Kate: Hello and welcome to Called to Queer, where we hold space for the queer Mormon women, genderqueer, and intersex experiences. I’m Kate, and my pronouns are they/them.
Colette: And I’m Colette and my pronouns are she/her.
Kate: Today we’re talking with Eliza Campbell and we’re so excited for this conversation. But before we jump into that, we wanna start off by seeing what brought us Queer Joy this week. So Colette, what brought you Queer Joy this week?
Colette: I know I’ve mentioned them before, but I’m gonna mention them again because they’re a great shout out. Yesterday I was just over hanging out at Celebrate Therapy for five hours. My girlfriend got a job there and so she was doing some training and I just went along with her and we brought Brooks and they have a cute little child’s play area and we’re just like, okay, we’ll hang out until he’s done playing and then we’ll go back home. And he was [00:01:00] playing for five hours with these toys.
Kate: Five hours. Wow.
Colette: He was just having a blast and I was doing some work there in the waiting room and she was training and it’s just, it was so happy just to sit there though. It was kind of a rough day for me. Emotions wise, there’s a lot going on. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and it just really feels like home to be in this totally affirming, celebratory space.
Again, Celebrate Therapy is great. We’ve interviewed some of the therapists on here. They’re awesome. If you’re looking for a therapist in Utah, they’re great, along with some other organizations, but that was my queer joy yesterday, was just being in their space.
Kate: What’s Kaneesha doing there?
Colette: She’s gonna be one of their receptionists.
Kate: That’s awesome.
Colette: And I’m just really excited for her to be in a queer space more often. So it was really fun seeing clients come in and the wide variety of humans that are receiving services and I know it’ll be really good. And Brooks just had a blast and he wants to go back already cuz they just have the funnest [00:02:00] toys.
Kate: That’s awesome. That’s awesome.
Colette: How about you Kate? What was your queer joy?
Kate: I’ve had several, it was hard for me to pick today, but okay, I’m gonna do two. One was, I recently got to talk with Eliza, who is our guest today. And we just gotta hash out a bunch of stuff. But I was reading the book that you recommended, which is The Revolution Will Not Be Funded and just feeling like empowered by community support and thinking through community support and what that might look like. So talking with you and also going ahead and reading that book. That was part of my queer joy. The other one was, I got these great socks for Christmas, that are “You’re my lobster,” with a picture of a lobster on them
Colette: Friends reference
Kate: …and they are my queer joy. Every time I wear them, I’m just gonna put them on and say that today is Queer Joy Day.[00:03:00]
Colette: And every day should be Queer Joy Day. So I think you need a few more pairs of those socks.
Kate: Yeah, for sure. All right, Eliza, how about you?
Eliza: Yeah, no, I don’t know how to follow up such affirming queer joy. But yeah, I’m living here in New York and something that I wanted to do. I love public libraries. I’ve always loved public libraries, which is very gay of me. And, I just, I had this goal to visit as many of the branches of the New York Public Library as I could this week.
So, I went to four, five different locations over the past two days in two different boroughs. And yeah, libraries are just extremely queer affirming and delightful to me. So that brought me a lot of joy.
Kate: For sure.
Colette: That’s really cool. I actually set a goal to visit, to check out a book from every library within the Salt Lake County library system. I didn’t realize that was a queer thing, so now that will just add to my queer joy list. I love that.
Eliza: You’ve never gone into a library and seen like the gayest [00:04:00] they/thems you’ve ever seen in your life, always working at front like…
Colette: I guess haven’t thought of that before. Again, I live in Utah. So little different, but I love that.
Eliza: I will maintain that teachers, social workers, librarians are the gayest jobs that there are because they’re the coolest jobs and the most socially affirming. So like, you know, look into it.
Kate: For sure, for sure.
Colette: Maybe that’s why I was attracted to social work before I even knew I was queer. That’s it.
Kate: Exactly.
Colette: Awesome. I’m excited to get to know you Eliza. We were just talking a little before we started, and I don’t know you like at all. So this will be fun for me to get to know you along with our audience. Would you mind giving your Queer in 60 Seconds: A Queer Mormon Story overview so we can get to know you?
Eliza: I would love to. Okay. May, 1990, something really gay happens. I’m born. Just kidding. But it’s true. I was born to a very legacy Mormon family in Utah and yeah, from the time I was a little kid, I just remember feeling slightly different from other kids. You know, I was [00:05:00] really, realistically, it’s also goes along with being neuro divergent, which is a slightly related but not entirely related phenomenon.
I remember when I was four or five, actually, I got really obsessed with the Oklahoma City bombings and wanted to talk to everyone about it all the time, and raised money for the victims of it. And for some reason my mom recently relayed that story back to me and I was like, huh. Was that not an indication of something that this little kid was just really obsessed with, like world disasters and social wellbeing and wanted to like incessantly talk about it all? Anyways.
And then we moved to Seattle when I was five and it’s kind of this more slightly liberal vibe of the church which is good in some ways and not so good in some other ways, which we can get into. But yeah, I knew basically from the time that I was a teenager that I had attractions to women and to people outside of the people I was supposed to be attracted to.
And I went to BYU and immediately became …this is the other thing that people always say, is just like, were you a really staunch [00:06:00] ally for some reason and you didn’t really know why? I was president of the Gay/Straight Alliance at my high school and was always like, yeah, I’m such an ally, but looking back on it now, I’m like hmm, was I? I mean I was, but also for other reasons.
And yeah, at BYU I was involved in a lot of work to try to bring the campus to make it more kind of women/feminists accountable. A lot of those efforts were shut down really brutally.
Colette: Just for my knowledge, when were you at BYU, because that can really drastically impact. the queer experience. When were you there?
Eliza: Yeah. So, sorry, I know this is more than 60 seconds at this point.
Colette: No, we are, we do not time here.
Eliza: K. I started in 2008, so the fall…
Colette: You were year after me then. So yeah, I know the vibe.
Eliza: So the fall of my freshman year was when Proposition 8 was on the ballot in California. And actually I mean, I’ll tell this story more about it later, but it was you know, I grew up kind of in this liberal bubble of the church in some ways, and going to BYU was the first time that I really faced [00:07:00] exactly how homophobic and violent the church was that I’d been really cloaked from. And Prop 8 was this example that really put it into stark terms for me because my YSA ward, we were like basically every week with asking people to volunteer, to phone bank to try to get the proposition passed. This was, for people listening, on the ballot to define marriage as between a man and woman. I can’t believe that’s like a ballot initiative. That’s so stupid, I’m sorry. But anyway, that was also, I remember like my freshman year we had a, stake leader come into our Relief Society lesson, shut down the lesson, stop it in the middle, make everyone in the room kneel down on the floor and pray together that Prop 8 would pass.
And I walked out, like I refused to do it, and then I got in trouble later. My bishop called me in and gave me a stern talking to in an interview. Anyway, so that’s the year that I started. And obviously I think things have changed in some ways, but in some ways– I think we can get into this more later– I think BYU is just getting savvier about concealing its homophobia, mostly.[00:08:00] So yeah, I went on a mission basically just to like escape. I’d always wanted to travel and it was you know, it’s this thing that you do in our culture and, I ended up on my mission, mostly making friends with and forming the deepest bonds with people who were queer. And living in eastern Europe where I served and being queer is really, really difficult. I started to see more up close the ways that it was affecting people’s lives. And yeah, it was always kind of like this slow march, you know, I was trying to hold my progressive, feminist liberal beliefs and my desire to stay in my community in the same place. But eventually, and I would say this as we get into the topic of like liberal Mormonism, if that’s even possible, those things start to divide apart, especially if you’re queer and you’re trying not to like, hate yourself . So probably around 2018, 2019, when I started grad school, I just decided for the first time I was like, okay, well I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m gonna [00:09:00] start moving away from my upbringing, and that led to me coming out more fully. I’d beenout as like, kind of bisexual, but not really fully out, out– radicalized out– until maybe like two or three years ago. Now I’m living in Brooklyn. I came essentially for the purpose of being gay in a gay place. And, yeah, we can get more into it, but that’s kind of the short version.
Kate: Yeah, I think that we’ll go back to the beginning a little bit, but before we do, can you just give us a brief overview of what you’ve done the past couple of years in terms of profession, and other um, activism type work that you’ve been doing?
Eliza: Yeah. So I guess I’ll start by saying that when I enrolled at BYU, I had this really ambitious plan to double major in political science and English because I’ve always wanted to be a writer– a poet and writer. But I also felt really interested and strong about social activism and social justice movements. And I remember like going to the guidance counselor, whoever at one of the departments and them just shutting me down so hardcore and being like, “That will take too [00:10:00] long.” You know, at BYU they like to push you out as quickly as they can, et cetera. So I’ve always been interested in both fields. I’ve worked as a writer and at various nonprofits trying again to hold both of those aspects of what I’m interested in. From BYU, I lived in the Middle East for a while. I studied Arabic really extensively and worked with some humanitarian organizations there. After that I had a Fulbright grant, which is how I met Kate actually in Bulgaria, which is where I served my mission. So I went back and luckily it was useful in a weird way to have these language skills and these cultural skills to go back and do the research that I was doing, which was about the humanitarian sector and the repression of the human rights sector there. Then I did grad school at Georgetown at their foreign service school, specifically in Middle East policy. Accidentally found myself getting a job at a think tank where I focused on technology policy, which we can get into this more later, but I’m realizing now the genesis of my interest in human rights and technology really comes from the queer community [00:11:00] because queer people have always been innovators in using alternate forms of bonding, communication, community building, and a lot of that, along with the disabled community. They’ve really been innovators in using tools online to make that accessible, especially outside the US where there’s often countries where you can be sentenced to death or can be arrested for being queer.
So, for the last couple years I’ve been doing that and right now I’m about to start a new job. Hopefully I can’t talk about it officially yet, but basically in that same field and on the side, I’m doing a lot of work with advocacy and social justice. One thing that I want listeners to know about that I think is really cool is there’s a lot of different organizations that work with incarcerated people, which I think is a really good, accessible, low- impact way to be involved in the abolition movement, if that’s something that interests you, which I think it should. And being a pen pal or a friend or peer advocate to an incarcerated person. I recently started doing [00:12:00] that with an incarcerated poet at San Quentin. He calls me and we have talks about poetry and it’s amazing. So the organization I work with is called Empowerment Avenue, and they do great stuff with writers specifically, but there’s lots of other organizations that do kind of, more just like being a pen pal basically, or a friend to incarcerated people. And I really, really, recommend it. In as much as I hold on to a lot of the sacred practices from my spiritual upbringing that I still, despite all the trauma, feel very close to some of the core beliefs at the core of the Christian message, visiting prisoners, which Jesus told his followers explicitly to do. And thinking about people who are incarcerated to me is a sacred practice still that I hold onto. So that’s something that’s also, I should have mentioned earlier, been bringing me a lot of joy recently, is maintaining that practice.
Kate: Uh, yeah. So in case you’re wondering, Eliza’s way cool.
Eliza: No, that’s popular misconception, but um, thank you though. I appreciate
that.[00:13:00]
Kate: Yeah, so there’s like a ton of things to, to jump into, but I think that maybe going back to the beginning and maybe talking about growing up in Seattle and those, you talked about that being kind of an insulated um, perspective of Mormonism. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that.
Eliza: Sure. I guess what I would say is that I think in Mormonism, and this is like the world that I grew up in because of my family and our background, we kind of have like this intellectual elite slash mormon aristocracy.
Kate: Yeah. Maybe you can tell us about that.
Eliza: Yeah kind of like a, a cult within a cult, you know? I mean, I think back to like the Sunstone kind of crowd or like Eugene England or my grandfather, my mom’s father, Tom Asland, was kind of like a minor Figure in this for a lot of his life. So as the church got bigger and kind of more [00:14:00] mainstream and more accepted into, you know, mainstream American culture to some degree. in the 20th century, we noticed this phenomenon of talented young Mormon people going and getting PhDs, something that probably wouldn’t have been accessible in the past because realistically a lot of Mormons were working class or like farmer class and there really weren’t opportunities for that. and so as that happened and as BYU itself became kind of a player in the world stage, whether it was through sports kind of at first or gradually gained more of kind of like an intellectual standing, which it didn’t really have at the beginning, it was sort of more of like a, I don’t know, kind of weird trade school honestly. there came a lot of really, really well educated intellectual Mormon, people who both were serving this dual purpose of bringing cultural studies, bringing you know, anthropology, bringing the social sciences, bringing the physical sciences to their participation in Mormonism as professors, as intellectuals, as public figures.
And I [00:15:00] think that it’s not just in academia, although that’s where a lot of it was concentrated. and so because of my family’s background, my, my mom’s family is Canadian. They grew up in very small communities of Mormons in Canada.
I, I guess what I, would say, besides just like the intellectual elite part of it, I think there’s a phenomenon we have in the church where if you are raised outside of Utah, you know what people back in the day jokingly used to call like the mission field, outside of Utah. you really, depending where you live, experience such a different version of the church. It’s really, you’ve probably talked about this before, it’s like really a crapshoot and it’s, it’s, really gaslighting in a lot of ways because people will say you know, like, well I live here and like, no one has ever been homophobic to me at church. And it’s like, well, if your parents were lucky enough and privileged enough to raise you in a big liberal city where things were just generally safer, slightly more socially progressive like, yeah, You’re gonna have a very different version of the church. And to go to people and say, oh, like this is how it is [00:16:00] everywhere is, and that’s something I’ve heard people experience and that I used to do myself is really, really, counterproductive.
And I guess what I’ll say is that part of the reason that even though from the time I was like 14 or 15, I remember you know, being deep down, secretly knowing I was queer, even though I didn’t really have words for it. And just being like, fuck this shit. Like why do I have to pretend to like these extremely socially backward like norms, even though my parents are pretty liberal. Why do we go to church and then listen to some guy tell us about how homosexuality is going to like destroy the country. Like why are we doing this? And I think one side effect of having a greater kind of contingent of like liberal or socially progressive Mormons who are still trying to reconcile their beliefs and their values with the church’s beliefs and values is that it has the effect of kind of whitewashing a lot of the outright homophobia or kind of providing this like plausible deniability for the reality of what a lot of people experience.
And I think [00:17:00] one of the reasons that even though I from a really young age felt very conflicted about the church and very unhappy there a lot of the time and very unwelcome, a lot of the time I stayed in this state of like kind of gaslit like denial for so long, like into my twenties and late twenties for lots of different reasons.
But I think this is one way that people can stay kind of deluded. And I don’t say that to be cruel. I would describe myself in this same category, but I guess the intellectual whatever, quote unquote liberal Mormon kind of circles. And like a lot of the organizations that popped up you know, in the 2000s as people, more people got online and got more access to more information about the church’s history. they had some good effects, I think, of softening the experience and sort of bringing a greater plurality of perspectives and realities to the church and how it was practiced. And I thank God for that a lot of the time because a lot of them raised me. They were like my youth counselors at church and I’m really, really grateful that not all of them were like rabid [00:18:00] homophobes. Like some of them were more like slightly liberal or, or welcoming, but ultimately it’s not enough. Not to be, lighthearted about this. I think I take it really seriously. I just don’t think, especially now at this point in history, You can reconcile any kind of social progressiveness or desire to be an ally to your queer siblings and friends, and also justify your participation in the church, knowing what we know, unless you’re, really actively working, really in a lot of different ways to, to protect the people around you or to push for things to change.
So anyway, that’s what I would say about that whole contingent and my, my background in it. Sorry. I feel like I just gave an accidental TED talk and now both of you are just kind of like, uh, okay. Um,
Colette: we are here For the TED Talks
Kate: what I was thinking was that I want to actually dive further into this TED talk and kind of poke around it some more and how maybe you got to this [00:19:00] point and perhaps even like how this has, has impacted your relationship with other Mormons or with your family in general.
Eliza: Yeah. No, and I like, I love all my family and I come from, like I said, at least on one side of my family well, on both like, a lot of like artists, a lot of musicians, a lot of professors, a lot of people who have tried really, really hard to make lives that are about openness and exploration and about understanding the world more deeply. Which I would say unfortunately, like without you know, I wouldn’t say this is like the rule, but I would say in general the church discourages that kind of exploration even though they will pretend really hard that they don’t because probably to a lesser extent than in the past. But like, yeah, you have directives from official church people you know, discouraging you from consuming certain [00:20:00] types of art or music or restrictions around you know, the whole doubt your doubts thing or, you know, don’t consume anti-church stuff ever.
And that really cuts people off a lot. and I also think that there’s a lot of downward pressure on young Mormons now, especially to become quote unquote providers and to focus a lot of your energy. This is more, I think, for people who are socialized as men, but that like your ultimate calling in life is to have children and then like buy stuff for them.
And especially now as like conditions of our economy in the world, especially in a state like Utah, which has popped up and populated with a lot of like, sort of homegrown industries, whether that’s like MLMs or this weird new Silicon Slopes thing or whatever. But it used to not be so easy to like have a safe economic life, especially for people who were getting married in their early twenties or who don’t really have a lot of [00:21:00] outside experience with the bigger world or who have like a very kind of limited social group that they can rely on.
So I think part of it too is that the conditions of participating in Mormonism now and like combined with the conditions of just the world is a lot more expensive now and a lot more difficult to navigate have made it so that a lot of people are kind of just in survival mode and trying to do the best they can. Especially if you, you, know, get married when you’re 20 to 23 because you really wanna have sex and there’s no way to have sex until you get married. And then you immediately have a bunch of kids without really understanding what you’re getting into or like how much time that will take, how many resources that will take.
It just doesn’t really leave a lot of like free time, free intellectual energy, free emotional energy to be really self-reflective. And I think that is in the church’s favor because if you’re not self-reflective, if you don’t have free time to think about your own mental intellectual health, it might [00:22:00] be easier to push things down.
And since I’ve left the church or stopped participating in it as formally, it’s been really interesting to, to learn more about the kind of therapeutic or intellectual studies that are going on now about like high demand groups, whether that’s like religions or other types of groups, which back in the day we used to call cults.
And I don’t know how useful that term is now just because of how much of a loaded word it is and how inexact it is. But one of the common kind of threads running through them that I’ve seen really consistently, and I think this describes the church super, super well, is that if you keep people exhausted, like working so much, having so many obligations you know, spending three hours, three to 10 hours on a Sunday. having so many, like when you’re in high school as a kid, having exhausting early morning seminary every day. If you overwhelm people’s nervous systems and schedules with all this work, it has this dual effect of keeping [00:23:00] you too tired and too like immunosuppressed kind of to really like, think freely, or to just make you on the other side, and this is, I think both of these really describe the way it is to be a missionary really well. So busy and so overly consumed that you sort of start to think like, well there’s no way this could be exploitative or something I don’t want because look how hard I’m working. Look how much I’m doing, look how tired I am. This must be good. You know what I mean?
And yeah, I think the, the modern effect of the way that the church is asking people to participate is looking more and more like pushing people to the point of burnout, so that for various reasons. But being not in a position to be self-reflective enough to put up an argument or to find time for your own spiritual practices in that system is really convenient because it keeps the church kind of in a position of power, I think.
Kate: That was really powerful and a little bit mind blowing for me. I [00:24:00] also don’t like the term cult. I think exactly what you’re talking about. I don’t think it conveys a whole lot of meaning. I think it’s used derogatorily with in exactitude.
But everything that you’re pointing out feels, I hear you saying that. And I feel in myself like that that feels accurate. Suddenly, I think we’ll give a lot of people listening A little bit more compassion for themselves too, because the system was set up this way, right? Like What you’re pointing out is that the system operates this way for a reason.
Eliza: Yeah, and I don’t say that. I also want to just qualify and say like, it’s complicated for me and I’m still in a really active trauma recovery phase. And so I don’t, I’m sure that my views on this and my understanding of it will change. And I think for people who’ve left, especially people who are queer or experienced their gender differently than the way they were [00:25:00] socialized, it can take years to start uncovering the shame and the trauma that you’ve been repressing for your whole life.
And that’s true for any kind of major trauma, not just for church trauma, although religious trauma we were just talking about this before you came on Kate. Like, it’s just, there’s, it’s slowly growing, but there just really aren’t a lot of mental health resources or therapists who are coached in the specific ways of working with religious trauma.
And the only real analog that I’ve found that works semi well is thinking about it in the lens of like an abusive or manipulative relationship. because you’re kept really dependent. You do love them. You do genuinely have a bond. You do genuinely have care for each other, but that is not mutually exclusive with them being someone who harms you.
And so I think that is a kind of a trauma that’s really hard for people to work through when they’re trying to decide something about their relationship to the church. Because we, we love our community at church, I loved my community at church. [00:26:00] I still feel very bonded to everyone who I knew and as my time as an active Mormon.
And like part of that is because I didn’t have any other option, right? Like it’s sort of a trauma bond in that sense. but part of it is genuine, like our relationships, the emotional experiences we have with each other, the kindness and compassion and the emotional release that we have with each other in the best case scenario. Those are all real. The religious and sacred experiences that we have in the church are all real. And I would never go to someone and I think a lot of ex Mormons do this and it’s really unhelpful when you’re trying to help someone. They’ll immediately denigrate everything and like talk it down and say like, oh, You were stupid for liking this. You were stupid for ever liking it in any way. And that’s A not true and B, not helpful. And if you think back to like the abusive relationship model, that’s the number one thing they tell you when you’re working with someone in an abusive relationship situation is like, don’t shit talk the partner, the abusive partner, don’t point out how stupid they are for going back to this [00:27:00] person who hurts them because that inevitably just pushes them closer to the abuser and makes them more vulnerable.
Like your job is to be a welcome landing pad if and when they decide that it’s time to take a step away. And the other thing I will say is that I’m never gonna like, denigrate anyone’s relationship to the formal church, especially women, especially queer people, especially people of color, especially lower income people. Cuz the reality is in America we do not have a social safety net whatsoever. And churches are the only social safety net we have, really. and especially for Mormons, if you spend your entire life in this social system, which unfortunately I’ve had to realize this is a very closed and very like us versus them world, like leaving immediately you’re giving up your professional contacts, maybe your financial support, your emotional world, your family, maybe your partner. Like it’s a huge unfair thing to ask [00:28:00] someone to give up. And it’s possibly very dangerous for them to give it up all at once. So I should just say as a caveat that I’m, even though I come at it from this perspective now, I also understand and really want to make space for the fact that there are a range of ways that people can feel about their relationships with the church and their participation in it.
And ultimately, my goal as like in my own whatever activism or my own work that I do with friends and family, is to say like, what would make you happy And feel like you’re living an authentic life? And can we find ways to get you to the point of being able to recognize that and feel that? And usually that involves therapy, not always.
And then usually people themselves, when they start to tap into their authentic feelings a lot of the time, find themselves being like, huh, like I don’t necessarily love the way that the church forced me or made me feel manipulated into having certain beliefs or practices that didn’t feel authentic to me.
And I think that’s a way more empathetic and powerful and just like effective way to [00:29:00] work with people who are struggling with their Mormon identity is to say like, let’s think about who you are first and foremost, and what would make you feel happy and safe as a person. And if it stays with you in the church like, great, I won’t whatever, like go with God or whatever. But like, if not, let’s think about this.
Colette: I so appreciate you articulating all of that. I see that every day in my work with clients and having to sit in that duality of the church has been so good for you and it’s really hurt you. And realizing that your decision on where you’re at with it may change day to day. Like I’ve had clients who come in one week and are just ready to burn it all down and then the next week you come in they’re like, I went to church and it was really good, right?
And so I think just learning to sit with like this is complicated and I really, you just articulate all that so well. So thank you so much.
Kate: Yeah. I think that this is a micro examination of [00:30:00] something that you do really well, much more broadly, and globally. I want to ask you a little bit more about your work, particularly how these perspectives have influenced your writing because you are a professional writer and you write professionally about colonialism and NGOs and living and working abroad. How all of that like global experience has influenced this micro perspective.
Eliza: Oh yeah, let’s get into it. so something I think that’s really interesting is that a lot of us who are raised with Mormonism or some kind of like christian dogma end up becoming activists, or like, environmental activists, social activists, abolitionists. And it’s not actually that difficult to understand why, because at the heart of [00:31:00] it, and this is sort of the way that my faith was formed when I was young, was about around my, my mom who happens to be a social activist and kind of like a, I don’t know, socialist in a sense.
And because of her Canadian upbringing was way easier for her to sort of understand the social gospel as it’s been called. And so I think for me, from a really young age, and I’ll just also self-disclose that I identify as on the autism spectrum and have this like, as I said, really, really powerful sense of like justice. like I said, with being a weirdo who wanted to sit outside Harmons and ask people for money for the Oklahoma City bombings when I was four.
Kate: That’s not a weirdo though. I wanna just like point out that’s, you say that, and I know you’re joking, but I just watched the episode about Greta Thunberg and how one person who does fixate on these sorts of justice things, literally changes the world and creates a whole movement. So I have a whole new like, [00:32:00] really deep love for that fixation.
Eliza: Thank you. yeah, I I wouldn’t compare myself to Greta Thunberg. I think I’m most mostly just creating the movement of making my mom annoyed with me outside a hot Utah store in the summer. But you know what? It’s the, the principle. I agree. I think I agree. with you on that.
It always was really baffling to me when I was growing up that like people didn’t come to the same conclusions that I did when we read like the Gospel of Christ and we read about his life because you really can’t ignore it. And later on when I ended up like studying the politics of the Middle East really extensively and learning more about like the character and background of Jesus Christ as like a you know, a person. And for that, I really recommend the book called Zealot, by Reza Oslan, who is a soci or an anthropologist of religion, I think, and really, really puts into perspective a lot about the roots of Christianity in a way that can be super empowering and useful for lots of people.
So, yeah, I mean obviously Jesus Christ was like a [00:33:00] Palestinian anti-imperialist who was put to death by the state for struggling against imperial power, basically. And I think when you frame it that way, which is when you go back and you think about these stories and the messages, it just makes it make so much more sense. And if you read more about the history of Christ as a person in the context he was coming from, the religious, social movements that were going on at the time, it’s not just limited to Christianity. This was something that you see running as a thread through Judaism at the time, through Islam, which was on the way to being, formed as a religion.
the social justice gospel, the idea that the most sacred thing that there is in the world is the idea of social equality and the inherent worth of each person, regardless of who they are, how much money they make, whatever, has always seemed to me like the only real thing that we can count on as something sacred to believe in. And I remember just being a kid and like reading the [00:34:00] scriptures and being like, well this is really obvious, right? Like ,our job as Christians is to like lift up the poor and to like smash down structures of inequality and to like call people out for, you know, being cruel to the weak and the poor. And like it was always really shocking to me when people would be like, oh actually no that’s . That’s not what it’s there for. It’s about self-reliance.
And it’s funny how I remember like being, oh God, this is one of my most annoying, just fills me with rage to this day. I need to find a good outlet for my rage. anyway, I remember like being in seminary my junior year, we were studying the Doctrine and Covenants and we were reading the section in the Doctrine and Covenants about the new order something? I can’t remember. Where basically they had like a short period of time as the church where they were basically living or decided to live a version of communism, like holding all resources in common.
And like, it’s so funny now that the church has pivoted to being like a big neoliberal daddy [00:35:00] business that they’ve had to like, just do whatever they can to like whitewash and cover up a lot of the radical roots of the church and obviously the radical roots of Christ.
And I remember my teacher at the time, this woman, I won’t call her out. Sister Metcalf. Sorry. yeah. So and this must have been in the manual, right? Because they had to have these answers, like pre-ready in case any of the teens got like rabble rousing ideas was like, yeah. So the idea of like having common resources or like sharing the means of production or whatever it was, I think was just basically a version of like closer communalism. Not even like communism. Which was really necessary for the time because the early saints were kicked out of the places they lived in. There were death orders, extermination orders against them, et cetera. Like it was really essential for the church to be like socially and economically communal in a way that it isn’t now even uh, technically it should be, but you know.
So she was like, yeah, so this was great. And like, the reason that we don’t do this anymore, even though it’s a good idea in principle, is because capitalism came [00:36:00] along and like made it so that everyone can earn a fair living. And so it’s way more just now. And I just remember being like, I was 16 I, I was like, you know, 6:30 AM and I was barely functioning, but I just remember like sitting up and being so filled with rage and I was like, what are you talking about? Like, there are homeless people. All I lived grew up in Seattle, we have and had an enormous problem, like a housing crisis and a lot of unhoused people even back then. And I just remember being like, what the fuck man? Like, you think capitalism is like this great principle or power of justice, which is the church has really leaned into its messaging of this in the past 50 years, especially as you know, with reaganism and like the, prosperity gospel have become lines that a lot of churches have adopted in order to like, cover up the inconvenient truth that Jesus Christ was calling for, the overthrow of the rich, basically, if you look at it.
And yeah, so basically I think that started the roots of my interest in social justice work. Not that I, I don’t know, I, have a lot of qualms [00:37:00] with like the degree to which, and Kate and I have talked about this, like it’s possible to earn a fair living working on issues of social justice now. The economy has essentially whittled it out so that those jobs are really inaccessible. They don’t pay very well. The conditions are really bad. social workers in particular, like the best example I can think of where it’s like, why wouldn’t you pay for this as a society or teachers or what’s been going on with teachers the past couple years?
so yeah, that led really, like I said, into the work that I was doing and the interest that I had in migration and refugees. And it’s like, it’s all these things. Like I think it’s time honestly to just bring back like the old school gospel. I’m like this close to starting my own cult one of these days where we just like, actually, like live somewhat close to the principles of Christ and like, honestly participating in the, like the socialist or the Environmental action movements that I do here in New York. Like that’s where people are getting, like a lot of young people who didn’t have any religion whatsoever growing [00:38:00] up are now coming to these ideas of like communalism or social emotional release or like singing together as something that bonds you together as activists that, like we had in the church all the time growing up and I’m like, yeah, like you, you didn’t know about this? Like this works really well. Like we should do this. So it’s like this weird convergence now where I’m like you know, a socialist queer living in Brooklyn and everyone is coming to me and being like, could you teach us like cult living? Cuz I think it works really well for like our activism. And I’m like, yeah, honestly, like we should take some of this good shit and like, you know, throw everything else away.
Because at its core, like yeah, Jesus was a radical anti-imperialist who was willing to die to protect the idea of not cowing to an imperialist state that wanted to put the poor to death. And it’s like, Look man, if you’re gonna raise us all as zealots. and the root of the word zealot is also really interesting. You know, the person who believes passionately in something or who has like a fixation on [00:39:00] justice, like that’s how we were raised as Mormons. And if you’re mad that some of us are now coming out and saying like, okay, I’m gonna be a zealot, just like Jesus was, I’m gonna chain myself to a tree that’s about to get logged down. Like, you taught me this. Sorry. so I’m, it’s interesting to see how that has evolved as capitalism has continued to destroy the world and make it more difficult to ignore that.
Colette: a hundred percent. I think that just reminds me of a meme that I’ve seen as far as like all these parents, like, why are my children leaving the church? And then it’s like, because you taught them and they actually listened to the scriptures that you were reading them and interpreted it that way.
And I think that can be really tricky to have such a conflict over. and I don’t know if you want to or can dive into, how has that been with your family? Cause I know that’s been a, that’s a subject for a lot of people as far as I’m doing what I believe the church taught me to do and because of that I’m stepping [00:40:00] away. Whereas maybe parents are like, Nope, you need to stay. Is that something you’re willing to talk about?
Eliza: for sure. And I have a slightly different experience in some ways, like a luckier experience than a lot of people who grew up with more conservative, more kind of traditional Mormons. Like my parents were kind of the outcasts of our ward wherever we lived. Like, they were these weird hippies who occasionally my dad would leave sacrament meeting and like go play, an Afro punk gig downtown in Seattle cuz he was a drummer and would take us with him and then we’d go to McDonald’s after, even though it was the Sabbath or whatever.
So I definitely had a, way more, in some ways open and less controlling version of my immediate family, at least. I do have more traditional conservative family going in certain other generations or in on like more my father’s side. But I actually feel, and I feel like this is a perspective that I wanna share because it’s not often discussed: the liberal Mormons I think are the most dangerous, to be honest, [00:41:00] in some ways. Because the delusion is that much more strong, and I think the contortions that you have to go into to justify what you’re doing are that much more contrived, even though you have that much more power to potentially be a really great ally or change -maker to someone.
And I think, a lot about like the, it’s not like it’s the exact same, but you know, like in Dr. King’s letter from Birmingham Jail, he talks about the white liberals being the people who were really the most dangerous to the cause of social progress at the time in that movement. And I think there’s a rough analogy I would make to the liberal Mormons in our communities who they want to stay comfortable above all. And again, I’m saying “they,” but this was me not that long ago. So I can talk shit because I did this. You want to hold on to the idea that you are a loving and socially progressive and communally minded person, but you also want to not put up too much of a fight or [00:42:00] not make too many people uncomfortable, especially yourself when it comes to the survival of vulnerable people around you.
And I guess the example I would give of that is there are so many incredibly damaging and violent beliefs in the church’s doctrine that don’t even have anything to do with homosexuality per se, or gender per se, that if you look at them a little bit deeper, you cannot not notice how cruel they are.
And I think the number one, one that I would point to is this idea that in order to make it into the top tier daddy’s special, good celestial kingdom, like the best heaven, you have to be married in the temple. You have to sort of maintain this purity of purpose your whole life. And that basically for, correct me if I’m wrong, maybe I’ve just like forgotten this, but like the idea is that if you go to any of the second tier kingdoms, you can’t be with your family, right? That’s so [00:43:00] fucked up. Like when I started to see that with clear eyes, I was just like, okay. No wonder all these educated, supposedly socially progressive people are bending backwards to find ways to justify this cruelty because the church literally ingrains in you this idea that your ability to be with your family after you die or to have access to your family or to have a family to begin with, which you know, is like supposedly the core of who you are, your purpose as a person in Mormonism, is being held hostage to the church’s dogma, to someone who in an interview or in some priesthood setting, is gonna decide how worthy– and I’m doing air quotes– you are as a person.
That worthiness culture is so, so fucked up and damaging. The idea that your, like, why would we use the word worth to talk about like where someone like you know, got horny one time or drank a cup of coffee. I just think it’s like such a slippery slope to making people hate themselves and to [00:44:00] like exacerbating the effects of anxiety, depression, OCD, whatever, different types of mental health conditions that are already, I think, pretty endemic in our community.
And I guess I would say that it’s been really, really painful. Probably the most painful thing for me since I’ve moved away since you asked is like having these liberal family members, aunts, uncles, adopted aunts and uncles. I love our tight-knit community. But then it was really impressive to me that as soon as I started to move away or be angry, a lot of my community stopped engaging with me.
Or when I would talk about my pain or the losses I’d experienced, they would shut down or treat me with cruelty or things that I didn’t expect at all. And I think that’s more what can be difficult for people when they leave is like, I don’t know, this is a bold metaphor, but [00:45:00] just go with me. I feel like the way that the church makes you feel and it’s not entirely bad, like we talked about. It gives you the sense of like safety, community connection. That is so wonderful. and Kate, and I know this from like living abroad and like being single into your twenties and thirties, like the sense of social isolation that you experience can be so debilitating. And it’s so comforting to like go to a Mormon congregation and immediately feel like you have this built-in family who speaks your language, who wants to pray with you, who wants to help you.
But the flip side of that is that you ever, are disobedient in any way or different in any way in general, people are not very subtle about the fact that they’ll just take that all away. Like it’s very all or nothing.
And I think the metaphor that I’ve found that works for me is that I think the safety and security of what it feels like to be held in this really cozy worldview of traditional Mormonism is, it’s like [00:46:00] sort of having just like this gentle, like I don’t know, opioid drip in your bloodstream at all times that inoculates you from the fear of death, the fear of illness, the fear of sickness, cuz we don’t talk about those things. Those are kind of like taboo, from the fear of loss, from the fear of uncovering your true identity from these uncomfortable feelings about like, what if I’m not actually living as an authentic person?
And then also from like, boy, all those teen suicides in Utah, that’s not really my problem. So I’m just gonna kind of like, keep moving along with my life on this really comfy opioid drip that like, keeps me really comfy and warm and soothed. And I think that’s why so many Mormons are characterized as like really nice when people meet them. Because yeah, if your worldview shields you from a lot of the pain of the world and from the pain you’re causing, like you’re gonna have a more relaxed, easy time in the world in a lot of cases.
And I don’t say this lightly because again, this is something I experienced when someone begins to threaten that comfy [00:47:00] painkilling warm snugly blanket that you’re huddled up in to like maybe take it away. You react in the same way that someone who’s an addict would. And that’s why I think the language and concepts of like addiction are really relevant to religious trauma as well. Because you see people lash out, get really violent behave ways they, you didn’t know they could. and it’s really hard to see that happen with people that you love and with people that you kind of thought would have your back or would be there for you.
But I think it’s a really common experience. And I think the only reason I bring that up for people listening is just because if you’re trying to understand the cruelty or like the loneliness or like the huge sense of isolation that you face once you’ve started to like point out suffering that you’ve experienced and people treat you with more cruelty and are like, Hey, stop making us uncomfortable thanks.
It can be helpful to understand that like what you’re experiencing is the effect of their fear. Like you are living in your [00:48:00] truth. You are willing to see things with clear eyes, and they know that they should and they’re not able to, and so they’re kind of lashing out from a place of pain. And it doesn’t make it easier, but like it, it’s helpful to make it not feel so heavy and to not go into the spiral that I think people can go into that can lead them to suicidal thinking of like, oh, I don’t have anyone. I’m worthless. People are treating me like shit because I am shit, you know?
Kate: thank you for bringing up living abroad because we haven’t talked about that. And living abroad is hard and I think that people who go on missions have a really innocuous understanding of what living abroad is like.
and so the first time I lived abroad that wasn’t with a group of Americans or ex-pats or something, was the Fulbright. And so I lived in Bulgaria and Eliza was there the year after me and we overlapped for a little while. I’m not quite sure why, but we met each other in [00:49:00] Bulgaria. Oh, I came back for a conference and we met each other in Bulgaria and we had this like shared understanding, oh, we’re both Mormons. We both have the same language. Look, let’s introduce one another to all of the other Mormons that are in this area, which are not very many.
But there’s a, there’s a huge expat community too, right? So there’s also this sense of meeting other Americans and having similar language and experience that way too.
But living abroad now when I came to Bulgaria, I thought, I’m gonna make sure that my records are transferred to the Sophia branch because if I go missing, the Mormons are gonna find me faster than the Fulbright people are gonna find me. The Mormons are gonna know where to find me. Like There’s already that community.
And so when I moved abroad now and living abroad now, and not having that safety net and not having that [00:50:00] community is it’s quite scary. It’s hard, it feels like missing a limb, especially cuz I’ve lived here and gone to church here and that is exacerbated by the fact that I’m constantly, every moment afraid of being excommunicated. And what that would mean to not have my records anywhere. To not feel that sense of safety and security that The people who loved me and were supposed to come find me wouldn’t.
And so you pointing that out is something that I’ve wanted to talk about, but haven’t really had an opportunity to talk with somebody who understands that to the extent that you do that, that excommunication and that even just the threat of excommunication is really traumatic in itself. And it’s a constant fear of, the deepest kind of rejection.
But you, you’ve been out as [00:51:00] queer, living abroad as well, right?
Eliza: Um, no. I don’t think I was out any of the times I was abroad. because I couldn’t, I had to mask a lot and I wasn’t really fully ready to be. But I think what you’re talking about, it also gets into another interesting intersection of two topics that I think way too much about, which are a, the number of Mormons who are in government work, like whether it’s with the State Department or with Intelligence or the Defense Department or the military. Huge. Like the percentage from, I don’t have you know, exact numbers on this obviously, but like, just anecdotally and based on what I’ve understood and the number of CIA recruiters that come to BYU campus, Obviously Mormons are great candidates for all these jobs because various reasons, language skills, being really obedient, having an easy time passing background checks, security background checks.
And it was work I used to want to do. Like I used to be interested in State Department work as well. but yeah, years of living abroad and like working and [00:52:00] living among State Department Mormon families really, really helped me to get a better perspective on how and why this all works. And also, even though I don’t you know, judge it, just to realize that it’s not the field for me personally.
And then having any interest in like, traveling or working or studying or doing work in fields that are you know, kind of more artistic or more intellectual. it’s this double bind for people who are socialized as women or who are raised as women because I didn’t even really accept fully, like how much this had impacted me. But like when you’re a Mormon person being socialized as a girl, you’re sort of given this implicit message your whole life that like you’re not gonna have to ever be financially self-sustaining. And I didn’t really, I thought, I didn’t really realize that that was something that I had experienced. And then I started to make more friends at BYU and like people who were you know, intellectual or artistic.
And I noticed that even among those people, [00:53:00] basically the assumption was that whatever they were doing professionally or artistically, it was going to be relegated as second to an eventual male partner who was eventually gonna come along. and be the main financial provider. And also sort of like the main decider in terms of like what they did, where they go.
And even like among more quote unquote liberal circles, this remains the case. And this isn’t just within the church, this is like broader as well. And I think it shows this really double bind that queer people and queer people socialized as women or non-binary people experience, which is like, it’s a huge financial hit as well to be raised as Mormon and to not really have access to the same security because you were taught your whole life, you’re planning your whole life that a man and men just tend to earn you know, higher amounts of money. And to be in fields that earn more money was going to ultimately be the one who’s like financially responsible for you. And for me, eventually when I started realizing [00:54:00] that that wasn’t gonna be the case, it was like this big loss because like while a lot of my friends that I went to BYU with were like, Buying homes or like making investments or like could kind of move into the next tier of financial stability, I remained pretty precarious and I’m doing fine, but like my worldview is completely different than those of the people that I went to school with or my Mormon friends because like, and this is also about a broader problem of America, just like being built around the idea of heterosexual marriage in terms of taxes, in terms of the way we set up households, in terms of the way we think about financial safety and who deserves it.
but like if you are a queer person and especially a queer woman, we should also be honest about the fact that it puts you in a state of like triple vulnerability. Because like you’re saying, you know you’re alone, you’re physically vulnerable, you’re more financially precarious and like that safety net is usually what we rely on.
I realized late into my twenties, Kate, like that’s a big part of the reason I think I [00:55:00] stayed active even though I didn’t really feel connected to my community, was just like, I don’t have anyone else. I don’t know how to be a person anywhere else. But like that’s another reason it took me a long time to leave.
And I think people are scared to consider leaving is like, you do have to learn how to be a person, kind of. Like learn about how to relate to and have close relationships with people who don’t have your background or learn how to relate to people who don’t have any religious background. Learn how to drink if you wanna do that, like learn how to have sex if you want to do that, like you have to get this whole other skillset that can be really intimidating and really scary to do. And I think it puts a lot of downward pressure on people to stay in because starting your life over is hard. Sounds obvious, but like it’s something people don’t talk about a lot.
Kate: Absolutely. can we dive into your queerness a little bit more and talk about how there is a [00:56:00] large overlap of folks who are neurodivergent are also queer. and we’ve had several folks on the, the podcast who are neuro divergent and just how those things work together for you.
Eliza: Yeah. that’s a good one. I mean, I think I only really started thinking about myself as neurodivergent like maybe a year or two ago. Even though the signs were like hilariously obvious to me and everyone else from the time I was a kid. I just think this is a broader problem about the state of mental health education just being really abysmal in America in general and the state of accommodations for people with neuro divergence being really terrible.
Colette: And can we also add in that the medical system focusing on male bodied individuals and having like, this is what autism looks like. This is what ADHD looks like, and it generally being studied in people assigned male at birth. So then people who are assigned female at birth. [00:57:00] That’s an additional layer too. I just wanted add that in.
Eliza: No, exactly. Thank you. I mean, that’s very much the case for me. Like it was very obvious to me for a long I mean, if you look, if I look back on it, I was like, yeah, I was a hundred percent adhd. I was a hundred percent like on the autism spectrum from a really young age. And I actually have a, a, pet theory that this is more common with people who are raised Mormon.
and there’s various reasons for that. I don’t know. This is my, again, the Eliza Institute for Bullshit Ideas that I think about at night. It’s not by any means like a verified study, but like,
Colette: Can you like start a membership for this so I can subscribe and hear
Kate: It’s part of her cult. It’s part of her cult
Colette: I want to join this cult
Eliza: I’ll keep you on the mailing list. I have never, all I’m saying is I have personally never met a Mormon person assigned female at birth who does not have some kind of mental health issue and who does not have some kind of like body dysmorphia, like never, I don’t know, maybe other people have, but like, [00:58:00] very rarely have I met someone in that category, right? And I think there’s reasons for that. I think like, neurodivergent people, I just finished. Understanding Autism, I think is what it, or no, Unmasking Autism. Oh, this is bad of me. It’s on my shelf somewhere. Anyways, one of the first books about Neurodivergence.
And it explained that actually one of the main ways that people are taken advantage of or experience insecurity or instability as neurodivergent people is the tendency that we have to be taken advantage of by high demand groups or by like systems in addition to abusive relationships, in addition to addiction issues that are more prevalent among people with neurodivergence.
This is like a sidebar, but I just think once I look back at it, and I think more about the tendencies of a lot of people, especially people assigned female at birth, if you’re already someone who’s hyper sensitive or like has this powerful sense of justice or like, is easily [00:59:00] overstimulated. Or for me, like I need a lot of spiritual artistic stimulation in order to like keep my dopamine up. Like, and a lot of that I got at church, like I had these rules that kept me from having to think about substances that I might take that sounded overwhelming for my brain. I had these rules that kept me from having to like explore or think about my sexuality because I wasn’t allowed to. It was like a really safe, comfy way to just sort of stay masked and to stay comfortable as like a neuro divergent person.
And it’s not necessarily bad. I think people can make choices about what kinds of substances they wanna consume or not consume, what kinds of sex they wanna have or not have as they will. But the thing about the church is that it provides this like obligatory shame culture about what you have to do. Um, and so for me, my queerness and my neurodivergence are really inseparable at this point.
And this is something I’ve only really [01:00:00] come to an understanding of over the past. I’m still learning about it. It’s really only the past six months to a year, I think. But I just think having a different relationship to sex and relationships that might look different than what you were told it has to look like.
Whether that’s having something on the asexuality spectrum because you just don’t experience sexuality the way that you’re supposed to quote unquote, or like, Being highly overstimulated or needing a sense of a lot of safety. So you might be on the demisexuality spectrum and mostly have sexual feelings for people you feel safe emotionally with. those can all go along with queerness in really interesting ways, and I won’t make, I think it’s the idea that queerness and neuro divergence are entirely related. as more people come out as queer, obviously that becomes less and less true because it’s, there’s all types of people who are queer. We have queer assholes, just like straight assholes, you know what I mean? I think the idea of like queer [01:01:00] people being this inoculated perfect class of people who are never abusive for example, or never have dangerous relationship dynamics is obviously not true.
yeah, for me, I don’t know, and I’m still working on this. I think if you have ever felt out of place or really different or like people do things and experience social relationships or sexual relationships, and you just have no frame of reference for why it seems to be so easy or so fast or so simple for them, which is how I felt for a lot of my life. There is a chance that it might be worth looking into whether you’re experiencing your gender or sexuality in a way that feels authentic to you because you might be masking in that sense, or maybe not being fully authentic with yourself about something.
And then thinking more about neurodivergence, like maybe you need the accommodations of admitting that you need more time alone, that you need more comfortable clothes, or that you need [01:02:00] like a quieter space in order for your brain to relax. And so they’re not like totally co-related, but I think they do kind of bounce off each other if that makes sense.
Kate: Yeah, it does. We haven’t even asked you like how you identify . How do you identify?
Eliza: Oh man, who knows? Um,
Kate: I know that’s a hard question and you don’t even have to answer it,
Eliza: I think I identify as like gay and annoying. I think we should really like start identifying annoying as one of the parts of the, it can be the, the, other A lgbtqia a, right. You’re on the annoying spectrum. Sorry, I’m kind of kidding. kind of not.
yeah, I mean I think queer is like a good heading for me at this point because it’s very intentionally vague, which I love. I love being intentionally vague. I also kind of have this belief that, and I think this is beginning to be more acceptable to people like you have the opportunity to come out multiple times, as many times as you want, right? Because like [01:03:00] realistically, if your taste buds change over your life or if your clothing style changes over your life or who you like, or like the things that you like in other areas of your life change and evolve, which they do.
We’re not like you know, a little cell in a Petri dish. We’re a very complicated organism. I think people should have the opportunity to decide over time to change over time or to not identify at all. Like there’s lots of people who experience queerness for whom the sort of straight induced, forcing them to put on a rainbow flag and be like, I’m gay forever the end is like not helpful or kind or true.
So I think queerness works well for me at this point. if we’re getting into the nitty gritty of it, like I experience primary attractions to women at this point in life, although I have also dated and have close relationships with trans women with non-binary people, with a couple of men who sidebar, there’s so many closeted [01:04:00] bisexual men.
I’m so sorry. But like, it’s really an epidemic. It’s really kind of sad to me and like, I think I’ve dated a lot of them. No offense, and yeah. So I guess that’s how I would put it. And I think for anyone who’s listening who, and I feel like this is so common, especially for people socialized as women sort of being like, oh, well, like I get turned on by women a lot, but like, I mostly love men and like my partner is a man, so I don’t really feel like I have a claimed queerness or I don’t really belong in this conversation.
It’s like, come on. Relax. And I think we as a community of queer people, especially queer women, need to just like relax about recognizing that there’s a broad spectrum of what queer identity and lives can look like and they don’t all have to do with relationships or sex. Like we don’t always need to sexualize, queerness. Sometimes it’s I mean, it’s deeper and bigger than that, you know? So anyway, that’s my long way of saying yes. I, I identify as queer and annoying.
Kate: [01:05:00] So you talked earlier about how your family struggled, even though they’re more liberal, they struggle with you leaving the church. How did they handle your queerness at that extended family and your immediate family?
Eliza: Yeah I mean, I think it’s an ongoing journey. I have taken a break from some of my extended family, which I also will, just as a public service announcement. I think it’s totally legitimate and fair to take steps back from your blood family if you need to. As Mormons. We have this huge stigma against not giving family what they want all the time. And I think that’s really harmful for people. You don’t owe them anything. And so that might change in the future, but for some of them, yeah, like I’m taking a break while I’m still kind of in like a fragile, figuring myself out slash healing phase.
And I think that’s a very fair option because frankly, coming out is complicated. And [01:06:00] a lot of people, I feel like they have this reaction where in words they’ll be like, oh, like I’m technically happy for you and that’s technically fine with me, the end. But then like, that’s it. Like they know that they’re supposed to say those words, but when it comes to being there for you in any deeper way, let alone like bothering to do their homework or try to understand what this means for you, like how your whole life is changing, they don’t show up at all.
Kate: Oh my gosh, yes. That resonates so hard.
Eliza: yeah, I would say it’s a comparison I would make to like leaving the church too. when I was still Mormon, I had this idea because I was you know, trapped and a little bit scared where I was like, oh, those people who leave the church, like, why are they complaining? Like it’s so, they get to have such a good time now. Like they can drink, they can wear whatever they want. They don’t have to wear garments, like they can be free. Like it must be so easy and fun and they’re just giving up. And what I didn’t realize is that it’s actually extremely hard to leave the church and really isolating [01:07:00] and really, really, hard work.
And one of the reasons that it’s so hard is because most of the people who love you and that are close to you are intentionally going to not think about what this means for you because it’s too hard for them to think about. And I think that’s the same with coming out is you’ll have a lot of people who will sort of say like, oh, love is love rainbow emoji heart.
But then like if you want them to be there for you when you’re having a hard day, or you want them to think about how isolated you are or like to maybe show up if there’s like a protest against some horrible government policy or whatever, they’re, they don’t, they’re like well, why? Like, I don’t have to do that.
Kate: Or even just know about it. That’s the thing for me is like, just, just pay attention to what’s going on for someone like me.
Eliza: And I imagine that’s all the more true for trans people and people who experience their gender not on a binary or who have a different relationship to their gender. And I think it sucks because the far right, [01:08:00] and I’ll go ahead and say it like the idiot liberal crowd of the New York Times, which is like, I don’t know, this recent stuff with like talking about trans people and trans people’s rights really has infiltrated even like these educated liberal quote unquote circles of making people be like, oh, aren’t they going a bit far? Aren’t pronouns kind of a lot to ask for. And it’s just like, what are you talking about? Like, it’s actually very easy and if you do like any basic homework. I remember seeing this thread by a trans person on Twitter, which by the way is a great place to hang out with a lot of really funny and really interesting, really, really, brilliant trans people is on Twitter.
And they were like, people are always kind of like, you know, the stupid whatever JD Vance’s of the world are like the working class doesn’t understand trans stuff. Like it’s too hard for them to wrap their dumb working class brains around. And she was like, that’s actually not true. Like, I worked at the Dollar Store for years and it was always like poor people [01:09:00] who immediately gendered me correctly or who like were way more respectful or just like, didn’t give a shit about having some opinion about my gender.
And I think that’s like a really common trope. If you can like, get people past you know, whatever, like stupid news source has sort of like infected their brain and just be like, look, it’s not that complicated. Like, it’s like if someone changed their first name because they wanna go by a different name now, you know?
Or the idea of gender affirming care and like, Ben Shapiro, getting these insane lip fillers or hair plugs like, is that not gender affirming care? You know? I feel like just to end that one, it’s like, it takes very, very little actually to help people have a better understanding of how to relate to queerness. And it’s just that a lot of people don’t even wanna do the bare minimum, which sucks, but they could.
Also, if anyone’s listening and they’re going to BYU right now like, ugh. God bless you. It’s so horrible there. Please take care of yourself.[01:10:00] I think that’s something I’m still trying to understand. And luckily I think from the time that I went there are more resources and it’s slightly less dangerous to go as a queer person maybe in some ways than, than it was when I was there. But it’s still so violent the way that the school treats you. And I was thinking more recently about my history with the school and like my freshman year and I was remembering how first, yeah, my freshman year started with , this uh, phone banking, volunteering for Prop 8 to pass. and then like having us literally kneel down in the middle of church and pray that this legislative ballot initiative in a different state would pass. Like this happened. Like I think this is important history to hold onto because the church does a really, really, good job of flushing away its shitty history and like rebranding with a new Helvetica font and being like, we are allies now.
And it’s like, grow up. No, you just have better graphic design now. and I was even [01:11:00] looking at this email attachment someone sent me to like my singles ward back in the day. And you know that like whoever that stupid artist is who does all the book of Mormon art, Arnold something, I can’t remember.
Colette: Arnold Freeberg, right? Or no?
Eliza: yes. And you know that the one of like, oh man, I’ve forgotten all their names. This is so refreshing that I’ve forgotten all this shit.
But Samuel the Lamanite who like stands on the wall and holds up. Yeah. Anyway, so someone had like made a bunch of those art, but like photoshopped in Yes. On prop eight signs into like their hands and then like sent them around.
Or like the banner where it’s things like in the name of our women and our God and our children, but they like photoshopped in,
Colette: Oh, the Title of Liberty.
Eliza: That’s the one. Thank you. Yeah. My trauma
Colette: Mm-hmm. .Oh, no, I’m still, I’m still Mormon enough.
Eliza: Well, I mean it’s in the air where you live, so it’s ambiently floating around whether you want it to be or not. also I just have severe memory loss.
So anyways, so I was remembering all that shit and there’s many [01:12:00] stories I could tell, but it’s just is so horrible at BYU as a queer person and I’m, I know that probably people are gonna listen and be like, well then go to a different school if you wanna complain, blah, blah, blah.
But it’s like, when you sign up to go there at 18 and you’ve committed to the only tuition that you can pay in the whole country, and you can’t really transfer those credits anywhere. You’re financially locked in or facing this and you can get kicked out of your university housing for getting kicked out of school.
I don’t know what the status is of a lot of these movements, but I know that there’s like a decent idea that like a lot of the stuff is illegal, especially given like the church’s tax status. And I guess just like, yeah, for BYU students who are queer listening, I see you and I affirm you. And like, uh, yeah. In as much as I pray anymore, I am praying for you.
Kate: Yeah. , it’s a rough go. 2008 was before 2012, and I believe two, [01:13:00] 2012 was when BYU made this sudden switch. This idea that now you can say that you are queer, you’re gay, or
Eliza: Right. But you can’t act on it.
Kate: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Before that you couldn’t even say it though. You, You would run risk of, of
Colette: I think that happened right before I started. I think that was maybe 2006, 2007 they made that honor code change, but I wanna say like 2012 is when, and my timeline may be off, is that when they kicked USGA off campus
Eliza: I think that was later. Cause I remember them being active when I came back in like 2013, 2014.
Colette: It’s been such a long, complicated history of queerness with the school and it’s always interesting talking to people with different timelines. We started this season with Maddie Tenney, who’s founded the RaYnbow Collective, and they’re doing such phenomenal work there, but also still the pushback even now in 2023.
Eliza: The church is [01:14:00] panicking and has to double down. And in some ways this is really hard to admit, but like, we’re going backwards on queer rights and the country overall, right? So like, I think a lot of these institutions I’d probably wanna look at, like Liberty University and other equivalent universities are probably getting more emboldened with what they can do because outside of certain pockets, people are getting increasingly emboldened about like violence, anti queerness, like old school violence is coming back y’all.
So. the other thing I’ll mention is that, and I think this is a related fact that isn’t really talked about as much. When I was at BYU, there was a gender equality club on campus that was like the only one that existed called Parity, BYU Parity. It’s not like parodying something, but P-A-R-I-T-Y.
And a lot of really great people that I met through that, you know, my Mormon feminist, friends, people who had started it before me. And this is again, the whole problem with [01:15:00] activism or you know, progress at BYU is that we lose a lot of this history because people come, they have a flurry of activity, they get burned out, or they leave and then the whole cycle has to start over.
So like progress tends to not really go very far. But at the time we were trying to revive Parity and it was basically kind of like this at the time, a very like, kind of second wave liberal white feminism kind of view, which I would say describes the so-called the Women’s Studies program at BYU, which they had back in the day.
And this was when I decided to go on a mission because like we were trying to revive the club, we had to jump through all these hoops that you know, obviously clubs, like the BYU juggling club didn’t have anywhere near as many pieces of complicated paperwork or weird things they had to pass to operate on campus.
And basically it ended up with them like threatening the job of the campus representative, like the professor who agreed to be our faculty sponsor and telling us that we hadn’t filled out some paperwork. So we [01:16:00] were all had like disciplinary hearings. And then when we tried to get the center for Women and Children in Crisis, which is the only resources for assault or rape survivors in Utah County to come to the campus and like do a really basic kind of event about awareness or prevention for sexual assault awareness month. They also wouldn’t allow us, like they said, that it was against the honor code.
And so I don’t know where things stand with that now, but I also think this is a related vector having to do with queerness because we know that queer people experience assault and sexual violence on a much larger scale. and especially people who are trans or non-binary or were socialized as women.
And I think BYU’s behavior in this respect, the way that it’s treated survivors of assault is just abysmal. Shocking. And it’s also something that as queer people we should continue to have a conversation about because it’s fucked up and uh, it’s kind of illegal too.
Kate: thank you for bringing that up, because I think it’s a point that[01:17:00] queer people have been told for so long that either one their queerness is because of sexual trauma or two, that once they leave the good standing of the church, even by admitting that they’re gay, they’re setting themselves up for sexual trauma. That when we do experience it, we don’t know where to go or how to talk about it because of these stigmas.
And so I think it’s really important to point out that we do have much higher statistics for these things, and particularly at BYU. BYU students are not protected because if you get kicked outta school, as we said, you can lose your housing, you can lose your, your familial financial support, all sorts of things.
And so you’re much more vulnerable for These sorts of experiences, especially if BYU says you can’t date like that, if they’re [01:18:00] putting dating, just dating as queer people as a violation of the Honor Code, then all of that, everything that you’re experiencing as a queer person, if it, if you are so afraid of it being perceived as dating, you’re put in this vulnerable position where people are able to take advantage of you.
Eliza: For sure. Yeah, that’s so true. And I would also just like to point out again to my, the liberal Mormon contingent like, uh, man. like there was one professor who just retired and then finally was able to like come out and say like, I’ve been gay this whole time and I’ve been in the closet. It was Chad Emmett and the geography department who I knew and I worked with in a very brief way. It was one of my research jobs when I was a student.
and I was just thinking about that and it was making me so furious because I was like, whoever is like the liberal Mormons out there saying that the church is actually getting better when it comes to like [01:19:00] gay shit now. Like imagine asking someone for like 30 to 40 years of their career at the risk of getting kicked out of your job to like, oh, it’s fine. Like you can identify as queer. You just can’t like act on it. Like you just have to sign a piece of paper that says the minute you start living as your authentic self in public, you are at risk of losing everything. And it’s like, Honestly, fuck you. Like if you think that’s at all justifiable, I just like, now that I’m out and I can like see it with fresh eyes, I’m just like, I don’t know how people convince themselves of this, but I think talking about it in those terms and just being like you know, I don’t know.
I guess what I’ll also say is that I have this fantasy someday when I’m like less angry and more stable in my recovery for Mormonism to organize a protest where we just go to BYU campus and just like, I don’t know.
There was this Onion article that I still go back to that I really love that was like fake. It [01:20:00] was like student stage protest against expulsion of Brandon Davies by having sex all over BYU campus and it like interviews students, like as he vigorously penetrated his girlfriend against the statue of Brigham Young. He said, this is so unfair, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, not that I’m saying we should all go fuck all over BYU campus, but just the idea of going with someone that I love and who I have some sort of queer connection to and just like holding their hand and walking across campus, you couldn’t do that. Right. Which is so heartbreaking. And the idea of doing that someday maybe with a group of people just gets me in my feels. Maybe cuz I’m about to have my period, but also because I think we should do it anyway.
Kate: I will do that
Eliza: with you.
Thank you. Yeah, let’s arrange it. Maybe in two to three years, once I’ve done some more therapy
Colette: And I think there are people, I think I remember, was it on Valentine’s Day this last year that they did, some people did stage like a kissing or handhold in, and it’s just so Yeah [01:21:00] I, I was getting in my feels as you were talking because I worked for the church up until a year and a half ago and that I mean, I was only working for the church for not even a decade.
And you see these stories of people who you’re stuck you know, when, who might wanna hire you after you’ve been at BYU. That maybe look down upon in certain uh, academic areas and it’s, it’s a tricky spot to be in. And it does, going back to what we talked about earlier, it makes sense that some people feel like they can’t leave because it is high demand religions are high demand
And then when you’re working for the church, when your whole life is it. And I, I think that is really hard. And one thought I’ve had when we were talking about the community aspect, one thing I’ve told a lot of people to help normalize is evolutionarily, of course you’re scared of losing your community because when you lost your community back [01:22:00] in the caveman days, you literally died.
You needed people to keep you alive and we still need each other. And so it’s so hard when you have these additional barriers to stepping away and it’s, it’s terrifying. It took me a long time and I know my therapist had to sit with me for several years just trying to like, what works for me now, like staying in the church was killing me, but I couldn’t imagine leaving and stepping away from my job that was providing me financially well, but not emotionally. And it’s, it’s so complicated and I appreciate you speaking so forthrightly about all that.
Eliza: Yeah, it’s a real, once you look at it, it’s just very clear that it’s very much a closed system and designed to really keep you from being able to leave. And I know people in my life have said that I’m extreme or that I’m being dramatic for saying those types of things but I’ve had friends who had like [01:23:00] mentors and I you know, had my own at BYU professors who are gonna write these letters of recommendation for you going forward if you wanna do anything else professionally, if you leave the church, if you aren’t really part of the fold anymore, like you risk having like your entire professional life blow up basically.
And hopefully there are some professors and some you know, professional people who are willing to look beyond that and see you for your work and that’s it. But there’s no guarantee of that. And I think we discount a lot in the church the degree to which we really are kind of an us versus them community. Like we think of other people as outsiders a lot. And it wasn’t until I left and I started trying to make community outside that I was like, oh, this really is kind of like a Kimmy Schmidt situation because people don’t have a frame of reference for me. I don’t have a frame of reference for them.
Sidebar, I’ll tell an embarrassing story just because I feel like I haven’t for some reason shared enough embarrassing things about myself. When I first kind of [01:24:00] left and decided to start exploring sexual relationships and relationships with people outside of you know, the fold or whatever. I started dating someone that I met at Georgetown in grad school, and when I got there you know, I’d been in Fulbright, I’d been traveling, I’d been on my mission before that. It was the first time that I’d really been embedded in a community, in a program where I was the only Mormon and like I had to you know, be that only person. And it was really scary and intimidating, just like I thought it would be. And I remember a lot of the people in my program were you know, in their early twenties. I was 28 when I started. and I felt so embarrassed about being 28 and unmarried, which is really fucking sad. But that’s just how the church makes you feel. It’s like ,you’re not married and you’re 28. Anyways. so I remember like people, when you get to know people, they’d be like, oh, like what have you been doing? Like, what have you been doing the last couple years? Like, I graduated BYU technically in 2015 because I added a minor and because of my mission.
And I remember because of graduating in [01:25:00] 2015, people assumed that I was like you know, 24 or 25 because that’s the age you would be if you were normal or whatever. And I just let them think that because I really, really didn’t wanna explain my past and I really didn’t wanna explain my mission or my background.
And just in case anyone else is in a similar position to this, I’ll just share just so that it’s maybe takes some pressure off of you. But the person I was dating was also himself 24, 25. and I just was so embarrassed to have to share like, oh yeah, from ages 21 to 23, I was like, proselyting for a cult. and also I’ve never had sex before technically, and like I’m 28 and I’m scared to have sex for the first time and just freaking out about all this. So I just kind of let him think that I was younger than I was for a long time. And then we finally started dating and I was like, okay, shit. Now, Now, I have to actually like admit all of this.
And so I share all of that just to say like, I can look back at that now and [01:26:00] like laugh. and it’s funny to me and I’m proud of myself for being resilient and trying new things, even though it was incredibly scary and it’s mostly just funny, but at the time it felt so life endingly horrible and scary to have to like have this shameful secret or life that I didn’t know how to relate to people about.
And to have this double bind of like a, with all my Mormon friends, I feel super embarrassed and behind because I’m not married and I’m not anywhere near married yet. And then B, with my non-Mormon friends, I feel like this freak who doesn’t fit in because I’m older and because I have this extreme kind of unusual background and I have never drank before and I’ve never had sex before and I don’t know how to do anything.
So it’s just like incredibly isolating in the middle. And it was a period of really extreme depression and anxiety for me for that reason. So I guess I just wanna share that like it gets easier and if anyone is facing that moment of like deciding to leave and deciding to start your life kind of all over again, and like having to explain yourself or like account for these years [01:27:00] like, yeah, I wanna validate that that’s really scary and really like, I don’t know, overwhelming, but like it’s doable. And once you do it, the whole world opens up and you realize how many more options you have, how many more things you can do. And it becomes so much less scary and you feel so much more powerful and secure in yourself.
Whereas before the church really, for me at least, made me feel like I was pathetic or useless or not worthy. And I don’t know, I’ve been practicing in my own mental health practice lately, a lot of like self-compassion work. Self-compassion meditation or the idea of like learning to make more through narrative therapy, through art therapy, through inner child work, more compassion and more loving kindness for yourself, even for things that you feel embarrassed or ashamed about. Which for anyone who’s in my position, I really recommend because I feel like the number one mental health challenge at the core of a [01:28:00] lot of queer identifying people who’ve left the church is like, we hate ourselves. ,like we have so much internalized shame and grief and disgust about our bodies, about our minds, about who we are, about what we haven’t done, about these failings, about What if I don’t get to go to the celestial kingdom? Like what if I don’t get to have a family? What if I don’t get to have love? That is what makes people move towards the feelings of not wanting to be alive anymore. And I think it’s so dangerous and that’s why I bring it up.
And I think the more that people can do, and I’m still, this is still a journey for me, very much so. But like to start to cultivate like that I am a child of God. Like that inherent self-compassion that you can have for yourself, like these Mormon ideas about the worth of souls you know, your inherent worth and that you deserve love and to feel accepted and compassionate towards yourself no matter what. I think [01:29:00] can be so transformative for those of us who are raised this way.
Colette: I’m just like all the snaps, all the claps, like how do we even wrap up such an awesome episode. You’ve just dropped so many truth bomb and helped me articulate things that I’ve been thinking but haven’t been able to put into words. So thank you so much. I know this will be very powerful for our listeners as well.
Eliza: I hope so. Thank you for letting me just like pop off. You know, I love to rant and I know that not everyone is into it, but it’s nice when I have it invited.
Kate: We are into it.
Colette: We’re into it. Please start your cult. I wanna subscribe. I wanna listen to any podcast or YouTube rants, TED Talks you put out. Like I’m here
Eliza: for it.
Thank you. I will keep you posted. It’ll probably involve some costumes, so look forward to that.
Colette: as long as there’s rainbows involved on the costumes.
Eliza: Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see.
Colette: we’ll we’ll see. Okay, perfect.
Kate: In terms of costumes, I was talking with Laurie Lee Hall about the temple and [01:30:00] because there aren’t very many people that you can, there aren’t very many people I can talk with about having a, like Mormon experience and a trans experience in the temple. And so it was really nice to talk about that.
But we were talking about how it’s really hard thinking about it and feeling the feelings about the costume wear of temple work and how gendered all of it is, but especially like how I used to be, like I told this to Laurie Lee Hall. I, I used to be like, man, everybody makes fun of those hats. But I kinda like them. I wish I could wear one of those, like, why am I in this? I want a hat. But if your cult has costumes, I just wanna say please let everybody have hats. Everyone needs hats.
Eliza: People can listen. It’s like, I also really recommend the show [01:31:00] pose for people who are still exploring their queer identity. it can be really intense, but it’s honestly, I feel like so many queer informed media is just like really sad and heavy and about loss exclusively. And like, there’s plenty of loss and sadness in Pose because it’s about the AIDS crisis and being trans and a person of color in New York. But the flip side of that is that there’s so much joy and it’s like, you know, if we have to be gay in a world that hates us for being gay, we should at least have great outfits you know, so,
Kate: Yes.
Eliza: and at least be able to have fun and show off those outfits. And that’s what Ballroom was all about, supposedly. So.
Kate: And dance. Yeah. All the
Eliza: things.
Yep. So yeah, costumes for sure, and everyone can wear whichever they want.
Kate: Excellent. Thank you. That’s my only request
Eliza: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. I’ll, I’ll write that down.
Kate: Thanks.
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