Colette: Hello, and welcome to Called to Queer, where we hold space for the queer Mormon women, genderqueer and intersex experiences. I’m Colette and my pronouns are she/her.
Kate: And I’m Kate and my pronouns are she/they.
Colette: Today we are interviewing Maggie Slighte, and we’re so excited for this conversation. But before we jumped into that, we wanted to start off by seeing quite broad as queer joy this week. So Kate, what brought you queer joy this week?
Kate: Actually this, earlier today I was out with some friends. We were on the marina here on the Black Sea having lunch. And my friends were just talking about me, even though I was right there and making sure to use, the they/them pronouns. In fact, when I’m with these friends, they, I only see [00:01:00] them rarely.
We only know each other from Romania studies. They are from the U.S. But we are all studying in Romania. And every time we meet up, they, they only use they them pronouns. And it’s so nice. I don’t have to feel like on edge. It just feels comfortable. And that, ah, I can’t even express how much gratitude I have to just feel comfortable in a conversation to not, you know, not hearing those, those pronouns. Colette is really great with this.
I love meeting with Colette too, but it’s different when you’re in a foreign country where you never hear that. And then you meet up with somebody and you, you hear it all the time. It was just very nice.
Colette: Oh, I’m so glad you have that. I know you and I have talked about it. Cause people when they have mixed pronouns use them differently. But the way when you and I talk, you say, I prefer they. And so for me, why wouldn’t I use that for you? Why wouldn’t I [00:02:00] use they/them? So that’s easy for me. And I’m so glad you have other friends there who are able to do that, especially in Romanian and other languages that don’t really have that neutral pronoun.
Kate: Ah, thank you. Thank you. Okay, cool. What brought you queer joy this week?
Colette: Yeah. I met up with a friend the other day for brunch and it was just so happy. I’ve I’ve known him peripherally he’s a cis gay man, and we’ve interacted on Instagram. We’re finally like, Hey, let’s just get together. Let’s talk. And he wants to hear my story and. It was just so much queer joy over the course of the hour and a half or whatever we were at the restaurant of just talking about the joy of our experiences.
Because again, so often we do focus on the hard parts of our journey, and that’s a lot of what we talk about here, but it was just so easy to talk to him and he was so celebratory of my story and it just was so nice to have someone so interested [00:03:00] and just so willing. And willing to talk and just asking questions. And he was talking about how he just wants to have more queer joy in his life and talks about writing different queer stories and things. And it was just really happy. So that made my week.
Kate: Love that I really appreciate that. And I like that. That you get to have those conversations.
Colette: For sure. For sure. How about you, Maggie? What’s brought you queer joy this week.
Maggie: Well, it was Tiktok
Kate: Yeah. Yes.
Maggie: I just keep finding that the same people that I really admire, the older lesbians, The older masc lesbians are actually also seeming to pay attention to me too. And that came and makes me happy.
Kate: That’s awesome!
Maggie: I love that [00:04:00] validation. It’s like, oh, okay. So we’re, I’m not just looking one way that, that, that they’re looking my way too. So
Kate: Oh, my gosh. I love that so much because I felt like that too, that like the people that I would have been attracted to are suddenly like they would be attracted to me too. It was like new and mind blowing to me. Yeah, totally, totally awesome.
Maggie: Because I mean, for so many years because of my background and the way I look at things for so many years, I have just defaulted to dating who is attracted to me, not who I’m attracted to. And I’m finally comfortable in, in myself enough to say, no, I won’t do that anymore. I will date who I want. And, and so it’s, it gives me all of the joy when, who I am attracted to is actually also looking back in me. [00:05:00]
Kate: Oh my gosh. I think this is going to be so affirming for people.
Colette: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that’s a struggle we’ve never really talked about, but it’s real, right. I think sometimes when we’ve hidden our queer identity, it can be easy to settle of, oh, well they liked me, so, okay, I guess this is it instead of really pursuing who you want. So that’s awesome.
Maggie: Well, it’s, it’s something that I’ve referred to in the past as the pretty tax. I know I am attractive. Unfortunately I know that I’m attractive to heterosexual men and, everybody else has been pretty quiet on towards me and the heterosexual men. I really don’t want to hear from anymore.
I just don’t.
Colette: Sure. Understandably so.
Well, Maggie, we’re really excited to introduce our audience to you. Would you mind giving your overview of your queer Mormon story? And so we can start getting to know you a [00:06:00] little bit.
Maggie: The overview of my queer Mormon story, that it starts out as overview as my queer story first because I wasn’t Mormon until nine years ago, I am 55 years old in, I came out the first time. I believe I was 15 years old. So that was about 40 years ago. When I, came to the realization that I needed to be baptized and become a member of the church.
I got to the questions that I was given. Got to that fourth question. That fourth part of that fourth question. And I went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what, what, wait, what?
Colette: Can you tell people what that question. If they’re not familiar.
Maggie: Question number four is in four parts and it starts out with, “Have you ever committed a serious crime?” It continues with, “If so, are you on now on probation or parole?”
The third [00:07:00] part of the question is: “Have you ever participated in an abortion?” The fourth part of that same question is: “Have you ever participated in a homosexual relationship?” So in my neurodivergent brain being very literal, I was saying, “Wait a minute. You’re equating a serious crime, which to me is homicide or whatever, to these very loving relationships that I had with women and with intersex people. And I don’t understand why you would do that.” And I mentally broke during that, week that I waited for that white card interview, because once I, once I answered in a way that the very, very young cis male child that was across from me [00:08:00] asking the question. When they answered in a way that he was not expecting all of a sudden it was, “Oh yeah, we need to do a white card interview.”
And what does white card interview mean? That means I have to interview with the mission president, but for me, what happened during that piece of time between those interviews -between the interview with the elders and the interview with the mission president- is because I have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), we created a new identity to fix this problem. Cognitive dissonance is not something that my system, my dissociative identity disorder system handles well. So we create an alter to handle that. And there was Sister Maggie. There we, yeah, I mean there all in all through my almost nine years of membership in the Church [00:09:00] of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, three different alters were created.
The first one was created during that week of absolute utter trauma. I spend more time crying during that week, than I know. And actually, a week ago I met with my therapist in, in talking about these interviews and that it was going to bring up a lot of this. And during that week, I basically had a psychological break in order to follow the feeling that I had to become a member of the church, which was, it was an answer to a prayer. It was a small, still voice that guided me in, but in order to follow that, I had to create a completely different personality. So
Kate: Wow. Thank you. That’s —
Maggie: That’s my queer Mormon story.
Kate: [00:10:00] There’s so much there to unpack for listeners who aren’t aware of these, the, just basic vocabulary that you’re using. But also just taking one minute to recognize how traumatic this whole experience and story is not just the nine years, but the whole story. But can we start by talking about DID and can you give us kind of background about.
Maggie: Sure. I actually wasn’t diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder until I was 48 years old, 49. So I was already a member of the church at that point. I’d been a member at the church for a couple of years. I had many misdiagnosis over the years. DID is what some people know used to know as multiple personality disorder.
It comes from a basis of trauma. The trauma leads to PTSD and in my [00:11:00] case complex PTSD so because it’s over and over and over again, there are traumas that are repeated over and over again. But when as, as my first therapist, described it, DID is a perfect storm of trauma, and in, in high, high intelligence and high creativity in the brain.
And so the brain basically splits into sections that each hold, whatever, certain traumas are held by certain personalities, certain for me, I used to say, when, when apple came out with its commercial, “There there’s an app for that.” I would always say, “Well, there’s an alt for that.” We can have an alt for that. And that really came out in my membership of the church because, the, the alt that was the alter that [00:12:00] was producing “Strangers No More” was Sister Maggie. I also have an alter that was a member of a very right wing hate group on Twitter. That was, I’m not even going to, I don’t want to say her name publicly because I don’t want anybody searching because you know, that was that. It’s very difficult for a convert who’s coming in with dissociative identity disorder, because -especially I am also autistic- and so I look for, very clear definitions of how I’m supposed to act and how I’m supposed to be. And I wasn’t finding that in the Mormon community, I was finding, okay, you have this group over here, and you have this group of over here and never the Twain shall meet. And I didn’t understand that it made no sense to me. So [00:13:00] we created an alter for each.
Kate: Actually what you’re explaining, I think will make sense to a lot of members because we talk so much about cognitive dissonance. We understand this concept of -not to this extent, right? – But, but we understand cognitive dissonance. We understand that when you go to school, you, for me, this is as a historian.
This showed up in a really interesting way. I was going to school and in history classes and learning about the Romans. And then I was going to seminary and Sunday school and learning about the Bible and never in my mind. Did the Romans crossover with those people that we talk about in the Bible, like that’s just specifically for church and the Romans are specifically for, and this is embarrassing to admit as a historian, but, but I, but that happens, it was part of my cognitive dissonance that we believe these things, this history and everything is completely separate from everything, [00:14:00] that I’m learning in the real world. Quote unquote. Right.
Maggie: But unfortunately for me, what also ended up happening is especially over these last five years part of my dissociation included, dissociating from all of my, sexual attraction. I became completely asexual because I had no feeling basically in, in parts of my body because that’s the only way that I could live as I was supposed to live was to completely cut off that part of me.
Colette: And I think that makes so much sense. I hate that it makes sense. But by putting yourself back in the closet, when you already experienced so much trauma growing up to lead to the DID and then to have the trauma of putting yourself back in the [00:15:00] closet, putting yourself in a box that you don’t actually fit in and to fit in that box, you have to cut off certain parts of yourself and yours. It came off like more, literally I cut off this, my sexuality and I developed this alter that wasn’t a sexual person or my, you know, however you describe it, whether it was the alter, whether it’s your core self. I think a lot of people in order when this sort of things happens, dealing with their sexuality, they do have to cut off parts of themselves. Maybe not to the extreme that you did. And so that’s why I think your story is so fascinating that this is how you coped, and this is how, how people cope. When you have to put them back in a traumatizing environment, they potentially just cut off pieces of themselves.
Maggie: Well, it was really bizarre for me because I didn’t even realize to the extent that I had done that until I literally submitted my resignation to the [00:16:00] church. And parts of my body began to feel again. And I’m like, “What in the heck is that sensation?”
I mean, I literally had chalk it up to age and disability. I mean, I, I, I, I use a power chair. I do have neuropathy and parts of my body. I just, okay. But we’ll just chalk it up to age and disability. I did not talk it up to, to dissociation. I had no clue until I submitted my resignation to the church until I did that formal act.
And then I did a cord cutting ceremony following that up, and it was like strange things happened in my body and brain. And I was like, “oh wow, I’m back. Okay. I can do this.” And literally people I’m on a Facebook group that I have for some very close friends, they said, “Oh, so, so you’re [00:17:00] back?” I said, “Yeah. I’m back.”
I’m back. Almost nine years of my life. I was in a church which isn’t anything to most people who are raised in the church. I mean, so most people, it was like a year after they were baptized. Or if you just take nine years and attach it to when they were baptized, they in in their late teens. So, you know, that, that’s where I am.
It’s like, okay, I’ve just graduated seminary. And I went, “okay, wait a second here. Nope.” And that’s how I kind of feel.
Colette: I love how you’ve just been able to do what you need to do to be able to heal this aspect. I think a lot of people do cope with cognitive dissonance by dissociating in some way, maybe not to the extreme to have diagnosable DID, [00:18:00] but I love that. I think your story shows how important it is to come home to yourself and to heal what you need to, to be whole.
Maggie: A lot of people in the post-Mormon community used the expression their shelf broke or putting things on the shelf. And I, I had never heard, I mean, I had isolated myself so much during the nine years of being in the church. I had never heard that expression until after I was, after my shelf broke after a couple of months after my shelf broke, actually.
Kate: Yup.
Maggie: But I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a way to visually and mentally, you know, look at it, cognitive dissonance in, in putting everything that just doesn’t fit on that shelf.
Kate: Absolutely. Yeah.
Maggie: And I did not realize just how heavy my shelf was until after it was broken.
Kate: [00:19:00] Yeah. Great. Thank you. That is a great way to think about the shelf and cognitive dissonance, how those things line up. I, if it’s okay with everybody want to go back to the point, you kind of say in your, your story at the beginning, you said. “Yeah. I came out when I was 15,” and then you go on with your story. 15 that, so for me, I came out, I came out for the first time, I think let’s see like 2005, which is pre-Prop 8, and the church was in a very different place at that point. And it’s hard for me to like, see. You know, my experience is just different from other people’s. I can’t imagine when you’re 15, how much things have changed since then and what that experience
Maggie: You back to where, where the world was when Maggie gave us 15. I was born in [00:20:00] 1966. The world in 1983 was in the middle of the AIDS crisis.
That’s where the world was when Maggie was 15. I was actually dating an intersex men and who presented as completely as, as male. He was 17. I was 15, you know, he looked like completely heterosexual, couple what? And my family was so confused when I came out as bi and at the time that’s what I came as.
And he was like, why is she coming out as bi, she’s dating Vic and they’re great. And. Whatever. So nobody understood at that point in time in, in, in my life, although I was at the time [00:21:00] dating women at the same time I was dating Vic. It was, you know, it was the eighties. The early eighties, I wasn’t the only one.
Kate: It was an exploratory time. Can we say that?
Maggie: Very exploratory time. My teenage years and my early twenties, I, I dated women. I dated men. I dated intersex people. I ended up marrying a man and the question I asked him before he married me, I said, “Well, you know that I’m bi. You know that there are things that you just can’t fulfill.” And he, at that point in time, as we went into a marriage, a marriage that actually ended up lasting over 21 years, he knew that it was not going to be monogamous.
And it [00:22:00] never was. I had many relationships with many women at the same time that I was married to him. We fronted as, as a heterosexual couple, but that’s not what we were in. Most of our close friends and family knew that. Our, our children definitely knew that.
Kate: Do you identify as poly?
Maggie: No, I don’t. I it’s an awkward situation being a DID system. My brain does not identify as poly, but that doesn’t mean that my body isn’t poly because different alters have different relationships with different people.
Kate: I think, I think, it’s a really interesting, point to bring up that people are what they identify as, right. It’s important to listen to what people identify as, [00:23:00] and, and their reasoning, why? And if they don’t, identify, that doesn’t, they don’t need to tell you anything. That’s just how they identify.
Maggie: Well also in, in being a DID system, it’s very unique because I literally have different personalities who front in my body. And it’s, as I’ve described it before as a time sharing a body with different people as I wait, we just timeshare this body is just like, we only get it for a certain amount of time before we have to pass it on to somebody else.
So in that way, you know, somebody from the outside may think that I’m having a relationship with two or three people, but it’s, the body is fronting, but Yeah. Different personalities are using the body that are having the relationships. But I never understood that when it was happening in [00:24:00] my twenties and thirties, although probably my ex-husband did, but I don’t know. He’s, he’s passed the veil long time ago. So he never talked about that.
Kate: Hm. So you came out at 15 and, and years later, you convert to Mormonism and you have that dramatic
Maggie: At 46. Yeah. At age 46, I can put it into Mormonism. So
Kate: At age 46, you convert to Mormonism. And then you, have this experience where you have to get special permission and then you go back in the closet. So you just never identified as queer during those nine years, or did
Maggie: No. In 2019, 20, yeah, 2018 or 2019. I actually wrote an essay. I wrote an article and I came out publicly as, as queer and as asexual at [00:25:00] that point, with a long queer resume.
Kate: I love that. Oh my gosh. A long queer resume.
Maggie: So I it’s it’s. That’s how I came out, but I wasn’t ready to date at that time. And the only person I dated as, as a Mormon was a heterosexual man who actually had a lot of hate in his heart for queer people. And once I really learned that I said goodbye. So, I, I wasn’t able to date as a queer Mormon person.
I just, I couldn’t. As I’m deconstructing, I’m realizing for myself that it was that I didn’t want to add any more trauma to another person. [00:26:00] And I’m seeing so much of the trauma that queer Mormons go through. And the last thing I wanted to do was to date somebody who was outside the church and bring that experience to them.
But this is… queer people don’t need any more trauma. Most of us have had plenty and I don’t want to add to their trauma. And, and I’ve just, just been deconstructing that in my leaving the church. That is definitely one of the reasons that I have felt an impetus to put myself on the market and start dating at this point in time. Whereas I wouldn’t before ever. So
Kate: We’re excited for you, by the way.
Maggie: I’m excited. I’m excited to become the person that I want to be. That, I mean, I’m finishing my book. I’m finishing The Car That Ran on [00:27:00] Prayers. I just edited seven chapters. What was the day before yesterday? It was exhausting. But, I’m up to like chapter 12 in editing, and then it’s going through the hard rewrite because I’m able to put more of myself into my book.
It was edited in a fashion for my previous would be agent, a person who said that they were my agent. So it was, it was edited very much for the Mormon missionary type experience. And I am taking all of that editing out and re-editing it and adding in the parts that were taken out by that person. Like for instance, my, medical cannabis use and the fact that I was a lead writer for a medical cannabis magazine. So, and that was a [00:28:00] prominent part of my story. That was when it was removed
Kate: Sanitized right. Censored, sanitized for an audience.
Maggie: I’m going to actually use the word whitewashed because it was, and. You know, I now I’m undoing that I’m putting color back into it.
Kate: Good.
Maggie: Especially the color green.
Kate: Well, I think that medical cannabis might be a good, segue to talk about disability more generally. And, neurodivergence and how those things are separate from one another. And how you experienced both can, is that too broad? A question?
Maggie: Well, I have a disorder, a genetic disorder called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and it is very common as, as [00:29:00] I have found in the community that it co-occurs with, autism spectrum disorder. And obsessive-compulsive disorder and sensory processing disorder and sometimes dissociative identity disorder. Those, those disorders are all parts of neurodivergency.
So those are how the, my, disabilities work in my brain, how they work in my body is: with the Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, it’s a connective tissue disorder. And on top of that, I was given an antibiotic called Levaquin, which caused me to have diffused tendinopathy throughout my body. It changes the DNA construct of the attendant. In the connective tissue. So it actually, it combines with the Ehlers-Danlos [00:30:00] syndrome to… it just makes everything a little bit worse and easier, easier damaged. I had a tendon just rip while I was walking and that, that just, I don’t know. Just, I, I didn’t step on anything. I didn’t fall, I didn’t trip. And so to avoid those things from happening and avoid my knees from randomly going out while I’m just walking across the, the floor, I use a power chair, so, and I actually just got a, this wonderful set of KAFOs of Knee, Ankle, Foot Orthotics. There are these just really intense, knee braces .And they’re hopefully gonna help me to walk in, keep my knees from going out.
Kate: So. I was so excited when you sent that picture to me that, yeah. [00:31:00] I’m so excited for you to, to get those.
Maggie: It is exciting. I mean, I’ve been using power chairs for now three years and I’m ready to start healing and start walking. And it’s, it’s hard because as, as a person, my body image has changed quite a bit of being disabled and dealing with body image is, is difficult because. I was a skinny child. I was so skinny. I was made fun of, and I was a very slender young adult.
And then when you sit down yeah, all of a sudden. The normal tasks that you would do that work off calories and work our bodies in ways that you don’t collect fat in your middle. You’re not doing them anymore. And so it’s extremely common [00:32:00] to get a lot larger. When you sit down, when you become disabled and start using a mobility device that sits you in a. Sitting position constantly. So I’ve been dealing with that and dealing with a lot of the, how do I love all of this body? Cause there’s a lot more of it.
Kate: Do you have some advice for folks who, for other folks who are going through this and feeling that.
Maggie: I don’t have any more advice other than what I’ve done, which is, get to know it, get to know your body dance with it, move with it.
Kate: I was hoping he would say dance I know that you’ve been dancing. That was a leading question. I’m not going to lie.
Maggie: Yeah, dance with it, move with it and, and share that with people who you trust. I happen to be a very exhibitionistic person. I was an exhibitionist when I was younger. I worked as a [00:33:00] stripper. But it’s, it’s been difficult, but yeah.
I’ve put out a couple of dances on TikTok and stuff, and I’ve kind of let my, my group into what I’m doing with learning to love all of this body. But, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a process it’s I’m 55 years old. I’m I’m an old woman. It’s my, your body changes so much throughout your life.
Kate: Old is relative.
Maggie: You, you two, you two are at, at the absolute ages where I was at, maybe at what I felt, in retrospect, was my peak, but yet what am I going to think in 20 years was my peak. So we don’t know we’re constantly changing. That’s what [00:34:00] life is. And it’s kind of exciting. I mean, looking at it from the crone’s point of view. It’s exciting because I look back and I see all of my grandchildren. I have six grandkids and you know, that range in age from one year to15 years old. And it is exciting to see where they are and where they’ve been and where they’re going. And when you are a grandparent, you can do that. You have that perspective, and I’m excited to see. I’m hoping that I will be able to have the perspective of my, of my mother and that great-grandparents.
Kate: Thank you for saying all of that and pointing it out. But also we’re going to have listeners who are—may not recognize—that coming out is a experience like you said, that you have over your lifetime, many, many different times. It isn’t a one-time [00:35:00] thing. And also that you can come out and be experiencing new and exciting adolescents as we all do every time we come out of. At any point, it doesn’t matter your age. You get to experience that.
Maggie: Oh, absolutely. And it’s especially fun with the different, you know, the different softwares. I I’ve been on social media since back in the bulletin board days. I mean, I literally. FIDOnet node. I ran a bulletin board service way back in the nineties. So I’ve been in social media in one way or another since then.
So now having a TikTok that has over 19,000 followers is just another form of that same thing that I’ve constantly been [00:36:00] reaching out socially through a virtual audience, because frankly with my autism, how you like to be alone 90% of the time. And I want social life on my terms and that’s usually virtually.
Kate: Yeah. Statistically, now that you’ve, we’ve brought this up, statistically. There are many queer folks who, who are also neurodivergent and there are many TikTokers. In fact who are talking about these, the relationship, between those things. And I know we’re going to have listeners who neurodivergence and queerness together and are trying to kind of parse those things out.
Maggie: Well, and actually strangely enough, today, I just did a TikTok about these interviews and I have just steered a few [00:37:00] people your way. So and, and my audience is, is queer neurodivergent Tiktok and it’s a bit of trauma talk has thrown in. There is a huge intersectionality. And like I was saying before with the EDS and the neurodivergence it, you know, if your brain is bendy, wouldn’t your sexuality be bendy? Wouldn’t your gender be bendy sometimes. I mean, if it’s fluid, it’s fluid. If it’s a spectrum, it’s a spectrum.
Kate: This is what I’m, I’m learning and loving from these TikTok TikTokers. I’m learning a lot and thinking through a lot about fluidity and about how, certain societal pressures might not [00:38:00] might in fact evade neurodivergence, which leaves way more room for queerness to cultivate and grow.
And, not that it’s not equally pushed back on, but that we can learn how you all feel, those things intersect in fluidity. And I think it gives us a lot more room to talk about fluidity and think about fluidity, sexual fluidity, gender fluidity, romantic fluidity.
Those are all different things, right? That’s the, this community on social media at least is talking a lot about.
Maggie: Right. And another side of that. And unfortunately, when we’re talking about all those fluidity, the other side of that with the OCD can be scrupulosity. Now here’s an interesting thing. As a grandmother, I have had the opportunity to walk into several, several, several primary [00:39:00] classrooms and something that I’ve noticed that is shocking to me, as I realized my own neuro-diversity, was the ratio of apparently neurodivergent divergent children, which tells me that the ratio of neurodivergent adults is so much higher in the churches than it is in like the public schools. So. As a person who deals with scrupulosity and knows, and has learned in my deconstructing that the Mormon church is one of the absolute,
Kate: Yeah.
Maggie: Easiest draws for somebody with scrupulosity because everything’s laid out.
I mean, the exactly how you’re not supposed to go to hell is laid out with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And those things are not only drilled into you on a constant basis with [00:40:00] 10 hours, every six months of talks. It’s, you are told the answer to everything is to pray more into fast and to read more scripture.
Well, that’s scrupulosity in a handbook and that’s what a lot of people with scrupulosity and a lot of people who are neurodivergent deal with. So how many people who are neurodivergent have, has the church actually exploited in its conversion?
That’s my
Kate: That’s a, that’s a point I hadn’t thought about. It’s a good one to think on.
Maggie: It, it concerns me as a neurodivergent person who suffers with scrupulosity. It’s it just. You know, the, the invasive thoughts of scrupulosity, the constant feeling [00:41:00] that if I don’t, if I don’t, pray enough, if I don’t, read enough scriptures, if I don’t, if I’m not a missionary enough, am I, if I’m, I’ll, I’ll go right out there and say that producing “Strangers No More” was part of my scrupulous. It was part of being a member missionary and to people who I was afraid who were, were at risk for, becoming suicidal because they were queer Mormon. I need, I felt this need to reach out to, to anybody that was feeling this same kind of feeling, you know, and, and was feeling that, that pressure of, celestial conversion therapy, if you will.
Kate: Yeah.
Maggie: The idea that, oh, if it, once we die, we’re all white and hetero. No, no, we’re not. We retain our identity.
Kate: And that’s such an important point. I think when [00:42:00] we’re talking about not, we’re talking about queerness and we’re also talking about disability and neurodivergence because those are the ways right now, I think that our still that are most, what we’ve talked about, Colette and I’ve talked with Blaire Ostler about as, celestial genocide and the queerness.
Maggie: I loved your interview with Blaire, by the way.
Kate: Thank you, but the queerness is getting talked about more and more, but I don’t think that disability celestial genocide is being talked about nearly enough. And about how folks are just told, oh, it’s going to be fixed in the next life. That’s something that we really it’s. It’s a move, especially queer folks
Maggie: I believe wholeheartedly that the disability of neuro-typical ism will be fixed on the other side.
Kate: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I am, and maybe I’m looking in the wrong [00:43:00] spots, but I’ve listened to your interviews. I’ve listened to “wHoly Human”. And I just, I’m not seeing that same sort of conversation translating from queerness to disability.
Maggie: I don’t think that it has translated. And I really don’t think a lot of people are talking about that, but again, it all goes back to we’re talking. In the church, we are taught constantly to that it is our responsibility to receive and seek and receive revelation for ourselves. But nowhere are we taught to respect one another’s revelations. And that’s, that’s the key part. You can’t have, you can’t say that you’re you have this responsibility without also saying I’m going to respect your personal revelation. That it’s, it’s a key that has to be together.
Kate: Absolutely.[00:44:00]
Maggie: And my personal revelation about being disabled, physically disabled is that I will have all of the qualities of, of me in the afterlife without any of the pain what that means to me, physically and mentally and, and whatever. But, but I, it, I truly do. And I’ve said this in a joking manner, but I truly believe that the, the thought processes of God as a Supreme Being are in no way close to the thought processes of, of a neurotypical person, but far closer to the thought processes of a neurodivergent person. And I stick to that one.
Kate: Oh, my goodness. That is powerful. That is a really [00:45:00] powerful statement. And I hope that people, I hope that people listen to that and, and take that to heart. Do you think you can repeat it?
Maggie: Oh, God is just not thinking a neurotypical manner. I don’t believe that God has neurotypical thought processes. I believe that that that process is of a God are in neurodivergent.
Kate: Okay. I just want people
Maggie: God is neurodivergent.
Kate: to sit with that for a minute.
Maggie: And y’all that’re neurotypical yet: that’s the disorder you’ll get over that and the afterlife and I tease about that, but I haven’t had an autistic person that hasn’t agreed with me.
Kate: Well, I, I really, I really hope that folks who [00:46:00] listened to that episode with Blaire or have read Blaire’s book and are thinking through celestial genocide, don’t limit that to just, you know, what’s happened with race in the past, or what’s happened with queer folks, but move on to now think about how that impacts folks with disability and variety of or neurodivergence.
Maggie: Here’s an interesting part of my, my genetic difference. My genetic syndrome Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. We are hyper mobile. We are some of the most elegant dancers and, and beautiful contortionists in the world. And then we get injured and we. As, as many doctors even will ask us to do party tricks, to show, to get diagnosed, but it’s those party tricks done over a series of a lifetime that creates injuries.
And then it’s things like other chemicals that [00:47:00] interact with our differences in our college and makeup in our differences in our connective tissue makeup, like mine was my, my antibiotic that the injured me that creates, again, injuries and create pain. But if you just take the bendy floppy kid that can move and can dance, you take that person without any of the injuries without any of the pain. who I believe the soul on the other side represents. Take all the features without the injuries, without the pain, but the features, if that makes any sense.
Kate: It does. It does make sense. I’m just sitting with it.
Maggie: Without that, because it’s, it’s the interaction with this world that creates disability. [00:48:00]
Kate: Thank you. Yes.
Maggie: It’s the interaction with the abled that creates disabled.
Kate: So, so I’ve been thinking a lot about this. This is, this is a topic that’s really become something of a big topic for me. I’ve read a lot more about disability studies and disability theology. There’s a whole branch of disability theology that I’ve been diving into. And part of that is. It’s talking about how do you talk about Jesus or Christ, however you view that person, or however you view the Bible?
As a healer of disability and disability studies and disability theology are really giving some unique, cool, great answers to that, to that question. And part of what I see is exactly what you’re saying that the in a Roman world[00:49:00] 2000 years ago, now that I understand that the Romans and the, and Jesus are same doing the same thing in the Roman world, accessibility is not the same than it is today.
And having four people carry one person to lower him down through the roof, right? That is not the same system that we exist in, in today. It’s all about the interacting with the outside world
Maggie: Yep. Absolutely.
Kate: I want to shout out. I want to give a shout out really quick to “wHoly Human” and the work that “wHoly Human” is doing. Um, you can find them on, on Facebook and Instagram Maggie’s episode just came out last week, I think. And well, last week when we’re recording this and you have another episode coming up, is that.
Maggie: I do. I actually just recorded the answer, the follow-up [00:50:00] episode with them. I just recorded that with them Saturday. So that’s what my, my, my post, Nneurodivergent Granny over on Tiktok was. I’m sorry, I haven’t been on TikTok. I have an interview podcast.
Kate: One right after another.
Maggie: It’s a thing though. It’s a lot of energy devoted towards a face-time towards people and towards trying to make sure the right messages out there. And that’s a lot of what I do on my TikTok. So if I’ve put out that energy towards one place, I really don’t have a lot of it to put in another direction. So
Kate: Do you want to give us your TikTok info here too? And we’ll put it also in the bio.
Maggie: My TikTok handle is NeurodivergentGranny. So, you can also look at under Maggie Slighte. It’s it’s searchable under Maggie Slighte
Colette: Is there anything else you wish we had been asking you or [00:51:00] talking about in this interview Maggie?
Maggie: Well, I guess at this point in time, I it’s, it’s odd for me to be doing publicity. And, and I’ve mentioned that a little bit too, to my followers on TikTok and on other social media, because I don’t currently have a book to sell, but I do, I am looking for a new literary agent in my book is almost ready to query, look for “The Car That Ran On Prayers.” and that’s, it’s, it’s exciting.
Kate: That is exciting.
Maggie: There were publishing houses looking at it when it was a couple of edits ago. So I’m hoping that publishing houses and a literary agent will look at it now.
Kate: Great. Yeah, we will promote that.
Colette: We just so appreciate you coming. I know this can be a drain for sure. Doing interviews. So appreciate [00:52:00] you giving us and our audience, your time and energy to be able to share the story that I think you bring up a lot to think about. And I think while widen a lot of people’s perspectives. So thank you so much.
Kate: Definitely also valid validate a lot of people’s experiences too.
Maggie: You’re welcome. And I really appreciate the opportunity to come up here and to do these interviews.
Kate: We will, we will, and we’ll put the title of the book in the bio as well.
Colette: Thanks for listening. We appreciate you joining us today. If you’re liking these episodes, we’d love it. If you’d rate and review Called to Queer on the podcast player of your choice so that other people are more likely to find us. We’d also love it if you’d share our podcast with a friend who could benefit from hearing these stories, if you want to contact us, you can reach us at hello@calledtoqueer.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram @CalledToQueer. See you next time.