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The Next Frontier: an Interview with Dr. Jeff Day

Dr. Day is an assistant professor at NYU Meyers, where his new course will launch in the fall.

by Jay Samson

image sourced from https://nursing.nyu.edu/directory/faculty/jeff-day

Smiling as he looked into the camera, head slightly tilted in thought, Dr. Jeff Day, an assistant clinical professor at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing, said, “I went to San Francisco. I remember very clearly walking down the street and seeing a trans woman ahead of me, and I remember thinking,

that’s the next frontier.”

He was discussing his upcoming course at NYU — a series of lectures focused on LGBTQ health — and we had begun to chat about his inspiration and why he felt the course was important. The course dives into the deeper waters of queer health, focusing not only on the “big picture” but on individual communities and issues. The conversation was filled with moments like these; moments in which we could truly see the engagement and care Dr. Day had for the subject he would begin to teach this upcoming semester.

Dr. Day is a nurse practitioner with the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, board-certified by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as an adult-gerontology primary care nurse practitioner and certified by the National League for Nursing as an academic clinical nurse educator, and is an active member and chair-elect of the Nursing Section of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, dedicated to ensuring equality for LGBTQ individuals and healthcare professionals. Dr. Day’s current pursuit is a course at NYU focused on LGBTQ+ health. This course has one clear goal — to educate the next generation of healthcare professionals and to “take care of LGBT individuals.”

Interestingly enough, the course came to fruition both out of Dr. Day’s belief that the topic went under-teached and out of the request of students. It wasn’t simply one or two students who would come to Dr. Day about feeling underprepared for helping queer patients; several students came to him with questions on queer health and a interest in learning much more than he was able to share in the moment. 

“I identify as gay, and I have had my fair share of poor treatment in healthcare… I had a friend who was trans and had an abysmal treatment in healthcare and ended up taking her own life,” Dr. Day told us, somber, and then added, “I needed something that was my own.” That opportunity came in the form of this course: the issue was clearly prevalent and on the minds of students, and Dr. Day knew he had to step in.

The course, which begins this upcoming fall semester, caters to students with little to no experience in LGBTQ+ healthcare, although those already informed on the topic are also able to participate. Curriculum is divided into week-long chunks, with, for example, one week dedicated to HIV/AIDs care and chronic conditions, one week dedicated to intersex care, and two weeks dedicated to general transgender care. Although Dr. Day created the course for those already interested in LGBTQ+ healthcare, he shared with us his ultimate hope for the future of education: “Ideally, LGBTQ+ content would be weaved into curriculum… Ideally, we would make space in each of those classes, such as Pharmacology or those medical-surgical courses, dedicated to LGBTQ care,” and while he “felt it was important to open up an elective for those who have a passion for it,” he believes that expanding LGBTQ+ care to be part of general study is important.

When asked why he thinks LGBTQ+ healthcare hasn’t become a general topic found in all courses yet, Dr. Day, with a sigh, shared he believes it is because professors lack understanding of queer health. In fact, a study conducted in 2011 concluded some disappointing facts: many medical students only received, at the time, around five total hours of education relating to queer health — and many of these rising physicians felt as if they were inadequately trained for working with queer patients. Although this study concluded a decade ago, these numbers have hardly changed. Many students still feel uncomfortable working with queer, especially transgender and intersex, patients, with many reporting that they feel as though they are uninformed on the subject of transgender/intersex care, according to this 2017 study. 

Ideally, LGBTQ+ content would be weaved into curriculum.

The amount of students who came to Dr. Day asking for more clarity on LGBTQ+ health only proves this lack of education.

How can medical schools improve? According to Dr. Day, “We need trans, gender nonbinary, gender nonconforming, gay, bisexual, we need all of this literature provided to students before they get to the classroom. It will make students more sensitive that way. In a way, they’ll understand what they’re getting into… I also think we need to tackle it from a faculty perspective. We need better training.” The problem goes beyond what students are being taught now; the issue began decades ago. If professors received improper training in their education and proceeded to avoid queer healthcare, never properly learning themselves, how could they teach the next generation any better? 

Still, it’s no excuse, and Dr. Day agrees. Professors have a duty to not only their students, but to their students’ future patients. Even the smallest changes, such as introducing oneself with one’s identities present and explaining that one has a different viewpoint and experience than those one is working with, can go a long way. As we continued to chat, Dr. Day offered advice for professors struggling with feeling inadequate, or as if they might make their students uncomfortable, explaining that in his course, “My ultimate goal is to bring in some guest speakers. I frame my lectures by saying, ‘I am not a person of trans experience,’ ‘I am not a person of color experience.’” These disclaimers mixed with the real-world experience of those impacted directly can do quite a bit for students who might, in many ways, also feel as though they could never understand queer health or would always be walking on eggshells with queer patients.

I frame my lectures by saying, ‘I am not a person of trans experience,’ ‘I am not a person of color experience.’

Disclaimers can encourage acceptance and growth, according to Dr. Day.

This ability to recognize one’s identities and experiences contrasted with the identities and experiences of others allows one to accept their own drawbacks, and even accept their own possible failures. That acceptance is an early step in moving forward. Optimistically, Dr. Day added, “I do anecdotally hear that there is some improvement in nursing schools… I am getting word that it seems to be helping. I do hope to one day have students come back and tell me about their experiences.”

This care is not only rewarding to the patient, but to the physician as well. “I had a patient who tied balloons to their bed, because they had gotten gender affirmation surgery and was celebrating their first birthday, and you hear me get choked up about that now… There’s something super special about working in that area,” Dr. Day shared with us, his excitement obvious. 

It’s clear: there’s nothing Dr. Day wants more than to bring these experiences to both his students and their future patients who might otherwise never receive such care. The Rory Meyers College, where Dr. Day is leading this course, works with future nurses, a field in which the relationship between oneself and the patient is of utmost importance. The impact of a nurse on a patient can influence a variety of things, including, but not limited to, the patient’s decision to receive treatment, the patient’s comfort with said treatment, and the patient’s willingness to continue to seek the aforementioned treatment. 

To see a patient thrive under one’s treatment — that is what inclusivity is for. Dr. Day shared with us an experience he had working with a transgender patient who had received surgery to raise her voice, and it is impossible to say that she did not thrive. “(T)he sheer joy she experienced coming in and preparing for this was just infectious,” he said, “We talked about her past surgeries… I just see people sail as a result of these procedures that I don’t often see in other individuals.”

Hundreds of patients await experiences such as these, but due to a lack of education and a lack of access catered to queer patients, many are unable to proceed with the care they deserve. That is also part of why Dr. Day is so adamant about his course, and courses like it: they are not simply taught for fun, but for the betterment of millions of people.

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Corporate Social Responsibility: Salt & Straw Cofounder, Kim Malek

Kim Malek
Kim Malek

In 2011, Kim Malek and her cousin, Tyler Malek, founded the ice cream company Salt & Straw to create a community gathering place where people can treat themselves and experience “moments of wonder” together.

We Welcome All Ampersand

As such, the company embraces people from every walk of life. Each store window displays a sign that states, “We Welcome All,” and they take steps to make each person who walks through the door feel comfortable being their authentic self.

Cofounder and CEO Kim Malek spoke with Cloud Dancers about her views on the role of business in the pursuit of social responsibility and the steps she has taken to make her workplace better for all, especially those who identify as trans*.

Malek’s kind nature and excitement over having these meaningful conversations are immediately apparent even in the age of video conference interviews. “Yay! We did it!” she exclaimed when we entered the meeting. Immediately I was put at ease, glad to know she was as eager to do this interview as I was.

Collaborating with other organizations or foundations like ours is nothing new to Malek, as she believes in working together to bring about social change. Malek grew up wanting to go into politics, but instead went into business when she realized the advocacy that was possible in the private sector. 

She observes, “Business has to be at the table and part of those conversations. The government can’t do it all on its own. Nonprofits and governmental agencies can’t do it all on their own. All three have to come together to make change.” She continues, “It’s good business to be investing in the right ways. Not only is it the right thing to do for society, but it’s actually just good for your business.”

“It’s good business to be investing in the right ways. Not only is it the right thing to do for society, but it’s actually just good for your business.”

When reflecting on this idea of social responsibility, Malek says it goes beyond writing a check. “To me, it’s looking into the core of your business and how you do business, breaking apart each of those components to figure out how you can use your business to make a difference in the world.”

She gives examples (and there are a lot) of Salt & Straw’s business practices that work toward this goal. “For instance, we buy a lot of ingredients,” she says. “The cost of entry today is that you would buy organic ingredients that don’t harm the environment. You would expect us to do that.” 

Social responsibility, though, goes beyond meeting basic expectations. “Let’s go to a deeper level and ask, ‘can we buy from mostly minority or women-owned businesses so we can use our purchasing power to help a first-generation farmer in the Bay Area where we’re her largest customer? And then can we use our marketing power to promote her and make her known?’” The question, Malek continues is, “‘How can you take what you’re doing every day and use that to invest in the community in a unique way?’”

Kim and Tyler Malek
Kim and Tyler Malek work together to dream up unique flavors which benefit the community.

With over one thousand employees, Malek says hiring is a huge opportunity to make business more equitable and safe for all. “We ask ourselves, can we use that to offer first jobs to people and train them in unique ways? Can we use our hiring to offer jobs to people who are reentering the workforce? How can we format our training program so that we’re known as a company that, if you used to work there you have these incredible skills? And maybe we even hold job fairs with different industries at the end of the summer to say, ‘We have this incredible talent pool that we’ve just trained – hire them!’ It’s radical that you would do that because you want to hold onto your people (and we do, by the way), but at the same time, could we be a launching pad for employment in other places?”

“And while you’re here, look at our benefits!” she exclaims. “Since Day One, we’ve offered benefits for people who are transitioning and just making sure that, if we get complaints, we hold everyone accountable and we have a culture where that’s not swept under the rug. We investigate and take care of issues. We’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but we’re on a journey to take the right next step each time.”

“Since Day One, we’ve offered benefits for people who are transitioning”

Supporting trans* individuals has been a “no brainer” since founding the company. Salt & Straw set up its benefits program in 2011, and Malek states, “Maybe it was a little newer to offer that benefit back then, but it was available, so it was like ‘of course we’re going to do that!’”

Beyond this financial assistance, she notes, “I think the challenge we’ve had over the years is making sure that we as a company are prepared and educated to support people who are transitioning. It’s one thing to give that benefit, but how does the company provide the right support? There’s a lot going on in your life when that’s happening, so what accommodations can we make more broadly so that you can be successful as you transition?”

The transgender community cites safety as its number one concern in the workplace (McKinsey), and these best practices along with Salt & Straw’s zero tolerance policy for any sort of safety concerns seek to mitigate this fear. Malek states, “We educate people about that on day one. Whether it’s from customers or coworkers or members of the community.”

Again, looking into the core of her business, Malek reflects, “We’ve done that successfully and I think sometimes we haven’t. Probably our biggest area of opportunity is to continue to make sure that it feels like a safe, supportive place as someone’s going through that.”

Malek’s response to this is training, focusing on the management, and ensuring that each level of the business reflects these values. She raises the question,  “If you’re a manager at a Salt & Straw and you have a team member who’s transitioning, how do you talk to them or the rest of the team and explain what’s going on in a way that’s supportive? And even how do you handle customer conversations? Because that can be hard too!”

Malek continues to work directly with guests, even in her role as CEO.

She stresses the importance of having training around this and communicating a plan for employees should these situations take place. “You need to have a plan of what to do because otherwise, you don’t know what to do in the moment. You need to talk about it with your coworkers, with your manager, and then when it hits you, you’re like ‘oh yeah, I know what to do!’ Otherwise, in the moment it’s too hard to navigate.”

“I honestly believe that there are a good number of organizations out there that would advocate for their team members,” she continues, “I just honestly don’t know if they’re thinking about it. So we need to talk about it and get best practices out there. Because there’s no environment where someone working in the hospitality industry should be made to feel like they have to endure that kind of thing. And it’s serious. And it happens.”

“There’s no environment where someone working in the hospitality industry should be made to feel like they have to endure that”

Society as a whole might be slow to catch up, but Malek cites this as a reason to take swift action where necessary. “If there’s any whisper of a concern, then the management team will be willing to face that, get involved, and take action,” Malek says. 

She adds, “This is really hard to do, and you hear companies all the time saying they don’t want to go through that. But you have to. Every single time. Every time.”

Malek says advocacy doesn’t stop at her business. Rather, her business is a form of advocacy. Salt & Straw has a number of exciting new programs and partnerships in the works, so stay posted and treat yourself to some ice cream – we all deserve to have moments of wonder.

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Rainbow Reflections: It All Works Out Beautifully

By Olivia Williams

In our Rainbow Reflections series, we highlight the experiences of members of the LGBTQIA+ community in their own words. For this series, we spoke to seven people around the world about their varying experiences. For an introduction to our participants and their thoughts on the labels that they use, please read the first article in the series, here. Their takes on the familiar question “Am I queer enough?” can be found here. The phenomenon of coming out is discussed here. In this final installment, interviewees offer advice to other members of the community. 

Despite the fact that they have never met you, seven members of the LGBTQIA+ community, spanning from the United States of America to Spain, Britain, and Australia, want the best for you. True, they may not know much about you, and your journeys may be wildly different, but they have all struggled at some point in their journey. Here are their best pieces of advice. 

On Being Gentle with Your Journey

“[O]nce you understand that you are queer, the specifics of that are only what you need them to be, as long as you aren’t devaluing someone else’s identity in the process. [G]ive yourself the space to look different, to try out different styles, different haircuts, and be aware that you’re not always going to look the way [that] you want. It’s a process, and you’ve [not] done something wrong.” 

  • MK

“I want people to know that you are not broken. It doesn’t matter if you feel a certain way because of a certain reason. You still feel that way. Your feelings in that moment are still every bit as valid as someone else’s.”

  • Kathryn

“It’s okay to be different and for people to not understand you. What’s important is to be comfortable with yourself and to know who you are. Reach out, ask questions, and, above all, know [that] you aren’t alone.” 

  • Edward 

On the Need to Compare

“Looking back, I’d tell myself not to judge my own transition based on what other people want.” 

  • Emerson 

On Finding a Community, and Even Love

“[H]aving people in [your] life just being their queer selves helps a lot [with] embracing the possibilities of who [you] are [are] and how [you] can exist in the world.”

  • Miriam

“It is not impossible to find love, or a healthy relationship, without sex or with limited sexual contact.”

  • Kathryn

“The most important thing I did to help [myself] accept my identity was [to] find community in other queer folks.” 

  • Emerson

“[C]ommunity is really important. I think as soon as I started having friends that were queer, it made it so much easier to learn things and share thoughts and relate, because it is so personal. [A]nd reading about it or learning about it from people who don’t experience it firsthand is never going to be the same thing.” 

  • MK 

On Protecting Yourself

“It’s okay to protect yourself however you feel you need to. Nobody is entitled to your truth if you feel unsafe or not ready to share it.” 

  • Kat

“I just want everyone to know that saying no is an option. You don’t have to be ace or graysexual. Literally anyone, for any reason, can just say no. There is literally no reason to have sex with anyone other than you want to, and you are both consenting and happy to be there.” 

  • Kathryn

On the End 

“It all works out beautifully.”

  • Hannah

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Petra Wenham: A Life-long Journey to Being Her True Self

By Meghan Serceki

Petra Wenham came out as transgender at age 68, began transitioning, and now in her mid-70s, is committed to educating people on what being trans really means. Her story is one of finding acceptance and of accepting herself.

She felt signs of her transness at a young age: she suspects between the ages of three and five when children develop a sense of self. When she started school, she recalls not “clicking” at all with the boys but rather with the girls. However, Petra recalls, “slowly the girls drop you because you’re seen as a boy. But you do not connect with the boys, therefore, you tend to become a loner.” She got bullied and called names, and when her mother got the sense that something was different about her she was sent to an all-boys school at age 11.

At the all-boys school, she felt even more isolated, struggling to find anyone she related to. She realizes now that others were doing the same. Although she wasn’t close with them, she says of the boys that she did get to know there, “it wouldn’t surprise me at all if some of them had been somewhere in the LGBT umbrella.”

Receiving her degree. Source: Petra Wenham

Things got better for her when she met her wife, Loraine. After she got her degree, she started a successful career as a cybersecurity expert for British Telecom, where the two met. She is Petra’s support system, her soulmate. Even before they got married, Loraine knew that Petra would cross-dress and was comfortable with that. She still had not yet had her “egg-cracking moment” (that is, the moment when she realized she was transgender)and wrote off the cross-dressing as an occasional occurrence which could at other times be suppressed.

In 2001 she guessed she was transgender, but media coverage of LGBTQ+ individuals at the time was more focused on homosexuals, drag queens, and transvestites, not on transgender people like her. As a result, she still felt somewhat alone and unseen. Even though this thought lived in her mind, she says “what I did and what quite a few trans people do is you bury it; you try to ignore it and you sort of try and carry on.”

The stress of burying and suppressing a huge part of herself built up for years. When her home got broadband, she remembers realizing, “Oh, hang on, I’m not unique. There are other people out there like me.” Reading other trans people’s stories, she became more and more aware that she in fact is trans, starting to be more comfortable with her transness but still not accepting it.

It wasn’t until 2015 at age 68 when she was hospitalized with colitis, was in urgent condition, and was reevaluating her life that she had her egg cracking moment. While in the hospital, she came across an opinion piece by Jennifer Finney Boylan, “How a Sliver of Glass Changed my Life” in which Boylan compares hiding transness to a glass shard lodged in your foot, causing great pain and feeling almost instant relief when taken out. Petra decided then and there that she had to live fully as the woman she is.

Coming home from the hospital, she sat down with Loraine and told her that she is a transgender woman. She immediately recognized the “tremendous stress” that had been building up by keeping this from her wife, her soulmate, herself. Like the shard of glass, “trying to push it away only really caused it to fester,” and being open about it, removing that shard, provided the relief she had always needed. Loraine accepted her with open arms, and Petra references author Amanda Jetté Knox when she recounts it, saying “love is genderless, it’s sexless. It’s human being to human being.” Next January, the two will celebrate their 49th anniversary together.

Petra’s mission now is to educate people. Source: Petra Wenham

Petra holds that “the trans community in (the UK) and, I suspect in America, we estimate we’re about 10 to 15 years behind where the gay community is, in terms of the public acceptance.” Looking forward after her transition, she has one simple goal: to educate people. She says, “What we’ve got to do is to show people that we’re not a subspecies, we are human beings. Women should be totally and completely equal with men. It is equality. And we as trans women, we do not want anything over and above anybody else. We want to be initially treated completely as women. We will then work with the women to lift us up to make sure that we are equal with the men.”

Petra’s story shows that it is never too late to accept yourself in your entirety, to live the kind of life you want to live and to make a truly significant impact on the world by being exactly who you are.

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Rainbow Reflections: Am I Queer Enough?

By Olivia Williams

In our Rainbow Reflections series, we highlight the experiences of members of the LGBTQIA+ community in their own words. For this series, we spoke to seven people around the world about their varying experiences. For an introduction to our participants and their thoughts on the labels that they use, please read the first article in the series, here. 

In the image, a green-clad character stands in front of an old-fashioned carnival strength test, holding a mallet. There is a rainbow in the background and the word “Queer” emblazoned on the top of the machine. The metaphor is clear: If you hit the mallet hard enough, you win, and you are allowed to use the label “queer.” If you do not, you are not. There is a clear, definitive line between winners and losers: some people are allowed to use the term, and some are not. Even if the image wasn’t quite so on the nose, the character spells it out for you in a small speech bubble: “I constantly wonder– Do I deserve to use the term? Am I ‘Queer Enough?’” It is one part of a comic of the same name, posted on The Nib by artists Jason Michaels and Mady G. 

Generally defined as Queer Imposter Syndrome, or internalized homophobia, this fear seems to fuel an endless stream of content on the internet. Headlines such as “I Constantly Worry That I’m Queer Enough” and “Am I Gay? Quiz” are commonplace. Edward defines the fear as “the internalized social pressure to denigrate that which is queer, even if it’s within us.” 

Kat has a theory as to the origins of the phenomenon. “As children, we grow up learning a bunch of things from the adults around us and the media we consume, whether actively (by attentively watching it) or passively (the background noise as our parents watch the news, etc),” she explains. This information, which comes from sources such as family, friends, teachers, and “the media of the time or comments of peers” is at its core an evolutionary process, as it shapes how we understand the world around us. However, it becomes dangerous when the information that is being relayed to us, whether intentionally or not, is flawed in some way. “[B]ecause we’re taught to trust the judgment of adults, we take that information as some kind of gospel truth,” says Kat, “rather than seeing it as opinions that have the potential to be biased, or flat-out wrong.” The effect is the same whether you are surrounded by blatant homophobia or simply pick up on them subconsciously. Emerson adds, “Living in the society we’re in, with all the violence and hatred towards queer people, it’s difficult to not take that pain and turn it against yourself and/or your community.” This can result in someone growing up to, as Kathryn describes it, “…hold some unfair ideas about the world, and yourself.” Thus…“internalized homophobia is when, even if you don’t actively believe in homophobic ideas, you’ve got blind spots in your thinking, or you hold negative patterns of behavior or belief that you’re not even really aware you have.” Hannah agrees, speaking to the fear as a “way the outside world has messed with your internal perception of yourself.” 

As Kathryn explains, “part of growing is recognizing [these biases] and working out which ones really align with who you are.” It seems to be a constant journey, especially for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and involves quite a bit of time “questioning how you feel about yourself and why it is you [are] feeling that way.” Many participants confess to still struggling with internalized homophobia. We saw this most clearly in the words they used: they did not feel like it was “right” to call themselves their LGBTQIA+ identity, or they did not feel like they inhabited the denomination “enough.” For Edward, these words arose when we asked him about his pronouns. “I tend to think he/they,” he said at first, but then added: “However, I question if I’m [non-binary] enough to use gender-neutral pronouns when it’s really warm out.” “At first, I didn’t feel ‘bisexual enough,’ agrees Hannah. “I thought you had to have an equal preference for both, and I felt like I was more likely to be with men. Now, I think I’m more likely to end up with a woman, and have thought about changing my identity to a lesbian.”

Interestingly, all of the participants interviewed were actively and openly supportive of their friends who were members of the LGBTQIA+ community. The problem only came when it was time to admit to themselves that they had a certain identity. “I spent, and still do spend, periods of time thinking that I am kidding myself when I say [that] I’m attracted to people [who] are not men,” admits MK. “[A]nd I still see my relationships with different genders or genderless people in different ways to how I see my relationships with men.” Like everyone else interviewed, “[This] was an issue…just when it was associated with me.” The participant “liked girls, but I was very adamant that I couldn’t be a lesbian because the word sounded wrong to me, like it didn’t fit with who I was [or] I was gatekeeping myself…or being homophobic…” It was only when MK accepted another part of their identity, that of being non-binary, that their reluctance with using the lesbian label becomes clear. “Looking back now,” they explain, “obviously I know that’s because I’m not a girl and I am attracted to not just women, so…that word does not fit.” Miriam also found much of her identity guided by heteronormative dynamics. “I couldn’t see myself as a woman having a relationship with a woman, because somehow I still thought that wasn’t possible or ‘right.’ It took a long while to unlearn all that,” especially when she was later in a relationshp that could be percieved as traditionally heterosexual. “It took me a while to accept I’m still queer while in a seemingly straight relationship. But I’ve accepted I’m the same person and we two are very much queer together.” 

One of the best solutions on the path to this acceptance that our participants have found is acting in spite of their fears: claiming their own identities despite the fact that they may not always feel like they deserve to. For Hannah, “the first time I made out with a girl was pretty important. It just felt really right and natural and I wasn’t nervous in the way I usually am with men; it felt like what I was supposed to be doing.” Taking testosterone had a similar effect for Emerson. “One of the big moments for me,” he says, “was when I heard a recording of my voice for the first time after I got on testosterone. I remember feeling for the first time like my voice was what it was meant to be.” “Ultimately,” says Hannah, “I love both men and women and [I] shouldn’t have to change that identity to make other people, [who] would rather I fit into a binary, more comfortable.” And this includes herself. 

In proudly sharing their stories, these seven participants have continued to strengthen our Rainbow Reflections series and, in doing so, normalized many of the experiences that LGBTQIA+ members share, from navigating the long list of queer labels to the struggle with internalized homophobia. Next, they will speak about their coming out stories.

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Rainbow Reflections: 7 LGBTQIA+ People Share Their Experiences with Labels

By Olivia Williams

When my friend Hannah was about ten years old, she found herself unable to look away from the sight of Christina Ricci on her television. “I panicked that I was a lesbian,” she reveals, before mentally rationalizing away that identity by focusing on the attraction she felt for men. In fact, it took her until freshman year of college to “finally admit I love women and feel comfortable in that,” an identity she said she hid from herself  “probably from age 13 to 18.” Hannah is now happy in her bisexuality. She says, “I’m comfortable being like, ‘Oh, she’s hot’ when watching TV with friends and not feeling like I have to hide that part of myself.”

Hannah is not alone in her struggle to correctly identify her sexuality. According to Gallup, 5.6% of the population in the United States of America today identify as part of the LGB community: either Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual. The Williams Institute found 0.6% of the population is transgender. Within these scientific labels, however, there are other identities, ranging in terminology and definition. Each person who makes up these statistics has a story, just like Hannah, and just like The Cloud Dancers Foundation founder, Robina Asti. Their stories differ just as much as their subjects do, and exploring them helps us to connect to each other. In fact, that same little ten-year-old on her couch says today that finding a community helped her claim her sexuality. 

Curious as to the differences and similarities in stories like these, Cloud Dancers sat down with seven members of the LGBTQIA+ community from around the world. We spoke about how they have found the identities that they inhabit now, their personal experiences with internalized homophobia, their coming out journeys, and the advice they’d give to the next generation. Compiled into our Rainbow Reflection series, these stories give voice to some of the myriad of experiences held by members of the LGBQTIA+ community.  

For most of the interview participants, distilling their identity down to a few words was nearly impossible, and many of them use multiple identities. In fact, even the process of finding accurate labels for oneself and deciding what labels to use is a deeply personal process, according to MK, who asked to be identified only by their initials. “The limited information I had growing up gave me only so many labels I could use for myself,” MK said, so they had the “impression that I needed labels [in order] to be valid.” 

Even now, some of MK’s description of their identity is marked by their audience. “In terms of sexuality specifically, I use bisexual as well as queer to say I’m attracted to any gender and that gender doesn’t really influence how I feel about people. [Bisexual is] a more known and recognized term and so outwardly, with other people, I use it, but I don’t always feel it internally,” MK said. 

When not editing for a social audience, however, MK tends to focus on three terms: queer, non-binary, and gay: “I basically use these terms because they seem to be the more vague and broad versions of labels and terminology within queer circles.” Using general labels such as queer helps MK to “distance myself from gender and be aware in my otherness.” 

In fact, the universality of the term “queer” seemed to resonate with several participants, including Miriam. “[Q]ueer is the word that overall resonates with me the most because it can encapsulate more than sexuality,” she says. “Destroying the notions of binaries and sex as [just] a reproductive act appeals to me on philosophical and everyday life levels. For now, I’m trying to change the narrative and be more playful around my identity and presentation.”

Emerson also welcomes the freedom of the queer label, and, like Miriam, turns away from the bigender binary by identifying specifically as genderqueer, an identity that is associated with the rejection of the traditional gender binary. As for sexuality, he identifies as quoiromantic. “For me, being quoiromantic is being unable to tell the difference between platonic and romantic attraction. For most people, there’s a clear line between ‘I want to be friends with this person’ and ‘I want to date this person.’ But for me, that line has always had to be explained.” According to LGBTA Wiki, people who identify as quoiromantic, also known as Whatromantic or even WTFromantic, do not want to or cannot define their romantic orientation. It is a “disidentification with the romantic/nonromantic binary.” 

Although the “queer” moniker specifically was not used by the other four participants, three of them had a similar experience while trying to define themselves. “I went with heteroflexible at one point because it feels the most comfortable and accurate,” says Edward, adding that he has also used the “bisexual” label, as well as “pansexual.” “Most of the time I’ll just say straight if asked,” Edward said. “I don’t want to get into the queerness, which I think might be something of a privilege.” 

Similar to Edward, both Kat and Hannah have experimented with calling themselves bisexual. Hannah has kept the definition, saying, “To me, this just means that I’m sexually and romantically attracted to more than one gender.”  “For a long time I identified as bi,” Kat said. “I had inadvertently excluded non-binary people from the narrative I was telling myself.” She now likes the label “pansexual,” which means “I love and am attracted to people without gender or genitalia being a deciding influence. The gender of a potential partner isn’t a factor in entering into relationships for me.”  

Kathryn, who identifies as “graysexual, demisexual, pansexual” acknowledges that her identity might be quite a mouthful to those who aren’t used to it. Going in order of her labels, she explains, “For me, these three labels explain that I rarely experience sexual attraction, that I require an emotional connection to a person before my brain even considers sexual attraction to be an option, and that I have experienced attraction to both men and a genderfluid lesbian (my fiancée).” 

Several interviewees also struggled with reconciling their identities with the world around them, which operated on a baseline of heterosexuality. Kat details how her mom “wanted grandbabies, wanted us to settle down with nice men. My whole family’s default with heteronormative, so I grew up with the idea that straight relationships were the only relationships in my family.” This was only compounded by Kat being “a child of the 80s” and thus experiencing “a lot of deeply concerning conversations around the AIDS crisis,” which made it “hard not to walk away with the idea that straight relationships were safer and more normal/appropriate.” 

Emerson describes being raised in a rural Catholic town. “In school, I was singled out as ‘the queer kid’ [and] bullied often.” Edward remembers “off-handed comments” made by family members which “definitely altered my perception of queerness to some extent, by making it seem out-of-bounds.” He credits the acceptance and tolerance of his friends in his late adolescence for challenging these beliefs.  

For Hannah, who admits to being raised “in a very liberal and left household” with parents who “had friends that were gay” and ensured that she “always grew up knowing it was an okay thing to be,” the world outside of her house was not as accepting. “Outside of my parents, however, I lived in a really small, rural town in Illinois, and homophobia was pretty common,” she says. Stacked against the accepting ideals of her parents, this made for “a weird dichotomy, because I had really supportive parents and lots of my friends were gay, and I consumed a lot of queer media, but kids at my school and adults in the community were pretty homophobic.” 

There is even bias among the LGBTQIA+ community. Speaking for the asexual community, Kathryn says, “[T]he ace narrative is [not] a big enough part of the LGBTQIA+ community or conversation yet,” she says. “It is so common that we are left out, and when you already feel broken or like something is wrong with you, being excluded from conversations or campaigns or charities or communities adds to that feeling. It’s so lonely.” 

It is this kind of loneliness that the Rainbow Reflections series aims to combat.  Visit CloudDancers.org to sign up for email updates and be first to know when the next article in this series is available. The next topic: addressing internalized homophobia.