What I Hear When You Say

- When someone asks me, when did you become gay?

I tell them, when did you become straight?

- I hear that that's all that they find interesting about me.

- But I hear sister questions.

- How or why I became queer.

- When were you first attracted?

- What kind of gay are you?

- (singing) R-E-S-P-E-C-T. - Their struggle to understand that there's a way to interact with people with respect.

(upbeat music) - What I hear when people say, when did you become gay?

Is an oversimplification of a really complex process.

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I also hear things like, you don't believe that I'm gay.

You know for me specifically, it's like are you asking me that because I have long hair?

Like, do I not appear to be the thing that you think would be queer?

And I think that it's also, you should ask yourself if you're asking that question, what information do you really want?

Do you want to know how I understand my identity and like how I came to understand it?

Then ask that.

Nobody likely ever asked a straight person, when did you become straight?

That's not a question because we assume that that's the norm, that's the default, and that's kind of exactly why this question is problematic.

If an 8th grader didn't know how to define themselves and they were watching this and wondering why they didn't know, I would tell them I am 34 and I still don't know, and it's totally okay.

You know, it's okay to occupy one thing today and a different thing tomorrow.

It's okay to explore it.

It's okay to be fluid, and I think there's a lot of problem when we think that we can only be one thing.

I mean, that was the entire first 15 years of my process was being like, oh I don't really feel like a lesbian, but I'm watching the L Word, so you know (laughing) I guess.

I have Converse sneakers.

I'm even wearing a flannel, so.

One really important thing to remember is always ask yourself why you're asking a question and what information you wanna know.

Is it necessary information to you, or is it not?

And if you're on the end where you're being asked, know that if you don't have an answer it doesn't make you any less gay.

It doesn't make you any less queer, or less trans because we're all evolving and we all change and we don't have like this one day on our calendar that suddenly we understood everything.

- I do believe that that question in and of itself has a level of insensitivity to it.

- Sexuality is complicated.

- There's no excuse in this day and age to believe or imply that being gay is a choice.

There's just no, no excuse.

- [Woman] Or the title.

- [Man] When did you become gay?

- [Woman] Okay.

(laughing) - If someone said, when did you become gay?

I would say to them that that's a really complex question.

I don't think that it actually gets to what people really want to know, which is, how is it that your sexuality doesn't fit my understanding of what sexuality is supposed to be?

(ambient music) I think that there's actually a much wider range of possibilities than that question actually affords.

So there's an assumption about gender and part of that assumption is that there are two sexes, that there are male and female, and then from there there's an assumption about gender.

So then there are men and women and then from there there are assumptions about sexuality, that people are either heterosexual or homosexual.

But what we actually find is that it's much more complicated than that and it's actually really broad and it's a spectrum.

So when we look at the spectrum, we see that there are infinite number of ways that people can identify in terms of their gender and their sexuality.

There's trans identity, there's also people who identify as agender.

Not only are we not just heterosexual or homosexual, or queer, but some of us don't want to have sex at all, people who identify as asexual.

That's another way that people are thinking about sexuality.

So people use different pronouns based on how they feel about themselves.

He and she, and also pronouns like they and them, ze and zir.

Pronouns give people an opportunity to express themselves and express their gender more fully.

- Having to explain who you are and what you are to your friends, family and even strangers, it's so exhausting.

Just get to know me, build a relationship with me and you'll get to know the real me.

- What would I say to someone who asked when did I become gay?

Like, when did you become straight?

You know, you're assuming that straightness is the default and queerness is deviant.

(ambient music) Like gayness is something that happens to you and not just something that you are.

It makes me so happy to be a visible queer trans person of color in the media because role models were so sorely lacking in my life growing up.

So I am very happy with my life at the moment.

I'm really excited about everything that's going to come my way and I'm looking forward to the future.

Yeah, I'm just happy that my work resonates with so many people.

(ambient music) I started hormones and I began transitioning, and I was identifying as a trans guy at the time so I was on testosterone for two years.

It was not right for me, and so I went off of hormones and I started identifying as a non-binary person.

I didn't know what I wanted to be called.

I didn't know what pronouns I wanted people to use for me.

I didn't know how I wanted to dress or how to express myself, and I just sort of was existing in this space and just take it day by day and experiment, and figure out what worked for me.

I identify as queer and as agender.

The definition of being gay is being attracted to someone of the same gender.

I am interested in different types of relationships with people of all genders.

Like when I say I'm queer, I feel like that takes into account my gender, my politics, and my sexuality.

So I feel like it's important to see gender and sexuality as a spectrum because that's what it is.

Thinking of it in any other way or thinking of it as a binary just leaves so many people out.

It's so important for everyone to feel like they have room to exist in this world, room to express themselves.

It's so important for people to be able to find resources regarding their identities and you know, my life could've been so much different had I known growing up that there were other people like me, that my identity is valid, and that who I am is valid.

(ambient music) I'm Tyler, just let me be Tyler.

(ambient music) - Like the more people we educate, the less people are gonna ask, (laughs) ask us when we became gay, but it also isn't their responsibility to be that knowledge base all the time.

It's okay if sometimes you just get frustrated, you turn around, you roll your eyes and you walk away.

You know, we can't be activists and educators every moment just because we're queer or trans.

(laughs)