By Anonymous Student (not Prof. Bergerson)
It is so fascinating to think about the fact that within our country, each state has such a different culture and way of living life. I think it is mind blowing to learn that things from the political climate to the phrases people say can be wildly different from state to state yet we all fall under a common label: citizens of the United State of America. This was a reality I first became confronted with when I moved from Southern California to Sedalia, Missouri about a year ago. Shifting from a raging liberal state to a raging conservative state was quite the challenge. Something that I really took for granted is the fact that members of the LGBTQIA+ community in the midwest are often ostracized, harassed, and hated. This was shocking to me, due to the fact that where I am from everyone from every walk of life is accepted. The LGBTQIA+ community is even celebrated where I’m from. When I came to UMKC I immediately noticed a positive shift in the attitude towards different people in a way that I had not seen in more rural Missouri. In my Discourse 100 class, I met an individual named Raine Briscoe, who I ended up becoming close friends with. Raine identifies as a transgender male. Something that made him really stick out to me in class was the fact that he was so open about his sexuality and was unashamedly himself. I immediately knew I wanted to get to know him better so that I could get a sense of what things are like for people of the LGBTQIA+ community in the Midwest. I was able to interview him on February 28, 2019 in the Miller Nichols Learning Center. From this interview I hoped to gain a personal and insightful perspective into what life is like as a transgender person in conservative America. In the interview, Raine shared stories about his experiences with things ranging from harassment at school to being misidentified on a daily basis, to the acceptance he feels on the UMKC campus in particular.
Raine grew up in a fairly typical household. His parents divorced when he was around six, and his parents shared 50/50 custody for the remainder of his adolescence. Raine has one older sister, and they both grew up in the suburbs of Liberty, Missouri. When I inquired as to how old he was when he started to notice that he might be transgender, he was able to trace it back to the age of seven. Rained recalled watching Dancing with the Stars with his mother and seeing Chaz Bono, who is a transgender male, and also legendary pop star, Cher’s son. When his mother explained to him that Chaz was transgender, and what that meant, he distinctly remembered the acceptance and welcoming tone that his mother used. She made it very clear that what Chaz did was absolutely something that Raine could do to. Raine explained, “And at the time, because when your seven you don’t think about that too much, but uh, I really did kind of resonate with that and it kind of stuck with me all throughout my life and I didn’t really do anything about it or feel anything until middle school. I would have people literally go up and ask me ‘Raine are you a guy or a girl because we honestly can’t tell’ I was like ‘uh I don’t know, I’m whatever, I’m a medical mystery”. Raine always knew that he was different from the kids around him in ways that were not limited to gender identity. He reflected on this and said, “Umm, I really wasn’t like anyone else, and so, people, especially young kids, don’t like what’s different. And I was very much different. I used to put socks on barbies and pretend they were slug people. Because I really liked bugs”. The fact that his personality was already different from many of his peers made it even more difficult for him to develop a self-acceptance for his sexuality and gender identity. Raine did not truly explore the thought that he might be transgender until around the time that he entered high school. He explains, “I started listening to this band called Steam Powered Giraffe, umm, when I was about fourteen. And one of the main members of that band is trans and so I learned all about her experience as a trans woman and I can really relate that back and forth to, you know. I was like [high pitched tone] ‘maybe I am trans’”. This was a pivotal moment in Raine’s journey to accepting his sexuality.
The first person that Raine came out to as transgender was his mother. According to his answers in the interview, she was immediately very accepting and embraced Raine’s identity without questioning or any reservation. He stated, “I really didn’t do anything fully until high school, when I started watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, and there were all these drag queens who were trans women. And they talked about their experience being queer, LGBT. And I was like ‘Okay yeah somethings, somethin’ ain’t right chief’ so then I came out to my mom. And my mom was like ‘yeah you are’. Yeah my mom was like, without a doubt, ‘I thought you were a lesbian but you’re not so go out be weird’,”. There is something that I personally found very interesting about this. The first one being that both of the figures that Raine described in this interview as being the most influential on his path to acceptance of himself were both public figures that he saw on television shows. For me this was great insight into the essential role that consistent exposure to people who are like-minded plays in the lives of developing children. This is something that those of us who are straight and belong to majority culture do not have to necessarily think about. However, those struggling to determine their gender identity or sexual orientation have very few well-known public figures to look up to. While this was the case as well for people who reside in the area of California that I am from, I realized that it did not stick out as much to me because they had many figures in our local community and in their personal lives to look up to. Southern California has a high concentration of members from the LGBTQIA+ community, so many of the individuals who live there grew up with several relatives and friends that were active in that community. For Raine and others growing up in the Kansas City area this was not the case, which affected them in a big way. Raine describes his relationship with the area in which he grew up by saying, “Like where I come from it was awful. I mean, like, I enjoyed it and I met a lot of great people but there was a lot of things that were just not good. Things weren’t good. A lot of bullying as a kid. A lot, like from second grade maybe fourth grade up was a lot”. It is tragic to hear stories of someone being attacked verbally or physically for simply embracing themselves in a way that causes no harm to others. In a modern society that claims to be accepting and open, there is still so much hatred for varying groups across the country. In the Kansas City area, there has been an interesting shift in the common attitude towards the LGBTQIA+ group over the past forty to fifty years.
The gay rights movement in our nation was not truly born until after the Stonewall riots in 1969. These riots were a result of violent acts between gay rights activists and police officers outside of a gay bar called Stonewall Inn in New York. It was in response to these events that gay rights activists across the nation rose up to form a collective movement. A news article from The Phoenix Newsletter states that “In June 1975, the first Gay pride Festival was held in Kansas City. The three-day event was spearheaded by the Gay People’s Union, Kansas City Women’s Liberation Union, the Joint Committee for Gay Rights, and the Metropolitan Community Church,” (Hinds 16). This was the first time that the LGBTQIA+ community was really given a dedicated platform to celebrate who they were and what they had accomplished. After this, the community still maintained a very underground existence. The same article states that “Records of Pride activities for most of the 1980’s are scant to nonexistent in GLAMA (Gay and Lesbian Archives of Mid-America) collections,” (Hinds 16). Throughout the remainder of the 20th century, and into the 21st century, the political power behind the Pride movement in Kansas City began to die out and turned into a party scene. Currently, whenever someone attempts to organize a Pride festival or event in Kansas City, they are often met with insanely high costs that prevented people from going through with it. This has inhibited the ability of Pride groups to establish a strong public presence in Kansas City.
However, Raine explained in our interview that despite all of the hardships he experienced throughout his life, because of who he is, it was all for the most part put to a stop when he came to UMKC. He said, “during orientation I went here and I got to see everything. There were other people like me, trans, lesbians, gays, bi, asexual, queer, whatever, just LGBT in general. And I was like ‘damn, I’ve really fucking found my place, shit’ and um I was at pride alliance […] there was a night at the beginning of the year where we were all just hanging out watching Matilda, and it felt like I was watching a movie with some close friends. Because we were all just watching Matilda, having a good time. […] Just being here is great and I love it. I’m really happy I’m here,”. I thought this really spoke to the fact that while the Pride movement in Kansas City lacks support in comparison to many other parts of the country, the fact that a LGBTQIA+ movement does exist here makes a significant difference. Throughout most of Missouri, nearly no support exists for people in this community, while in contrast the UMKC campus specifically makes a tremendous effort towards fostering diversity and inclusion. Those like Raine, being able to come here and be apart of a group that makes them feel safe and loved is a remarkable experience, and is something that is difficult to find amidst a part of the country that tends to hold prejudice towards anyone who is different.
Hearing Raine’s story was such an honor, and provided me with a new perspective on the progress that needs to be made in this area. To not only hear his story, but to be able to pair it with a now expanded context of the city itself, has opened my eyes to so many issues that I never knew existed. I think myself, and anyone else who has ever sat down with someone and just listened to their story, quickly realizes how beautiful connecting with other human beings is. We so often gravitate towards people who are like us, but we often learn the most from those who have a completely different experience from our own. The stories of Raine, and anyone else who has experienced discrimination because of who they are, need people that want to listen and who will use those stories in their daily lives to not only accept but celebrate the beautiful ways in which all of our life experiences are so different.
Works Cited
“Stonewall Riots.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 21 June 2018, www.britannica.com/event/Stonewall-riots.
Hinds, Stuart L. “History of Pride.” The Phoenix Newsletter, June 2014, pp. 16–17. z
