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 talking with Dr. Lisa Diamond and we’re so excited for this conversation. But before we jump into that, we wanted to start off by seeing what brought us queer joy this week. So Kate, what brought you queer joy this week?
Kate: So we’re recording this just a few days actually, after Russia has invaded Ukraine and in Romania there’s been an outpouring of love that I wasn’t anticipating that it’s just been remarkable. And initially my biggest concern [00:01:00] was for LGBTQ folks in Ukraine. And I wanted to immediately just start getting people thinking about that and making sure that. They are particularly vulnerable to Russian aggression. And so I wanted to make sure that people were keeping these groups in mind.
And as I started to share more and more about that, people who are there are so many groups that just came together and have really joined forces. So the Romanian. The biggest national Romanian group is called Accept. And Accept is in close contact with Ukraine’s Insights. Both of those are like the big ones from both these countries and they just keep sharing one another’s stuff.
There’s a giant lesbian community called the Euro central Asian lesbian with an asterick [00:02:00] community that has also been sharing Insight stuff. So this has just been like a really cool moment to see these LGBTQ groups join together and support one another and support their communities in the community in Ukraine. That is also doing really remarkable things like standing up in front of Russian aggression and being loud and proud and queer, despite the very real risks of that.
Colette: That’s really cool. I’m glad. Thank you for sharing that. I didn’t realize all that was going on. And hearing of course the news headlines, but to hear from someone who’s definitely a lot more up close than us in the United States currently. Appreciate you sharing that with this Kate.
Kate: yeah, and probably by the time this airs, there will be a lot more that’s being shared about that. So let’s keep a close eye out for it. All right. Colette. What’s yours?
Colette: Mine’s a lot more lighthearted.[00:03:00] I was watching the Mitchell’s Versus the Machines with a friend last night. It’s up for an Oscar nomination and it’s a completely ridiculous movie and I loved it. Um, But what I want to highlight is my friend pointed out as we’ve started watching that one of the characters was wearing a rainbow pin and I’m like, oh, that’s cool. Subtle representation. That’s awesome. And then the mom asked her, oh my gosh, like, how are things with Jade? Are you going to bring her home for Thanksgiving, blah, blah, blah. And it was like, wait, that’s normal? Like the, it treated it in this kid’s animated film, just completely normal that she might have a girlfriend and it wasn’t a big deal. And anytime I see something like that, it just brings me a lot of queer joy.
Kate: Love that. Yeah, I watched that one, too. It’s a good one. I felt all the feelings too.
Colette: For sure. For sure. Well, How about you, Dr. Diamond? Do you have some queer joy you want to share with us?
Lisa: I do. So it is a student like [00:04:00] recruitment season for kind of graduate programs in the U.S. And I have two graduate students right now. Both of whom are queer and one of whom is nonbinary and one is graduating. And so I was, recruiting students. And so I invited two students to come visit. And they were both just incredible. Both of them queer, one of them also Latina, the other one, African-American. Both interested in like intersectional forms of marginalization. And I was like, God I want both of them they’re so cool. And it’s an opportunity to really like, with my other student to have like a cabal, like a queer cabal.
And uh, and I went to my department, I’m like, marginalized students do better when they’re a part of a cohort and can I just get permission to admit both of them and they’re like, go for it. And so we made the offers and I just found out [00:05:00] last night that both of them said yes. And I went down to the Pride Center and got some like pride swag bags with a t-shirt and I got some Utah Real Salt, and I put that in there and I put like a coaster of Park City Yeah, you could ski too.
And it is just it was just so much, when I think about what it was like for me as a graduate student, feeling like truly like the only queer person around in my program. And so the opportunity to welcome these students and to be your whole self is welcome and come on. And it just felt so wonderful to be able to do that. And so exciting and so it gave me a lot of joy.
Kate: That’s awesome.
Colette: That’s amazing.
Kate: So excited to have them too. That’s great.
Lisa: I know it’s just incredible and yeah. [00:06:00]
Kate: Yeah. As a graduate student, a queer graduate student it was very helpful first of all, to be in California, but to also know other queer folks in my program, it was really helpful. So yeah.
Lisa: And and one of them. is, nonbinary and my current nonbinary student, I think experiences a lot of marginalization. Like people are stumbling over the pronouns and to just have one other person to be like, this is not just me folks. This is not this is not like a weird niche thing. This is a reality and a lived reality. And I just feel great about that. I think it’s just going to be just a much more supportive environment overall. So I felt super good about that.
Kate: Awesome.
Colette: That’s incredible. And I’m so glad that they allowed you to hire two. I know sometimes the bureaucracy gets in the way,
Lisa: I know. And that is definitely true, but, and I think it demonstrates also that my department and 50% of the students that we made offers to were from [00:07:00] underrepresented groups. And it’s nice to see that and that wasn’t by design, it’s just the faculty making decisions and to see that the the ethics and the values of the department about, no, we need to take this seriously. We need to really look at how we’re doing things has actually been changing. I’ve been at the U for 22 years and it’s exciting to feel that yeah, it was worth it to make a commitment to staying here because my colleagues truly have my back and they share my values. And the fact that, the department was like, hell yeah, do it. And you know, do it.
Kate: Yep. Also, we, the whole country has been reckoning with a lot of stuff during the pandemic and at the University of California, Riverside, which is where I am a graduate student, a lot of the talk was how do we get more diversity within our graduate student cohorts? And the biggest concern was you have [00:08:00] to form that community. You can’t just bring people in who don’t have the support of other people who are going through it. So it sounds like your department is making that effort to make it a community, not just individuals.
Lisa: That’s so true. And the current students have taken such an incredible leadership role. We have a diversity committee, like a lot of universities do. And in the past it was just not doing much. And it has just lit on fire over the past four years or so, largely because of the students and they have led the way and that’s as it should be. And so one of the things that I’ve been tasked with for the next couple of years is to really provide some scaffolding and for mentoring across axes of difference. And how can we rethink what it means to be an effective mentor and navigating power and privilege. And for, a bunch of, white, cis, [00:09:00] straight faculty members who have more diverse students in their labs, how can we have a sort of safe and open and productive conversation about, you know, do you want to rethink and take a harder look at how you might have inadvertently been creating an environment that is the reason that we don’t have more underrepresented graduate students?
Like what can we do different? How can we learn from each other in a way that doesn’t make anybody feel like we’re saying you’re a bad person. But, hey, let’s learn from each other. What are the best ways to help students thrive? Here are the wisdom from your colleagues and talk with other people who have done this and see if we can make these lasting changes in the culture of our discipline.
Kate: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s exciting times for the U. I graduated from the U, I have three degrees from the U, but I know that many faculty and [00:10:00] students were concerned about top tier leadership being appointed at the U. And it sounds like at the department level and faculty levels that you all are making those changes you wish to see at the top.
Lisa: I think that’s exactly the thing. When we went through our last search for the new president, and even though they interviewed two outstanding and dynamic women of color, wow. What a surprise. We ended up with a white LDS man. And to some degree, a lot of folks said, as long as the U has to work so closely with the legislature, maybe the most efficient way to get things done is to give them someone that they feel comfortable with.
But at the lower levels, there is a lot of activism, and I have to give our new president credit. He unexpectedly showed up [00:11:00] at our LGBT resource center gala that we have every year. And I’m like, oh my gosh, here he is. So I was talking to him for a while and he was totally great. And then he had his staff like photographing him like, oh, look, our president talks to the queer community. And then that day he like posted a picture of himself at the event on his Instagram. And there’s like a picture of me and this other queer person, like animatedly talking to him with our rainbow masks on and like, okay, all right. I can work with this. We’ll see where this can go.
Kate: Cool. Cool. That gives me a lot of hope.
Colette: Thank you so much for all that background. I think this is a good jumping off point to talk about who you are and your professional, personal experience that led us to inviting you on here. Do you mind taking a few moments to do that?
Lisa: Sure. So currently I’m a professor of psychology and gender studies at the U where I have taught [00:12:00] for about 22 years. I was hired in 1999. I got my PhD at Cornell University, where I started studying sexual identity development in women. That was really what I wanted to do. And it this was the early nineties.
It was still pretty dangerous to do work on a topic like that as a graduate student. It was an era in which most of the people doing academic work in psychology on those issues were already tenured. They were like super safe. No one could harm them. And my own advisor, Ritch Savin-Williams, who’s just still a close friend and dear to my heart. He confessed to me like a year after I was admitted that he was thinking of retiring early and going into clinical practice because once he started doing work on LGBTQ youth, students stopped applying to work with him. And he was like maybe this is just not going to work out. And then I applied to work with him [00:13:00] and he’s okay, I’ll give it another try.
And then I ended up staying in the field for another 30 years and I always say I gave you back to the world. And so initially I was just interested. I was frustrated with the fact that all the academic literature that I was reading on queer youth, most of it is based on samples of young men. And it was before the internet, it was hard to find samples.
So there’d be all these studies. Like I found 16 kids at a youth group and only one was a woman. And I just, was like we need women’s voices back in the picture. And that’s what I set out to do with a really amorphous open-ended poorly planned project, where I’m like, I just want to interview a bunch of young women about what they’re doing and taking them up.
And I was also had just started dating my now wife and we drove around going to pride parades, and just going up to women, being like, Hey, want to be interviewed for this project? And I’ve no money, I’ve no funding. I’m just [00:14:00] driving around the state of New York, looking for people to talk to. And what I ended up doing was, following these women over time. My initial sample had about a hundred women.
And I was very open-ended. I didn’t say you had to identify as lesbian or, but I just said, if you’ve ever been attracted to women, I’m interested in talking to you. And so I got a lot of women who were unlabeled, who were questioning, who were like, I’m not sure if you want to talk to me. I don’t think I’m a very good example of a lesbian. I’m like, oh no, one’s a good example of a lesbian let’s talk anyway. And as I followed them over time, what ended up bubbling out of the data was just an incredible amount of variability and change that no one had ever really been able to put their finger on before, just because no one had ever talked to the same people over time.
And I think part of what happens in a lot of queer stories of coming out is people look back at their [00:15:00] past and they try to reinterpret everything through the stance of where they currently are. Oh, I had this friendship and I think I was in love with that person, but I wasn’t sure. And oh, and then I got married and then I left my marriage and the truth is that we always remember our past in a way more linear way than actually exists. And when I followed women over time, but I found that there could be really abrupt shifts in their identities and their attractions often based on who they were involved with at that current time. Lesbians who unexpectedly fell in love with their best male friend, heterosexual women who started sleeping with their female roommates.
And that contrary to this notion that there was like this true, essential self, that their selves were complex and changing. And just talking to them over time, really started me thinking about this idea of sexual fluidity and that yeah, [00:16:00] people do have sexual patterns and predispositions, but those patterns are not nearly as rigid and determinative as we used to think. That everyone has their pattern and then there’s things happen and there’s wiggle room around that pattern and you get pushed around. And that is not a sign of intellectual or psychological immaturity, and it’s not a sign of repression. It’s a sign of the fact that humans are complicated and that we needed to bring those stories forward because I found that so many of the women I talked to, felt that they were the only one who had such a weird story.
One woman was like, maybe you should take me out of your study cause I’m so unusual. I’m like, oh my God, you are not unusual. You are normal. All they’re all normal. And that, as a community, we had not done a good job of representing [00:17:00] the true diversity of experience. And we had allowed some individuals to feel like they were not authentic. They were somehow lesser than. That if they didn’t come out until they were 20, what was wrong with them? Aren’t you supposed to know once you’re eight? And yeah, some people know when they’re eight, some people don’t and that’s not repression. Sometimes it might be, but there’s as many different stories and as many different pathways as you can imagine, and they’re all valid and they’re all important. And that one of the messages we can give to the next generation is there’s no one right way to do or feel this. Whatever is your pathway, is your pathway. And don’t let anybody tell you that your story is not real and your experiences aren’t real and your feelings aren’t real. They are. And humans are weird. Humans are complicated.
Kate: I want to highlight that last point that you said, because our experiences are real, especially within Mormonism, we are taught all the [00:18:00] time to question our own experiences and say, is this, am I really feeling this? Is this really what’s happening? And we second guess that so much, but yes, our experiences are real. So I liked that’s the ultimate conclusion that you’re coming to.
Colette: And I want to point out the reason we invited you on specifically, I’d heard you on Questions from the Closet, really you had to say there, and we are geared towards more the non cis gay male experience. And so talking to people who are AFAB, women, nonbinary that’s our niche.
But I had someone reach out to me. Cause I jokingly say, oh, back when I was straight or I can’t believe like I was in love with my roommate and I totally thought I was straight. I thought it was just her. And I had a listener say, that is invalidating for the people who experience that. Who do identify as straight and just it’s one person.
And so I’m like, I [00:19:00] need to talk to Dr. Diamond. Let’s bring her on. And so I’m so grateful you did, and that you’re willing to talk to us. I’m just curious if you could speak to that listener that was like, you’re kind of invalidating some people’s experiences.
Lisa: One of the things that makes it really complicated is that I think all marginalized communities and especially communities of individuals who are sexually diverse and gender diverse, we often come together on the basis of shared experience. And part of what brings us together is that moment of, oh my God, you experienced that. I experienced that, too. Oh my God, I’m not alone. And I think because of that, we sometimes get uncomfortable or it’s a little sandpapery when someone’s experiences is really not very similar to ours and that you can have one person’s oh my God, I thought it was straight. But I was like, I was crazy. And another person’s like, No, I was straight then, and now I’m not. And that those experiences [00:20:00] are so divergent. And I think it’s hard sometimes to make space for both and to say we can absolutely be different on that. And both are valid and both are true. And yet there’s a tenderness about it because I think when we bump up against difference, it feels threatening because we have already felt so different from everyone.
And so I think because we often come together around shared experiences and around shared pain or struggle to get to where we are now, when an ally says something that makes us aware, oh, I’m different from that person too. I think it feels more scary and it feels it’s just more tender.
And I, I think again that listener’s story is absolutely true. And many of the women in my study, one in particular that I remember really clearly when I first interviewed her, [00:21:00] she was, I think a second year college student. And she was roommates with her very best friend who she’d known since she was 12. And they had always been really close and they ended up starting an affair and neither one of them understood what was happening. And she kept asking me like, am I lesbian? I’m like, I don’t know. And they were together for two years and kept it totally secret. Then when the relationship ended, she, and part of the reason it ended is because she thought, you know, I think I am actually straight. I think this is maybe a one-time thing. And the other one was like, I think, but I think I’m bisexual. And so they broke up, but they stayed close friends, they stayed best friends. The woman is now married with children. And when I talked to her, she described that experience was like, yeah, that was real. It was not, I was not wrong about anything, about my identity. Yeah. I think I’m basically straight. I [00:22:00] also had one of most incredible relationships ever with her. Both of those were true. The feelings were real. The relationship is real and it was not really my main pattern. Both of those are true and both of those are valid.
And I think those are the sorts of stories that are really important to tell. That, yeah. There’s not one way to do this. It’s not like if you discover your capacity for sexual desire or a more fluid sense of your gender, like it’s up to you to figure out what that means for your life. No one can tell you that there’s one way to experience that.
And I think the trick for us as a community is to be able to tell our own stories in a way that also holds space for people whose pathway was very different, to be able to say, Yeah. I was repressed, but not everyone was, right? And to be able to say your story is just as authentic, just as valid, just as important to center [00:23:00] and spotlight.
Because part of the problem that we got from, being raised as children is that there’s one right way to be. And this doesn’t really help if the queer community just replicates that and says there’s one right way to be this too. It’s oh great, no, there’s no right way to be. And as many different pathways in and out of queerness and gender expansiveness, every one of those pathways is real and valid. And we need to do a better job in the community of not privileging some pathways over others.
Kate: Absolutely. Yeah. I have a couple of questions. First I worry about, because I worry about gender essentialism. It is something that is constantly in the back of my mind, but I think that you can probably, I can ask it and you can navigate around the gender essentialism. And that is, we recognize [00:24:00] this space for women, genderqueer, intersex people is different than a cIS gay man’s experience, oftentimes because women don’t come out until later, they don’t recognize these things about themselves or people who are assigned female at birth. I have thoughts about that. I think it’s a socialization type of way of thinking about sexual purity and all that sort of thing.
But can you talk
Lisa: I totally agree with that. I don’t, I used to think that women were more fluid than men and I don’t think that anymore. I actually gave a talk, that said I was wrong. Men are pretty darn sexually fluid too. I absolutely think it’s a socialization thing. And one of the things that I talk to my students about is that kids that have penises, when they get aroused, they can see it. They can physically see it. They have an easier pathway to link up what’s [00:25:00] happening in their head and what’s happening in their body. And they’re also given these messages that say, oh, boys are sexual, no mouse brought rock. So they have so much more permission to think about their sexuality, to reflect on it, to experience it.
And kids with vaginas and ovaries have just as many early appearing sexual desires. I know that from my sister’s daughter who was, exploring her body with gusto at like age five. And I was like go. But that is not encouraged for women. Individuals assigned female at birth are socialized that it’s going to be their job throughout their lifetime to be the gatekeeper, to say no, to say, keep your legs closed, to push it away.
And they learn to disassociate the desire happening in their heads from their bodies, because the vulva is a different organ. It doesn’t give you as many visual cues. And I [00:26:00] think that by the time you end up with, folks that are 18 or 19 and those assigned male at birth are like, oh, I know all about my sexuality. And those are assigned female at birth, are like sexuality? What is that?
So I absolutely think it is the way we raise children. We do a lot to disembody sexuality in the way that we raise girls, in way that we don’t for boys and, feminists have been talking about this for years, but it is still true.
And I think in high demand religions, that is on steroids. The purity culture, the shaming, the deep sexual shaming. You know, one of the unique things about the LDS tradition is that their obsession with masturbation in boys that they do a plenty, good job, shaming individuals raise boys as well about, you’re not supposed to touch yourself and you’re a terrible person, if you do.[00:27:00] Those are damaging messages to everyone. But I think our culture in general does a lot to disassociate people from their sexuality. If they’re raised female.
Kate: Yeah. I think what you’re getting at too, I think that for individuals raised as boys, that it also becomes much harder to come out as bisexual too, for that group. That there is a demand for masculinity and a masculinity that is surrounded by sexuality.
Lisa: That’s absolutely true. There’s no middle ground. And to some degree, it’s because Western notions of masculinity are that masculinity equals not being a homosexual. That’s what it means to be a man that homophobia baked into the very definition of masculinity. So that leaves you two options if you have a more expansive notion of your sexuality.[00:28:00]
You can stay on the right side of the Lord and just squirrel it away and just focus on heterosexuality. Or you have to completely jump over to the other side and be completely gay, but there is no allowance for any sort of middle passage.
Kate: Yeah.
My next question then is maybe you, we can start to separate out sexual orientation and romantic orientation. And if that’s worthwhile exploring.
Lisa: Sure. I will say that one of my, my earliest publications was one that tried to raise awareness of the fact that these don’t like, why are we assuming that they go together? That love the process of falling in love, it’s not based on sexual desire. Like love is a fixed to the attachment [00:29:00] system and I’m a relationship researcher and a relationship scientist and attachment is as the system and the brain that governs love.
And it doesn’t care about gender. It cares about responsiveness and comfort and and and intimacy. And those are not gendered constructs. And there’s no reason to expect that a pattern of sexual desire maps on to who you fall in love with. It’s great when it all lines up. It’s great when the person you’re you want to have sex with is also the person you’re in love with, but there are so many cases, throughout human history, where those things don’t align. And our culture doesn’t really allow a lot of space for that. It’s interesting if you read the historical and anthropological literature, there’s so many cultures that, that treat kind of romantic passion as a separate thing, and have [00:30:00] ceremonies where you choose someone that you bond your emotional life to, and it’s not expected that’s the person you’re sexually involved with.
That’s, it’s treated as its own thing. Whereas in our culture, we’re like, no you fall in love with your best friend and you marry that person. And they all go together like this. And and that then raises the possibility, which a lot of people experience as a lived reality, of what if the types of people that you are sexually drawn to, are different from the types of people that you fell in love with? And what, what do you do with that?
And that is something that I think our culture still does a really bad time dealing with. And I think partly because one of the ways in which the queer community has gained legitimacy is to highlight kind of examples of queer couples that look as close to heterosexual couples as possible.
Oh, look, this is my life partner. And I love her and we have a baby and we’re just like you in every way. And, And there isn’t much discussion of [00:31:00] polyamory or individuals to like, oh, I have sexual partners. I have romantic partners. They may not be the same people. I have different types of bonds with individuals with a male gender identity, then, with a woman gender identity. And it may not match up with my sexual desire and all of that diversity is okay, too. So even most measures of sexual identity and orientation, don’t differentiate between sexuality and attachment. And that is a real, it’s a real weakness in our understanding of, sexual and emotional experience.
Kate: Yeah, for sure. So this is a topic that’s really interesting to me, and this is one that we’ve delved into before, and that is how do you deal with love and then the institution, state institutions, such as marriage. So what do you do about marriage? So
Lisa: Oh yeah.
And I say this as as a married lesbian, who is also deeply critical [00:32:00] of the fact that states have decided that you only get to privilege and prioritize family members that you’re either that are like related to you on a cellular level or that you’re having sex with. Like, why, why don’t we all get to choose two or three people and say to the state, these are the people that I want to protect. I want to be able to pass property to them. I want us to have a special tax status. I want to be able to make decisions for them. I’ve chosen these people, maybe I’m related to them. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m sleeping with them. Maybe I’m not. But if the whole function of marriage, which you know, was, its function was to figure out whose resources belong to who, then why can’t we all just choose who we want to have that special status? And why does it have to be based on a [00:33:00] certain type of relationship?
Now, I’m perfectly comfortable and perfectly happy. I’m lucky. I fell in love with a woman she’s been with me for 27 years. When we got married, we’re like, thank God. It makes health insurance So much easier. But I know, there are people in my life even like heterosexual people, whose lives didn’t turn out that way. Who are like, my best friends are the people that I would like to have a special status for and have my relationship with them treated with honor and respect and dignity by the government. But there’s no way to, to do that. And I, I wish that in the fight for marriage equality, which was an important fight, and I’m glad we won it and I’m happy to have the privileges that come with marriage. I wish we had done more to question why we were choosing [00:34:00] marriage as the way to honor diverse relationship forms. And that individuals need to be able to have autonomy to choose who’s in their family. That’s really what the marriage equality debate was about. You get to choose who you make kin, and that should not be restricted to sexual partners for goodness sake.
I feel like I have that ambivalent status. I’m pro marriage equality, and I still am. I’m glad we won that fight. I think it’s done a lot and I wish we would continue to push and say, this is really about chosen family, chosen kin. And honoring everyone who has a non-traditional family structure. When I teach about this to my class, I start with the report that came out in the 1960s, the pathology of the black family, that the single headed [00:35:00] households by black women were inherently pathological.
And that if there wasn’t a man in the household, and instead they were relying on grandmothers or somewhere else, these kids were growing up without a role model. That is a part of the same fight. That is part of the same fight, of holding up one type of family and saying no. The only type of family we’re going to support is one in which mom and dad in the home with two kids. And if your family looks different, if it’s you and your sister raising your kids, if it’s you and a friend, you don’t get to say, this is my family. You don’t get to say I deserve legal protections. I should be able to put them on my health insurance. That’s the heart of the problem.
Kate: Well, It’s a particularly interesting problem for Mormons to look at as well because Mormons, especially feminist groups of Mormons, have this tendency to reflect on polygamy as the worst thing about [00:36:00] Mormonism we could have ever done. And queer Mormons reviving that and saying. This was a context. There was a historical context where women are, marriage is not good for women. And here’s an instance where where maybe we can think about different types of kinship relationships and how the states oppressed these folks. But that isn’t really a conversation, even in feminist groups that they’re willing. They’re ready to have.
Lisa: You are so right. And I’m so glad to hear you talk about that because, I remember there was a when polygamy was, or I guess it was bigamy was decriminalized here in Utah. I’m like, what is that? Six years ago, there were these strange bedfellow moments between, people who were like, Hey, we’re polygamists and we just want the freedom to love what we want to love. And we have some support from these LGBTQ [00:37:00] people who we’ve never really wanted to talk to before, but they appear to be supporting the notion that people should love who they want to love. And it’s wow, didn’t expect that to happen. And yet, there, there are obviously points of obvious connection between, Polygamy in an, in a modern way, the way you see it on like the Sister Wives and these, TV shows, and polyamory.
And the fact that it was queers who really brought polyamory to the floor and said, Hey, if the culture was wrong about heterosexuality, maybe they’re wrong about monogamy too. Oh my God, what else might they be wrong about? So queers were really at the forefront of, giving voice to alternative family structures.
And so you would think that maybe there’d be some almost like Reese’s peanut butter cup moment your polyamory, my polygamy, maybe we can question these structures in deeper ways.
I think the problem is that [00:38:00] polygamy as it’s historically been constituted in both in Mormonism and another religious traditions, in Muslim traditions is really about male power. And that is not what polyamory w like queer polyamory is about. And so I think the fundamental problem there is that the more progressive possibilities that could have been inherent and polygamy of let’s rethink how a family should operate. Don’t work if it’s really about male power. And the patriarchal aspects of the LDS tradition and also the gender essentialistic aspects because marriage is only one thing in the LDS church, it’s man and woman, and that the gender is core to everything.
And whereas in, queer polyamorous like gender is whatever you want it to be. Like, it doesn’t matter at all. There’s [00:39:00] no, that, that seems to be like an unbridgeable gap.
Kate: Agreed. I completely agree by the way. And I think this is where me as the historian, a history graduate student says, keep polygamy in its historical context for what it was to, to those groups of folks who want to say like, yeah, we just need to, what were they doing or whatever, but that the 19th century historical context makes that a little bit. It makes it much more complicated.
Lisa: Absolutely. I remember I listened to a lot of Lindsay Hanson Parks A Year of Polygamy and just the history is just unbelievable. It’s just fascinating. And it really underscores the fact that you can’t really interpret any structure without its historical context. And it, you can’t just simply say, Hey, maybe we can refashion Mormon polygamy [00:40:00] and make it an empowering thing.
It’s everything is in its context. And We can look to the past, maybe for some ideas and instructions, but we’ve got to work with where we are now. And I think that the role of gender and gender essentialism in LDS tradition. If that’s an unbreachable chasm. Like, you know, you really, there is no gender expansive version of Mormonism.
Kate: Absolutely. I just want to plug in right here that we will be interviewing Dr. Taylor Petri, who wrote Tabernacles of Clay. Taylor’s background is also gender theory. So we will be, we’ll be exploring a lot more Judith Butler, gender essentialism, all of these terms in a couple of weeks.
So I just want to throw that out for our listeners who are like, what is [00:41:00] going on here. We’re going to hopefully be able to break all that down.
Colette: This is a bit of a change of topic, but I’m so intrigued by the fact that you didn’t grow up Mormon. And you’re working at the University of Utah, talking about sexuality and gender. What has that been like? Especially working since 1999 in Utah, when marriage, when you’ve been with your partner for 27 years, but marriage wasn’t legal until 2015, like anything I would, I’m always curious about people’s stories, personal stories that way.
Lisa: No And also it’s I like crazy because now, like so much of my research right now is focusing specifically on the LDS context and on the experiences of queer, trans, nonbinary folks raised LDS. Like I just did this amazing project with an honors thesis student on religious trauma among sexually and gender diverse Mormons and the specific traumatic [00:42:00] impact of different church practices.
And when we first launched the survey, we didn’t know how many respondents we would get. I’m like, oh, if we get like a hundred that’s enough for for an honors thesis. We got 700 responses in a week.
Kate: No No way. Wow.
Lisa: And a lot of my work has gone in that direction just because I’ve lived here long enough. I had no knowledge about the LDS faith or anything when I moved here. But you know, I’ve been here for 22 years and these are my people and their struggles are my struggles and they’re my students. And it’s been a real education for me. I wasn’t raised religious at all. I grew up in Los Angeles, California, and when my wife and I moved here, we were pretty skeptical.
We were like, ah, it was, and people were like, why did you choose to come to Utah? I’m like, there was no choice. That was the only place that offered me a job. If the choice was unemployment, you know, and we were like, maybe we’ll leave [00:43:00] and we’ll see what happens. And I remember we, we bought all these books and I think my wife tried to read the Book of Mormon at some point.
I don’t think she made it very far, but she’s like, we should learn. We should get to know this new, like interesting thing. And luckily the University of Utah, which is considered to be like the bastion of, immorality by, the church, if you’re really devout, you go to BYU. And I’ve got, I’d say about half of my students were raised LDS and a lot of them were questioning. And so within the university itself, it was always, like any other university, all the faculty were not from here. They were all from somewhere else, like me.
And so it was not a problem for my research at all. And I’ve been jointly appointed in the gender studies program, which is a whole bunch of kind of radical queer folks. And so I always had a huge feeling of support and nurturance, from the other faculty and from the students and, the first [00:44:00] pride parade I went to here, I was like, oh my God, there actually are a lot of queer people in Utah who knew?
And so over the years, it’s actually been an incredibly supportive and wonderful, environment. And so many of my students just have such stories of pain and suffering, been through conversion therapy, women who’ve got married at 20 pumped out two kids and then were divorced, and what is my, we’re just discovering the patriarchy.
And so it’s something that I just became more deeply interested in, over time. One of the projects I’m doing now is one in which we are interviewing parents and LDS families whose kids are trans or nonbinary. And the part of the project is to figure out and we’re partnering with Encircle, which is a an organization, a support group for LGBTQ[00:45:00] families in Utah to figure out okay, how can we speak to these parents within their faith tradition?
Because a lot of them figure I’m not going to go to, I’m not going to go to therapy over there. You guys are going to tell me that my religion is a problem. And so I’m not going to come. And we’re like, there’s gotta be another way.
Because we need. Family acceptance, family affirmation is so important. If we tell people that the only way to be affirmative is to leave your church, they’re not going to come. The most vulnerable kids will be lost. So we’ve been talking to parents and families who’ve gone through that journey to figure out how, like what’s the language, like what, what do folks who are faithful, how can we talk to them about their kids’ gender in a way that keeps them in the dialogue and protects their kid? And it’s been some of the most [00:46:00] meaningful work of my life.
Kate: Thank you for doing it. Thank you for being so compassionate and having that perspective because we definitely need you. Thank you.
Lisa: I should say. I mean, All this stuff is done in partnership. The folks at Encircle house have been amazing. My graduate students, all my honors students, everything I do is, I can only do it in partnership. And everything, I, people joke, they’re like, wow, you know more about the LDS church than most non LDS persons. I’m like, it’s all the people that I’m working with, it ends up, you absorb it and you share with them and you’re sharing knowledge. And Yeah.
Colette: And it is so necessary. I’m a therapist myself. And so I so appreciate it. I know anecdotally all the stuff that’s happening, but to have research to back it up, that I can point people to. Some people are more trusting of research. I know, I really appreciate all the work you’re doing. So thanks.
Lisa: I think that’s, that’s one of those things it’s like to the extent that, science grants some legitimacy. For example, one [00:47:00] of the things that we’re working toward is a way to shift the dialogue from one of acceptance, which some parents feel like they cannot get to. I cannot, you cannot make me accept this, to safety. That your first job as parents is to keep your kids safe. And you don’t have to agree with how they interpret their gender. You don’t have to accept the existence of nonbinary identities to prioritize your child’s emotional safety. And so how can we shift the focus?
Yeah, you can think whatever you want. Go ahead. Think it, but when you’re behaving and interacting with your child, how can we put your child’s safety and inclusion and protection at the forefront and make a distinction in your mind? Acceptance, maybe I’ll never accept, but can you be [00:48:00] 100% safe for your child? And so that’s, something that we’re trying to work our way around, trying to crystallize into something that we can tell parents and families.
Kate: And that’s based on data research that says that your kid is unsafe without an accepting parent. So can you.
Lisa: parents often don’t know the subtle ways in which they communicate the lack of safety. There’s a difference between overt rejection and lack of safety. Overt rejection is terrible, of course, but even a parent who just is looking at their child, getting dressed and being like that is a lack of safety. That expression, the eye-rolling, that yes, that matters. And so you need to make a division line in your brain. Yeah. I can think that, I can think whatever I want. Yeah. But that’s my [00:49:00] child. The look on my face, the energy I bring to them, can either make them feel safe and included and protected, or it can’t.
So it’s your job as a parent to make that line like, okay, whatever I think is that going on to be priority, number one, creating safety, creating a bubble of safety. And then, isn’t that your job as a parent, isn’t that what Heavenly Father wants you to do? And so go ahead. You can think whatever you want, but you have to communicate, you have to actively signal safety to your child, because not saying anything, the absence of information, feels unsafe. The most unsafe thing for the human brain, biologically is uncertainty. It’s not knowing. It’s the not knowing. And so when you allow that uncertainty, God if I die my hair, what, how is my parent gonna look at me? You know, [00:50:00] Uncertainty.
And so actively finding ways to connect, to express affection, to say, I may be thinking that I don’t agree with what you’re doing, but you know what? I’m going to show you every day that you’re my number one priority, and that I love you. I’m going to touch you. I’m going to hold you. I’m going to embrace you. And I’ll I’ll do my own work on the side to deal with my own feelings and I’m going to stay in the church. But when I’m with you, you are my number one priority in every possible way.
And I, you know, that is possible. But I think parents need to know that literally their child’s brain is on fire with uncertainty. So remove the uncertainty, make it absolutely evident you will always have a home here. And if that’s not true for you, then we have to have another conversation then you’re just not a bad parent. Let’s get the kid out of there.
For a lot of the parents that we’ve talked to, it’s only when their child becomes suicidal, that they wake up and say, oh [00:51:00] my God, this really matters. Ideally we can have that awareness before we get to the point of suicidality or serious crisis. Often for some of the kids in the families that we’ve talked to, the kid’s been struggling for two or three years before it reaches such a crisis point that there ends up being a family breakdown over a suicide attempt. .Like it doesn’t need to get to that point and kids should not have to literally be killing themselves to get their parents to protect them.
Kate: So we’re recording maybe the week after, I think it was last week that Texas governor Abbott’s said that, I’m sorry. You all can’t see but
Lisa: We’re just having a moment. We’re just having a moment of oh, M F G
w T F [00:52:00]
Kate: Well, For me, I felt as a nonbinary person and a lesbian growing up in Mormonism that I felt unsafe. I was unsafe. And to think that somebody can say that the opposite is unsafe, that affirming a child is what’s unsafe and needs protection is really unfathomable to me. And I think what you’re doing, this work, helps to eliminate a lot of these problems, even just that eye rolling. Not just right. It’s not just the eye rolling, but these lists of behaviors is going to be able that’s what’s going to counter somebody like governor Abbott’s approach.
Lisa: And I really put my neuro-biological hat on because one of the things that I’ve been deeply [00:53:00] interested in lately is what we now know about the immune system and the fact that one of the most harmful processes in the body is something called systemic inflammation, which is what happens when your body is fighting an infection. And when it’s just starting an infection, it’s localized, it’s, your leg swells up when you break it or whatever, that is a part of the body’s natural healing process when it’s localized and acute.
When it is low level and chronic, like in your blood, that over 20, 30 years leads to heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimers, frailty, pretty much every major condition. And there was a recent study that came out that said probably 50% of deaths worldwide have an inflammatory pathway that starts with inflammation.[00:54:00] We now know that that process is most strongly triggered by the psychological experience of social threat, because in the evolution of the human species, the single most dangerous thing for a human was to be pushed out of the social group. It was a death sentence for humans. So we evolved an alarm signal that when you see cues of rejection, ostracization, disapproval shame, your body responds to that as if it was a physical wound.
There is no difference to the brain between physical threats and emotional threat. They are processed the same way. They trigger the same inflammatory response in the body. And we [00:55:00] know that childhood abuse, childhood maltreatment, they trigger inflammation. And when it happens early on in development, it oversensitizes that system so that you have even more inflammation and response to social threats that happen later.
So I try to tell people like, Hey parents, when you look at your child that way, you are having an effect on your child’s body. You are actually causing a process in their body. You’re lighting their immune system on fire. The brain treats that eye rolling like a stab physically. So you might think, oh, it’s not as bad. Ask yourself. It’s as bad. I wrote a paper with my students. We’re saying, we know that there are these big health disparities for sexually and gender diverse folks. They have greater rates of cardiovascular disease, depression, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the [00:56:00] diseases that queer and nonbinary and trans folks have more than the rest of the population, they all have an inflammatory pathway. They all do. And it starts very young. It starts in the family. And if we can communicate to people, it’s that sense of unsafety, uncertainty, unsafety trigger inflammation. And so you have to actively counteract that. You need active signals. The brain is waiting for a sign. Oh, I’m okay here. I’m okay here. And so when we talk about the relevance of safe spaces, that is not just psychologically necessary, it’s biologically necessary. We need to feel safe to be healthy. We can’t be healthy if we’re not safe.
And so again, it’s like now forget about acceptance. Maybe they’ll never accept. Can we make your home safe for you? Can we make your school safe for you? Can we make airports and [00:57:00] public transportation and walking down the street? How can we amplify cues of safety? So that walking around in your everyday life, your brain is not on high alert all the time. Where’s the danger, where’s the danger, where’s the danger? We know that lots of sexually and gender diverse folks have depression, even if they haven’t experienced overt discrimination. Like we used to think overt discrimination is a problem. Yeah, that’s a big problem. It’s not the only problem.
We’ve not given enough attention to the fact that it is the lack of safety that your body interprets as an immediate danger. And it’s up to us to create environments that aggressively promote that. And I’ve given a lot of talks to organizations about how that’s why you need to announce your pronouns. Dammit. It’s not [00:58:00] about you. It’s a safety signal. It’s saying I get it. I get it. Me? I understand, like you put that in your signature, it’s I am a safe person for you to talk to. And I’m like, this is not about you. I don’t care if you’re not excited about your pronouns. I don’t care if you, as a CIS white, I don’t care.
It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s a safety signal. It’s saying here, your whole self is included. And if we can find ways to amplify safety, we could do a lot to help folks who are even in conservative and harmful environments. Maybe it’s about getting pockets. If we can create pockets of safety where people can feel like here, I’m okay.
And yeah. I was talking to my master’s student, Adrian, who wrote their whole thesis about this. And we were like, we need to come up with a definition of this. What does safety feel like? And they came up with a definition that I love, which is it’s when you’re so [00:59:00] authentically in the moment that you don’t have to devote any thought or attention to how you are appearing to others, how they are treating you, you’re you could just completely be in the moment. You’re totally unconscious. Totally not self monitoring, not monitoring the environment, just right there fully. Which is like a lot, like how they described mindfulness, being fully in the present moment. People who are marginalized and this also applies to ethnicity and economics, obviously, people who are marginalized have to be monitoring the environment and monitoring how they’re being viewed and treated all the time.
And that’s what starts the process. So being able to be like, wow, I didn’t even have to think about how I look or how I sound or what you think or what you feel, I can just be here. And that’s, I think what a lot of people experience in like pride centers, it’s oh, here I don’t even have to I literally don’t even have to think about it. And it’s a privilege to not have to think [01:00:00] about, how you’re about to be treated. And we need to look for opportunities to create more of that.
Kate: I think that’s going to help a lot of people. Your work is just so crucial. Thank you so much. And Adrian, everybody else, all the partners. This is incredible work that you’re doing.
Colette: I did want to circle back to the sexual fluidity. I think your research has been used in ways that hurt people.
Lisa: Yes.
Colette: I just want to give you space to talk about that because your research is misunderstood. And if you could just talk what it actually says, I’d appreciate it.
Lisa: Yeah. I’ve gotten used to the fact that no matter how many times I clarify what is a misuse of the notion of fluidity, it’s not going to matter because people who want to misuse it are going to misuse it. And I just kept screaming into the wind and I will continue to scream into the wind. And this started [01:01:00] happening early on with people like, wow, if sexuality is fluid, then conversion therapy should work.
You just kinda muscle that fluidity over here and you muscle that fluidity over there. And, Hey if sexuality is fluid, then if you’re a gay man in an mixed orientation marriage, you can become attracted to your wife and marry and the temple and everything’s going to be great. And none of that is true and none of that is an accurate use of my work.
One of the metaphors I often use to describe it is that the fluidity that I’ve observed in the people that I’ve studied over the years, it’s like the weather changes, but we don’t change it. You can’t force, the weather may change radically from day to day, but you can’t say, you know what, if it could be sunny, I’m going to make it be sunny. That’s not going to happen.
The changes that evolve and sexual and romantic feelings over time are, they’re a part of the human condition. They unfold [01:02:00] naturally. And one thing we know for sure is that when people try to actively force themselves to feel something or to eliminate something that they do feel, the results are pretty clear. Depression, harm, suicidality, even some of the proponents of conversion therapy. Exodus International finally came forward and were like, yeah, we know it doesn’t work. It never worked. And we suffered from it too. Sorry. So even the folks that have been doing this for years and years have started admitting that it doesn’t work and it’s harmful.
And I think it’s really notable that all of the organizations that are advocating for any sort of reparative or conversion therapy, they’re all religiously based. This is not just an alternative therapeutic practice. This is a religious practice [01:03:00] wearing the guise of psychology. And it’s just absolutely cruel.
And it’s basically using spirituality as a bludgeon to tell people that their self, their core self, is wrong. And, if there are some individuals who are in mixed orientation marriages and ends up becoming attracted their spouses and have a great life, yay. But when that happens, it’s going to happen on its own. It’s not something anyone can engineer and the harm, the demonstrated harm that has been done by those practices. It’s so clear. There are few findings in the field of psychology, as reliable as the fact that that stuff is bad. It is harmful. And so the notion that fluidity is used as a justification makes my blood boil. It just really makes my blood boil.
Kate: It goes back to a misunderstanding [01:04:00] that you talk to at the beginning of not understanding what attraction is. Not understanding of what love is. That somehow these groups think that love and marriage are the same thing and that they, that there isn’t really a separation there.
Lisa: Yeah. And you know, the other thing that I find so tragic about it is our capacity for diverse modes of connecting with other individuals, loving other individuals, giving and receiving pleasure to other individuals. Part of the reason I became a sexuality and an attachment researcher is because I find those systems fascinating and beautiful. And the fact that, love and attachment changes our brain, that love is a biological reality. It makes people healthy. The fact that this fascinating, wonderful part of the human [01:05:00] condition. Then all of the wonder and wonderfulness about it is set aside and it, and its power is actually twisted and used against individuals.
One of the most wonderful parts of being human is then used to control humans. Because that’s what it’s about. That’s why it’s only religious organizations who do it. Because they’ll like we have a certain way that you were supposed to be according to this tradition. And so we’re going to twist the deepest, most human part of you that, given what we know about the wonderful diversity and wonderful importance of love and sexuality and pleasure, the idea that, that system, that system is what is used to make [01:06:00] people hate themselves? It feels even like a deeper crime to me, knowing what I know as a scientist, it’s like even more of a betrayal of humanity.
Kate: So my question that is, I’m interested in the, as a historian, this is a weird thing to say, but in the future and that is gen Z is doing crazy stuff. Gen
Lisa: I know!
Kate: Gen Z is like amazing. So all of the new, all of the new polls and statistics coming out, one of which was that 13% of BYU students identify as LGBTQ. Another is that Gen Z is like 22% identify as LGBTQ. What do you think that says about fluidity? Not just sexual fluidity, but gender fluidity and all of that?
Lisa: I think it shows that we have all been like probably the only reason. [01:07:00] That it took scientific research like mine to discover fluidity. It’s simply because we didn’t have enough information available about the true diversity of experiences is actually out there. Now, the internet has changed everything.
You can go on Google and say, I don’t know if I’m a girl or a boy, and within 10 minutes you can connect with so many different ideas that just were not available. And so it really information is power. And when people are able to just hear that, oh, things are not necessarily the way you read about them in the books you read in elementary school.
People are like, why are there so many, I don’t understand this growth in the, nonbinary I, it must be a fad. I’m like, babe, it was there forever. It’s just that there was not a [01:08:00] word. There was not a language. You couldn’t find somebody else to say, oh my God, I’m not the only one. And it’s just a matter of the information is out there and people can find what they need.
I remember going to the bookstore at the University of Chicago, where I went to college. I’m like going to the HQ 75 area, which is where all the gay stuff was like, it was always H 2 75 0.11 month. Just like I just lived in HQ 75 area. And I’m like reading the things. And the time it took to even just get basic information, tell me that I was not alone. That was like, I spent two years trying to get the information that the average 13 year old can get in ten minutes on the internet.
So all we have done is simply given voice to everything that was already there. And so all these folks who are like, oh, it’s a fad. It’s a trend. [01:09:00] I’m like, what is a fad or a trend is that there didn’t used to be the internet. And now there is. And so information is power. It’s just information, you can’t articulate your experience unless you see it, unless you hear about it, unless there’s an alternative way to be.
And so they are the first generation that has grown up in the totally internet era where they never had to have a question that they couldn’t get answered. That is just it’s blowing and fabulous. And I just think that if we wait long enough and like the whole world will be like, I don’t understand what gender is. I would love it if we get to a point where even in some crazy place in Texas, if you’re going to fill out a health care intake form, instead of the male and female box, we’ll just have gender, please describe. I would love it if we got to a point where we just took [01:10:00] for granted that diversity is out there and that’s not a marked different population. That’s humanity.
Kate: Yeah, agreed well articulated. It’s also finding a community, too. It’s information and community, because you do have to have that safe space to be able to express those things, because it does come back to safety as well. So
Lisa: And, you I remember being so struck watching TikToks with teens describing their own gender journey. And within a week they would have 500 people saying go, go, go. If you need someone to be your mother, reach out to me, like things like that. Like the ability, if you can’t find your community, in your physical space, you can find a virtual community. And may not be as good. We actually don’t know. No one’s ever done studies to say what’s the importance of proximity. And during the pandemic, this is a huge issue. But just the fact that you can be [01:11:00] in the middle of a tiny town in Nebraska and not ever have seen a queer person, but if you have a smartphone and a wifi connection, you’re not alone. That is a revolution.
Kate: For sure. I’m excited for gen Z too. I also want them to get to this point where it’s just taken for granted.
Lisa: It’s made my life a lot easier because now, all the other factors like, oh, fair thing. And now all of them have all these students announcing their pronouns and they’re all like, maybe we switch, I’m like yeah. You want some guidance. You want to talk to me about this issue that you haven’t given us, a flying fig about, but like now you’re realizing, oh, this is actually a thing. Yes. This is actually a thing.
Colette: I honestly love doing this podcast and being able to just talk to people and expand my mind, get more information, hear stories. It’s been so good. But is there anything in closing that you want to say as we wrap up?
Lisa: Yeah. Anyone [01:12:00] who’s interested in this stuff or wants to get involved with research or wants to volunteer to be a part of a search. You can find me easily. My mother has informed me that if you Google my name and the word Utah, I come up right away. So thank you mom, for monitoring my social presence. Cause I’m not on Facebook or Twitter or anything. I’m too old for that stuff, but you can email me directly at the University of Utah and I’m always happy to answer questions and talk.
Colette: And super responsive as I can attest with me reaching out and you responding within two hours of, yeah, let’s set up a time to do an interview.
Kate: Thank you so much for being here. This has been, it’s always so nice to talk to people who it’s just like, oh my goodness. Somebody who gets it. And we just get to have a conversation with somebody who gets it for forever. It’s great. So thank you.
Lisa: Community matters. I think a lot of us who do this, who work on these things, individually one of the [01:13:00] things that’s made my career a lot easier is that the folks who were also doing this work, it has always felt like family. It always felt like, oh yeah, we’re trying to do something hard, but we’re not alone. And it’s important, it’s really important. And I look at my colleagues who study like, weird cognitive things. I’m like, how would you have the energy to have an academic career working on something that wasn’t like deeply meaningful? I really want to work on things that are deeply meaningful. It’s wonderful to connect with folks who, who share that, that passion and that commitment.
Kate: Yeah.
Colette: Thank you so much.
Lisa: Thank you.
Colette: Thanks for listening. We appreciate you joining us today. If you’re liking these episodes, we would 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’d benefit from hearing these stories. If you want to contact us, you can reach us at hello@calledtoqueer.com. You can also follow [01:14:00] us on Facebook and Instagram @CalledToQueer. See you next time.