person was able to do all that damage because he was in the path of resistance. He not only despised people of color and queer individuals, but overall people who just wanted to be accepted. Ain't that some shit? Before I get into my personal feelings about this portion of my research, I would like to give a shout out to Christopher Wells, PhD, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair for the Public Understanding of Sexual and Gender Minority Youth at McAllen University, and Pam Schwartz, PhD, a peer reviewer for the American Alliance of Museum Accreditation and Map Programs, amongst other things. You can Google both of them and find both of their works and check them out. A way this has personally affected me, when I was staying up late the other night doing research on all the horrendous things that happened to people of the gay community in the 20th century and so on, I fell asleep that night and I had a dream. Actually, it was more of a nightmare. The main thing I remember about it is being outside of a coffee shop or some restaurant and I was taking a phone call and as I was taking a phone call, somebody came up to me and had a gun straight to my face and they said, are you one of those queer people? Huh? Are you one of those queer people? And being super scared, I immediately was like, no, what, no, no, what, what, no, come on, what, no. And in my dream he believed me, thankfully, but as soon as he ran from me, others outside started running and I think he thought, well, this is my chance. So he ran into the bar, restaurant, whatever it was, and just started releasing the gun and releasing fire. And as soon as he started releasing fire, I woke up. When I woke up, I had just a small sliver of insight of what it must have felt like to be somebody at the Pulse Massacre. My heart truly goes out to all the people affected by it, all the families affected by it, all the people who were injured but still hold on to their lives, all the people who lost their lives, all the family of the people who lost their lives. My heart goes out to all of you and one of my main missions in my academic and future career is to make sure people of the queer community won't have to face such an atrocity like that. The story of Matthew Shepard stuck out amongst many others because he was left there, still alive at the time, just left there, strung up like he was a scarecrow to die. One of his killers tried to say that he defended himself because Matthew Shepard had tried to come on to him at the bar. Defend himself, really. Defend himself from somebody who probably didn't even hit on him. Ain't that some shit? We'll get back to the research and in the conclusion of it, queer people faced every single form of hardship there is to go through in the last hundred years, which is why most queers have compassion for others in the community because of the resilience it took to get to where we are today. This is why queer adults are so protective over queer youth. It is because they don't want mere children to have to go through what the adults have gone through when they were young. Not only because they're queer, but because no one should have to go through hardships based on a factor they have no control over. The LGBTQIA plus community has gone through mental manipulation, inhumane medical experiments, homelessness, untreated diseases, ruthless beatings, and murders to the sole intent of conformity. We are viewed as monsters, but the people who would commit such acts of hatred-fueled violence are the true monsters. Some of you are probably thinking, why do I think this matters? And anytime I'm given the option to pick a topic of my choice, I will always try to find the queer perspective in it. This matters because our perspective matters. Our side of the story matters. Our history matters. Another question you're probably thinking is, what is the most important factor I took from the research? And it's to remember who I am, and not be ashamed of it. To own 100% fully, with no shame or embarrassment correlated with it at all. Because there's absolutely nothing wrong with being someone from the LGBTQIA plus community. There's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with you. And that's going to conclude this episode. Thank you so much for spending these last 25 minutes with me. Please make sure to hit the like and subscribe button, and if you're my professor, Dr. Hudenpile, please give me an A. This is Niomi Dylan Sass, and ain't that some shit?