Latest / The Steve Harvey Morning Show / Redefining Queer Masculinity and Healing: A Conversation with Yolo Akili Robinson

Transcript

Redefining Queer Masculinity and Healing: A Conversation with Yolo Akili Robinson · The Steve Harvey Morning Show

0:03
Speaker 1: Learning to love ourselves and our messy and complicated truth
0:06
Speaker 1: is hard enough. But what happens when you have that
0:09
Speaker 1: feeling of otherness just hanging over your head, where you
0:12
Speaker 1: don't feel understood even within your own tribe. How do
0:16
Speaker 1: you confidently grow into your own skin or maybe even
0:20
Speaker 1: grow out of it when the road to acceptance and
0:22
Speaker 1: healing is so rough and bumpy. Hey there, it's Zach
0:27
Speaker 1: Welcome back to in the Deep Stories that shape us.
0:30
Speaker 1: I hope you've been able to catch our past episodes,
0:32
Speaker 1: especially part two of our conversation with Leon Ford. If
0:36
Speaker 1: you haven't checked it out, I really really recommend it.
0:39
Speaker 1: It's the powerful story of a man that is shot
0:42
Speaker 1: by the police, left paralyzed, but uses his experiences to
0:46
Speaker 1: help men the relationship between the police and his community.
0:49
Speaker 1: Take a list of So today I want to talk
0:53
Speaker 1: about those people that reach us, that represent us, that
0:57
Speaker 1: are a reflection of us without ever having met us.
1:00
Speaker 1: Today's guests feels like that to me because of how
1:03
Speaker 1: his work has impacted how I look at myself in
1:05
Speaker 1: the world, and also how I look at that very
1:08
Speaker 1: same world. You've probably seen yolo Achiley Robinson's writings about
1:11
Speaker 1: mental health or maybe even heard of being the Black
1:14
Speaker 1: Emotional and Mental Health Collective. But after reading his work
1:17
Speaker 1: and following him, I wanted to learn more about the
1:20
Speaker 1: person behind it all. I wanted to hear his story
1:23
Speaker 1: because before he became the resource to so many people
1:26
Speaker 1: that he is, Yolo was hurt a lot by people
1:29
Speaker 1: that he loved, and like most of us, he has
1:31
Speaker 1: had to learn how to pick himself up, how to
1:34
Speaker 1: heal from sexual and emotional abuse, and how to forgive
1:37
Speaker 1: those in his life. Not an easy journey for anyone,
1:41
Speaker 1: but to get to that, we have to start at
1:43
Speaker 1: the beginning his early life. I was born in Fort Lado, Florida.
1:50
Speaker 1: I am the child of military father who spent forty
1:54
Speaker 1: years in the military and retired to go back and
1:56
Speaker 1: work for the military, and a mother who um has
2:00
Speaker 1: been an education for but I think most of her life.
2:03
Speaker 1: They came from a background which we are still discovering
2:05
Speaker 1: a lot of their background. For example, my mother didn't
2:08
Speaker 1: know her father very well, but we're discovering he's from St.
2:11
Speaker 1: Kitts via Haiti via d r and so that's a
2:14
Speaker 1: big part of the kind of heritage trends that I'm
2:16
Speaker 1: holding as a Southerner, but also with a Caribbean like heritage.
2:20
Speaker 1: I lived all over the United States, in the world,
2:22
Speaker 1: lived in Germany until I was um in fifth grade
2:24
Speaker 1: and came back to the South. One thing that is
2:27
Speaker 1: really curious about military bases in foreign countries, particularly in Germany,
2:31
Speaker 1: is while there was racism, without a doubt, there was
2:34
Speaker 1: the ways in which are kind of connection as Americans
2:38
Speaker 1: influenced the dynamics of race differently. So I just remember
2:41
Speaker 1: coming back to Augusta, Georgia, which is Deep South, home
2:44
Speaker 1: of James Brown, and you know, I remember like going
2:46
Speaker 1: to the cafeteria and my earliest memory and sitting at
2:48
Speaker 1: the table with white kids right like you know, and
2:50
Speaker 1: not thinking much about it because that was kind of
2:53
Speaker 1: the experience I had in Germany. And um, you know,
2:55
Speaker 1: this white kid is saying to me, you can't sit here,
2:57
Speaker 1: you you need to go sit with the black kids.
2:58
Speaker 1: And I remember being like, oh wow. And then because
3:02
Speaker 1: of the way I spoke, because I had been living
3:04
Speaker 1: in a military base, I didn't have a Southern accent.
3:06
Speaker 1: I had, like you know, this point, was speaking the
3:08
Speaker 1: way I've been taught and going to the black kid's
3:11
Speaker 1: table and they'll be like, why do you talk like that.
3:13
Speaker 1: I didn't have a drawl at that point, which I
3:14
Speaker 1: have a little bit more now, you know. So it
3:17
Speaker 1: was an adjustment, you know, coming back and like and
3:19
Speaker 1: Couturally I was behind right. My parents were big into music,
3:22
Speaker 1: but like you know, you didn't have the internet, so
3:24
Speaker 1: the things you were listening to by the time we
3:25
Speaker 1: got to the stage, they were like nobody's checking from
3:27
Speaker 1: EMC Hammer. I really need you to do something different
3:29
Speaker 1: with your life. So the way I addressed the music
3:33
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting, and Augusta I was like an
3:35
Speaker 1: alien walking around, like what is going on? And for
3:38
Speaker 1: years took me a while to adjust. It's hard to
3:42
Speaker 1: think of someone that's so confident feeling like an outsider,
3:45
Speaker 1: an alien. And it's especially hard to think about the
3:48
Speaker 1: timing of all of this during this formidable years of
3:50
Speaker 1: manhood where we were growing into our own The influence
3:54
Speaker 1: of military played on Yollo's early life. His father in particular,
3:58
Speaker 1: was hard because on the one hand, you had a
4:00
Speaker 1: father that only wanted to protect his son, wanted to
4:03
Speaker 1: make a good man of him, But on the other
4:05
Speaker 1: yollow have these feelings of repression where the discipline was
4:08
Speaker 1: just too much. I think it's important to get the
4:13
Speaker 1: context that my father comes from, like, you know, a
4:15
Speaker 1: very difficult background, you know, and the military for him
4:19
Speaker 1: was the speaking for him of hope. It gave him
4:22
Speaker 1: discipline and gave him structure. My father grew up in
4:25
Speaker 1: environments like many black men are many men do, really
4:29
Speaker 1: seeing the qualities and traits that I was gravitating towards
4:31
Speaker 1: and expressing the softness to kind of the fluidity of
4:35
Speaker 1: my movements, the interests in arts and music, et cetera,
4:38
Speaker 1: as something that kind of put me in danger and
4:40
Speaker 1: it was a threat to my well being, right, and
4:42
Speaker 1: so it was very much so like you know, um
4:45
Speaker 1: reinforced by his military upbringing, where every day he was
4:47
Speaker 1: getting that message reinscribed and in many ways, like was
4:51
Speaker 1: trying to put that onto me. You know, talk about
4:53
Speaker 1: my father. Now we have a great relationship, but most
4:55
Speaker 1: of my life that has him in the case, it
4:57
Speaker 1: was very hostile because I believe if that a part
5:00
Speaker 1: of what my father was navigating was he was trying
5:02
Speaker 1: to create safety for me, but I experienced it as repression.
5:05
Speaker 1: He was trying to remove an element of my character
5:08
Speaker 1: that he saw as putting me as risk. For so
5:11
Speaker 1: much violence and harm um as opposed to understanding this
5:14
Speaker 1: is how I'm expressing and showing up in the world,
5:16
Speaker 1: and I need to have that nurtured while also cultivating
5:19
Speaker 1: safety and protection for me. Yeah, it was it was rough.
5:22
Speaker 1: My dad we have a joke now, we laugh about um.
5:24
Speaker 1: He was very big about yard work and just kind
5:26
Speaker 1: of like, you know, making sure things meticulous. And so
5:28
Speaker 1: my father, who did not understand landscape because he just
5:31
Speaker 1: kind of starting to become middle class. You know, he
5:33
Speaker 1: got these white rocks in his side to put all
5:35
Speaker 1: around the outside of the house that he bought, and
5:37
Speaker 1: he wanted to keep them white, but he didn't know
5:39
Speaker 1: to put a tarp underneath this so the dirt won't
5:41
Speaker 1: be there, right, So he would have us wash the
5:43
Speaker 1: rocks weekly. We would get a wheelbarrow and watch the
5:47
Speaker 1: rocks to put them back on the dirt, which makes
5:49
Speaker 1: no sense. How did you begin to find yourself in
5:53
Speaker 1: this tension with your father who's trying to kind of
5:56
Speaker 1: mary militantly take this out of you, but you began
5:58
Speaker 1: to know that this wasn't going away anyway. This is
6:00
Speaker 1: actually you. And how do you find love between a
6:03
Speaker 1: father when you know that he's and his heart trying
6:05
Speaker 1: to protect you but also hurting you. When they're saying
6:07
Speaker 1: I'm so scared for you, they're speaking as survivors of
6:11
Speaker 1: gendered patriarchal violence. They remember and some part of them
6:14
Speaker 1: knows the softness they once had access to, or maybe
6:18
Speaker 1: didn't have access to, in the same way they do now.
6:20
Speaker 1: They remember what it felt to have that attacked and
6:23
Speaker 1: belittled and destroyed, and sometimes, as survivors of that trauma,
6:27
Speaker 1: the only thing that can think of is like, let
6:29
Speaker 1: me do it to you first, because the world's gonna
6:30
Speaker 1: do it to you to protect you from the other
6:32
Speaker 1: folks doing it to you. And that's the logic, that's
6:34
Speaker 1: the coping strategy, right And that's what they see. And
6:37
Speaker 1: just like a lot of trauma, it doesn't always get
6:39
Speaker 1: um examined in a way that helps expand the possibilities
6:43
Speaker 1: of how we could respond to this. So here is
6:47
Speaker 1: Yolo trying to be himself in this very strict, very
6:50
Speaker 1: tough love household, and learning a little more about his
6:53
Speaker 1: upbringing helps me understand how he can connect with people
6:57
Speaker 1: through his work See the Other Side, so to speak.
7:00
Speaker 1: Take his spoken word album Purple Galaxy for example, this
7:03
Speaker 1: is a fifteen track piece reflecting on himself, his queerness,
7:07
Speaker 1: his heritage, his identity, and yet it touched so many people,
7:11
Speaker 1: and not just queer black men, but sis black men
7:13
Speaker 1: and women, and I wanted to know more about one poem,
7:16
Speaker 1: in particular, we are not the kind of Boys We want,
7:20
Speaker 1: which was such a powerful account of self expression and awareness.
7:27
Speaker 1: Around the time, I was working in an LGBT community
7:29
Speaker 1: center in Atlanta, and so much of the themes that
7:32
Speaker 1: came up and that I also was struggling with, was
7:34
Speaker 1: the ways in which that like as men who were
7:36
Speaker 1: not like, you know, super butch and like all the time,
7:39
Speaker 1: or who had a fluidity to their expression, that we
7:42
Speaker 1: weren't as desirable. And I began to think about what
7:45
Speaker 1: does it mean to not be the kind of boy
7:46
Speaker 1: that you want? Like? What does it mean to be
7:48
Speaker 1: so much disdain when you see someone who moves the
7:50
Speaker 1: way you move and your response is to like yuck
7:53
Speaker 1: them and be like oh and disgusted at them? What
7:55
Speaker 1: does that look like? I did a video where I
7:59
Speaker 1: Wouldn't pe Up Park and I literally was out with
8:02
Speaker 1: a random camera and asking people, you know, would you
8:04
Speaker 1: date you? Are you the kind of boy you want?
8:06
Speaker 1: And I got so many responses from all these different
8:09
Speaker 1: black queer people. Um really kind of like grappling with
8:12
Speaker 1: that and thinking like, well, no, I would never date myself,
8:15
Speaker 1: but wait why would not? And it was such a
8:16
Speaker 1: beautiful moment to kind of reflect on why we would
8:19
Speaker 1: not find ourselves desirable, to say an astrology, like, you know,
8:22
Speaker 1: the symbol for venus is a hand mirror, right, and
8:25
Speaker 1: venus being the symbol of love. You know, what does
8:27
Speaker 1: it mean that like desires starts with us, desires starts
8:30
Speaker 1: with like finding ourselves is desirable and attractive, and how
8:33
Speaker 1: that's disruptive when we don't have that because of homophobia, transphobia,
8:36
Speaker 1: et cetera. I love that you brought up the mirror
8:39
Speaker 1: and asking people if they would date themselves. In Greek mythology,
8:42
Speaker 1: there is a person named Narcissus, and he was so
8:46
Speaker 1: infatuated with his beauty that he There different interpretations. I
8:52
Speaker 1: will say he drowned in himself. Other people say he
8:55
Speaker 1: starved to death because he was still in love with himself.
8:58
Speaker 1: People have taken this idea and said, well, it's because
9:01
Speaker 1: he was queer, and like, that's the only man that
9:02
Speaker 1: he could find to love him. But what people never
9:05
Speaker 1: talk about is narcissist is a white man staring at himself.
9:08
Speaker 1: And I think white gay men, queer man especially have
9:11
Speaker 1: been given the runway, the ability to fall in love
9:14
Speaker 1: and find love that looks a lot like them. I'm
9:16
Speaker 1: not saying it's a good love. I'm not saying it's
9:18
Speaker 1: perfect love, but they find it, and then we have
9:20
Speaker 1: a culture that really props it up. Black queer men
9:23
Speaker 1: do not. I think black people are never given that
9:26
Speaker 1: mirror to say you are beautiful, you deserve to love yourself.
9:30
Speaker 1: And it feels every time when you're telling that story,
9:33
Speaker 1: it makes me think about the cultural violence we deal with,
9:35
Speaker 1: Like we were set up to not get there. How
9:38
Speaker 1: do you deal with hearing those stories of people saying
9:40
Speaker 1: they don't love themselves that would say that, like as
9:43
Speaker 1: black were people, as black transfolks, we have to create
9:46
Speaker 1: those mirrors, Whereas I think that like white men get
9:49
Speaker 1: the opportunity to see it's themselves so easily reflected in
9:53
Speaker 1: the world around them as desirable and as wanted, we
9:56
Speaker 1: have to kind of like create the art, the shows,
9:58
Speaker 1: the all these things to bring ourselves in that space.
10:02
Speaker 1: It's always hard for me to hear that black who.
10:05
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm in a different place with it now
10:07
Speaker 1: because I've heard it so much and I understand where
10:10
Speaker 1: it comes from and I understand the roots. But I
10:12
Speaker 1: will tell you that in my early days doing counseling,
10:15
Speaker 1: it used to be such a big trigger for me.
10:17
Speaker 1: I'll never forget. You know, this person is no longer
10:19
Speaker 1: with us, But I remember one time in a group,
10:21
Speaker 1: a young person saying, I know why my life never
10:25
Speaker 1: goes well. This is a black trans person. They were like,
10:28
Speaker 1: it's because, you know God, I'm not in God's favor.
10:30
Speaker 1: God doesn't favor me, and I know that's why the
10:34
Speaker 1: bad things happened to me. I know that's why I
10:36
Speaker 1: get treated this way. And I've accepted that and that
10:40
Speaker 1: message I heard that so much. Defining yourself desirable and
10:45
Speaker 1: lovable was something that I think. That's I know some
10:47
Speaker 1: of those young people and some and some of those
10:49
Speaker 1: folks never got a chance to really explore you know. Um,
10:52
Speaker 1: So it is rough. It is rough to hear it.
10:56
Speaker 1: Let's sit without for a second. I'm not in God's favor.
11:00
Speaker 1: Those five short words hold so much power, but it
11:03
Speaker 1: helps us see where that deep rooted self hatred can
11:06
Speaker 1: stem from within the lgbt Q plus community. And when
11:10
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves this, that we are destined for bad
11:12
Speaker 1: things to happen to us, things begin to snowball. That's
11:16
Speaker 1: when we start to see the secrecy where the shame
11:19
Speaker 1: begins to manifest into violence. And that's especially true with
11:22
Speaker 1: black trans women, who are the most vulnerable when we
11:25
Speaker 1: can seal and hide who we really are and who
11:28
Speaker 1: we love. That this thing is important to really center
11:33
Speaker 1: the experiences of black trains women and how challenging that
11:36
Speaker 1: is for them to navigate these men who can be
11:38
Speaker 1: both their lovers and also potentially provide a really big
11:41
Speaker 1: threat to their livelihood, you know, for the for the
11:44
Speaker 1: men who do these terrible things, these who commit these
11:47
Speaker 1: acts of murder and violence. You know, you definitely see
11:50
Speaker 1: how it's deeply connected to like toxic masculinity right there,
11:53
Speaker 1: Like this deep fear of I don't know who I am,
11:58
Speaker 1: and so I have to destroy you, because to destroy you,
12:01
Speaker 1: I will somehow destroy that within myself because I can't
12:04
Speaker 1: contend with the discomfort, the dissonance that it produces within
12:08
Speaker 1: myself around who I think I am. Right, So much
12:11
Speaker 1: of It is that fear of being found out so
12:13
Speaker 1: much of that that that idea that like my manhood is,
12:16
Speaker 1: my masculinity is the core of who I am. So
12:18
Speaker 1: now me having sex with you, me being attracted to you,
12:22
Speaker 1: disrupts that very centered notion. And so if I don't
12:25
Speaker 1: have someone else helping me build a different bedrock of
12:27
Speaker 1: who I am, then the act of engaging you begins
12:30
Speaker 1: to unravel that and and me too, and trying to
12:33
Speaker 1: clamor back and hold onto that. I'm going to do
12:35
Speaker 1: whatever it takes to kind of reground, which might mean
12:38
Speaker 1: violence and harm, so so that I can no longer
12:41
Speaker 1: have to feel that feeling of distress, you know what
12:43
Speaker 1: I mean. And that's what's happening a lot all black
12:45
Speaker 1: men in this country, and I would say, oh man,
12:47
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna speak to black men have been socialized
12:49
Speaker 1: with the most terrible and disgusting thing you can be
12:52
Speaker 1: is queer or trans right. And whether you're queer TRANSI
12:55
Speaker 1: strate you receive that message. And for a lot of
12:58
Speaker 1: straight men are in who identify a straight seeing us
13:03
Speaker 1: in the world represents that kind of wound that they
13:05
Speaker 1: may have received when they were told to stifle the
13:08
Speaker 1: queerness of the transniscent themselves to suffocate the softness in themselves,
13:12
Speaker 1: to suffocate the femininity. And then you see someone existing
13:15
Speaker 1: in this way that you have been beaten down for generations,
13:18
Speaker 1: and of course it activates that memory, that feeling of
13:21
Speaker 1: oh my god, like, what the hell is he doing
13:23
Speaker 1: wearing that dress? What is she doing looking like that?
13:25
Speaker 1: You know? I mean what happened to me was I
13:28
Speaker 1: had I got beat up by the kids, I got
13:30
Speaker 1: beatn up by my father, I got like assaulted, right,
13:33
Speaker 1: and that trauma. I then took that trauma on and
13:36
Speaker 1: I replicated it because I wanted to fit in with
13:38
Speaker 1: the guys. So like now when I said, instead of
13:40
Speaker 1: like um, honoring my softness and trying to fight for it,
13:43
Speaker 1: I assimilate into this rigidity and I and I helped
13:47
Speaker 1: I joined the police force around softness and femininity and
13:50
Speaker 1: and gender variance. Right, And that's what happens on the streets,
13:53
Speaker 1: That's what happens in our community. So often, the inability
13:56
Speaker 1: to go internal to ask themselves weight hold on, I
13:59
Speaker 1: see you, and this feeling is awakened within me. My
14:02
Speaker 1: response is a man has been taught there Like if
14:04
Speaker 1: I destroy you I won't feel that. It's like if
14:06
Speaker 1: I see a trans person or a quick person and
14:08
Speaker 1: all these feelings come up in me, but then you
14:11
Speaker 1: see and you're like, oh girl, work you know what
14:13
Speaker 1: I mean? Like, you know, the response is about something
14:15
Speaker 1: in me. But men haven't been taught to men and
14:17
Speaker 1: masterl and folks in this country have not been taught
14:19
Speaker 1: to go within and see, like, what is that disruption
14:21
Speaker 1: in me about? They've been taught to go outside and
14:24
Speaker 1: squash it so they don't have to feel it within themselves.
14:26
Speaker 1: You know, when you're the adult fourty year old who's
14:29
Speaker 1: having that experience and you're seeing trans queer people and
14:31
Speaker 1: you're having those emotions, you've likely gone through forty plus
14:34
Speaker 1: years of gender socialization, which I have like taught you
14:37
Speaker 1: to disconnect, to cut off, to dismember your emotional self.
14:42
Speaker 1: You know, I often tell the story about, you know,
14:44
Speaker 1: my godson and many of the kids I've loved and
14:46
Speaker 1: support throughout my life. My godson learning how to walk
14:49
Speaker 1: and like falling and being like, you know, like and
14:51
Speaker 1: me coddling him, and immediately his father coming in and
14:54
Speaker 1: being like he gonna grow up to be a punk,
14:56
Speaker 1: let him cry, like you gotta put him down, you know,
14:58
Speaker 1: he gotta learn how to be a man. Like that
15:01
Speaker 1: person who's forty years old who's on the street and
15:03
Speaker 1: sees that trans and queer person and has that emotional reaction.
15:06
Speaker 1: Is it's often the same person who received the message
15:08
Speaker 1: as a toddler to man up and suffocate your feelings.
15:13
Speaker 1: And so now you've done that for decades, and so
15:15
Speaker 1: you don't have the emotional self reflection because you've been
15:18
Speaker 1: taught to press it down. Whereas a lot of like
15:20
Speaker 1: I say, a lot of women in film and queer people,
15:23
Speaker 1: we often develop emotional self flexivity out of shame um,
15:28
Speaker 1: out of being held responsible for other people's feelings, particularly women,
15:30
Speaker 1: like you're responsible for everybody's feelings about you, or out
15:34
Speaker 1: of like safety hyper vigilance. We've got to know what
15:36
Speaker 1: people are feeling because he might be transphobic, he might
15:39
Speaker 1: be queer. So we're very cognizant of those things. Whereas
15:42
Speaker 1: when you're when you're you know, traditionally masculine and many men,
15:45
Speaker 1: you may not develop the same faculties. Just like with
15:50
Speaker 1: his godson, Yola's work has helped so many people, strangers
15:54
Speaker 1: and family alike, look within and be empathetic, but just
15:57
Speaker 1: like he can connect with people through his art and
16:00
Speaker 1: his work, I was curious to hear about his own
16:02
Speaker 1: story of domestic violence because Yolo is an artist, he's
16:06
Speaker 1: educated and introspective, and sometimes it's easy to forget that
16:11
Speaker 1: this can happen to anyone, and that is why it's
16:13
Speaker 1: so helpful to hear the stories of others. You Know.
16:19
Speaker 1: One thing I say is that for black queer men,
16:21
Speaker 1: our threshold for what we understand violence to be can
16:24
Speaker 1: be very high. We're used to being in such vaulatile environments,
16:28
Speaker 1: whether it's with each other or just the way the
16:30
Speaker 1: world relates to us, that we don't always recognize certain
16:33
Speaker 1: dimensions of violence as violence because it's like it's, oh,
16:35
Speaker 1: we didn't hit you in the head, so it's not
16:37
Speaker 1: that bad, and it's like, well, actually, there were a
16:39
Speaker 1: lot of things happening here right. I met a person
16:42
Speaker 1: at a point in my life where I was post um,
16:47
Speaker 1: suicidal attempt, low self esteem. I had um left USC
16:51
Speaker 1: where I started my social work degree and felt like
16:54
Speaker 1: I failed, and I was feeling that who I was
16:59
Speaker 1: was not viable and that I need to be something else.
17:03
Speaker 1: And I met this person who was in a different
17:05
Speaker 1: part of their journey. We connected in a relationship, and
17:10
Speaker 1: in that relationship they showed up in ways that they
17:15
Speaker 1: were working through their things, and I showed up in
17:16
Speaker 1: ways in which I was working through my things, you know.
17:19
Speaker 1: And I think it's so important. I try to say
17:21
Speaker 1: this consistently because I think it's so important to talk
17:23
Speaker 1: about domestic violence. He is not a boogeyman. That's like
17:27
Speaker 1: what I said when I when I worked in men
17:28
Speaker 1: Stopping violence, the men that I helped um learn new
17:31
Speaker 1: behaviors were like our brothers, our uncles, are cousins. These
17:33
Speaker 1: were men who are learned terrible things and had sometimes
17:35
Speaker 1: done terrible things. But they were not boogeymen. They were
17:38
Speaker 1: human beings who often were survivors themselves. And so the
17:42
Speaker 1: man that I met, you know, was the survivor of
17:44
Speaker 1: a lot of violence and harm. But I developed coping
17:47
Speaker 1: strategies that replicated that harm in many really destructive and
17:49
Speaker 1: harmful ways to me. And I learned I had learned
17:53
Speaker 1: in my life, and I showed up in that relationship.
17:57
Speaker 1: The ways in which I seen modeled by caregivers in
17:59
Speaker 1: my life was to be, you know, the people pleaser,
18:02
Speaker 1: which was to like try to please you as much.
18:04
Speaker 1: Was just trying to placate you, to make you, you know,
18:07
Speaker 1: as happy as much as I could, Like, you know,
18:09
Speaker 1: my father is a different man now, but my father
18:12
Speaker 1: was explosive. He had a temper when he was younger,
18:15
Speaker 1: and that's something we all talked about. And I fell
18:17
Speaker 1: into a role that I had seen modeled where I
18:20
Speaker 1: would assume that his anger was about me, as opposed
18:23
Speaker 1: to he needs to learn how to manage his anger.
18:25
Speaker 1: He had suffered so much harm and so much pain,
18:29
Speaker 1: and thought that if I make myself bigger, then I
18:32
Speaker 1: will not be hurt, which is what the yelling and
18:34
Speaker 1: screaming and in the in the the attacking is about.
18:37
Speaker 1: Like I feel small, so I need to make myself
18:39
Speaker 1: as big as possible and threaten you to to feel safe.
18:42
Speaker 1: And so we were in a dynamic that was really um,
18:45
Speaker 1: you know, toxic and really volatile, and a lot of
18:48
Speaker 1: terrible things happened, and you know, um, it's not one
18:52
Speaker 1: of my product moments in my life. I recognized the
18:55
Speaker 1: ways in which I played into that dynamic, the ways
18:58
Speaker 1: in which I could have left. But I also see
19:00
Speaker 1: how my trauma kept me engaged it was a really
19:03
Speaker 1: difficult time for me. I realized how much me and
19:06
Speaker 1: him were living in shame and how that shame was
19:09
Speaker 1: propelling that entire dynamic. And I often tell the story
19:12
Speaker 1: too that, like, I started going to therapy, and I
19:15
Speaker 1: never forget the biggest shift that changed that relationship was
19:17
Speaker 1: when I was in therapy and she sat down and
19:21
Speaker 1: she asked me to close my eyes and go through
19:22
Speaker 1: this practice where she was like, I want you to
19:25
Speaker 1: imagine yourself as a little child and what you're feeling
19:28
Speaker 1: right now as a little child in yourself. And I
19:30
Speaker 1: saw myself as this little child who was this kind
19:33
Speaker 1: of crying in the corner, who was just really hurt
19:36
Speaker 1: and scared and afraid. She instructed me to imagine myself
19:40
Speaker 1: as an adult going to pick up that child and
19:42
Speaker 1: protect that child, and protecting that child from the experience
19:47
Speaker 1: that we're having, which in my vision was that person's temper,
19:50
Speaker 1: that person's volatility, that person's rage. And I imagine myself
19:55
Speaker 1: standing up to that person, and as I did that,
19:57
Speaker 1: that person's face faded into my father's face, which was
20:01
Speaker 1: such a deep psychological thing for me, like because it
20:04
Speaker 1: was really showing the ways in which I was reliving
20:07
Speaker 1: the pattern that has seen imprinted, where I was trying
20:09
Speaker 1: to please a man the way I try to please
20:11
Speaker 1: my father, as opposed to knowing this man needs to
20:13
Speaker 1: get help, that it's not about me. What are some
20:17
Speaker 1: reasons you see people make, rationality make to stay in
20:21
Speaker 1: these cycles. There are so many reasons that people stay
20:24
Speaker 1: in abusive relationships, and they're all connected to so many
20:27
Speaker 1: different things, from capitalism to economics, to fear, to real desirability,
20:32
Speaker 1: to to their own kind of psyche and the things
20:34
Speaker 1: they're navigating. And I think that um for folks who
20:38
Speaker 1: you know, if you're listening and you find yourself in
20:40
Speaker 1: that space, because I've been there, you know, and I've
20:42
Speaker 1: been in that space when I ask myself why am
20:44
Speaker 1: I still here? And and having an intellectual understanding of
20:47
Speaker 1: why I'm still here but still but like you should leave,
20:49
Speaker 1: but still there because my body is in it and
20:52
Speaker 1: I don't have community support to help move me beyond it.
20:55
Speaker 1: You know. I think that like one thing that happens
20:57
Speaker 1: for a lot of folks who are going through that
21:00
Speaker 1: and trying to figure their way through it and trying
21:02
Speaker 1: to find out how love feels for them. And then
21:04
Speaker 1: they get abandoned by their friends and their loved ones,
21:06
Speaker 1: and they get isolated further by that person in that relationship,
21:08
Speaker 1: which is not helpful. What a lot of us who
21:11
Speaker 1: are in those dynamics needs sometimes someone to be present
21:14
Speaker 1: with us, not from a place of shaming, but from
21:18
Speaker 1: a place of this is happening, and I love you
21:20
Speaker 1: and I care for you. I'm going to be here
21:22
Speaker 1: for you. I want different for you, and I'm here
21:25
Speaker 1: to support you and how that could happen when you're
21:26
Speaker 1: ready or however we can support you in that piece.
21:29
Speaker 1: I got that at some point, but I didn't have
21:31
Speaker 1: that for a lot part of that journey, you know.
21:33
Speaker 1: And I think that a lot of our folks who
21:35
Speaker 1: are struggling don't have that for a lot of reasons.
21:38
Speaker 1: And the risk of being killed, particularly for women. I
21:40
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of data for that for queer
21:42
Speaker 1: men and trans women, but like for since women, we
21:44
Speaker 1: know that, like the likelihood of getting killed after you
21:46
Speaker 1: leave goes up, the threat of violence goes up, right,
21:49
Speaker 1: So there's like this real deep seated fear. And I
21:52
Speaker 1: think that like when we shift the focus onto why
21:53
Speaker 1: does he do that? And why do his community allow
21:56
Speaker 1: him to do that, because we all know folks and
21:59
Speaker 1: we have known elks who are like he is abusive
22:01
Speaker 1: emotionally physically, and we don't. We're still learning how to intervene,
22:06
Speaker 1: how to support, like a lot of times, and you know,
22:08
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of these kind of like transform
22:10
Speaker 1: of justice spaces, and people think that, like, I want
22:12
Speaker 1: to be loyal to my friends, so I want to
22:14
Speaker 1: deny that he's really capable of doing that. And I
22:16
Speaker 1: have to tell people that, like, being loyal to your
22:18
Speaker 1: friend is saying I love you, I'm here for you,
22:21
Speaker 1: and I'm here to help you reveal your behaviors and
22:23
Speaker 1: your choices and help you stop any patterns that are
22:26
Speaker 1: creating harm for you, are for anyone else. And that
22:28
Speaker 1: is loyalty and that is love. It's not denying that
22:31
Speaker 1: you're that, oh he's a good person. It's not about
22:33
Speaker 1: good and bad people. It's about people who have coping
22:36
Speaker 1: strategies and and tactics they have developed to survive our
22:40
Speaker 1: cope with a variety of different things. And I think
22:42
Speaker 1: we need to we need to help people understand that
22:44
Speaker 1: loyalty is intervention is saying I see this and I
22:48
Speaker 1: want you to stop this behavior as opposed to like
22:50
Speaker 1: you're too good and you can never do that, which
22:52
Speaker 1: is not helpful. I love this idea of accountability as
22:57
Speaker 1: loyalty because Yolo is beyond loyal to community, to his family,
23:01
Speaker 1: to himself. I wanted to know more about Being and
23:04
Speaker 1: why he decided to create the space and show up
23:07
Speaker 1: with love and support in this way. So, you know,
23:12
Speaker 1: as the executive director of Being, which is the Black
23:14
Speaker 1: Emotional Mental Health Collective, you know, our organization is really
23:17
Speaker 1: focused on mental health broadly, but we definitely address, of
23:20
Speaker 1: course the intersections of HIV or substanties of transphobia and
23:23
Speaker 1: all these different dimensions you know UM. My first work
23:27
Speaker 1: was in queer communities doing any kind of pure counseling
23:29
Speaker 1: or counseling work, and so of course HIV, you know,
23:33
Speaker 1: UM was always a present topic. And one of the
23:37
Speaker 1: things that was always a constant theme was the ways
23:39
Speaker 1: in which people who were UM, either newly diagnosed or
23:42
Speaker 1: navigating UM living with HIV felt that living with HIV
23:46
Speaker 1: diminished their worth, of their value as human beings, made
23:50
Speaker 1: them less than and that was that was hard for
23:53
Speaker 1: me because one of my core wounds is around worthiness,
23:56
Speaker 1: around being good enough and less than and and um
24:00
Speaker 1: seeing how that belief and the HIV stigma continue to
24:05
Speaker 1: perpetuate that belief, it really became like activating peace for
24:11
Speaker 1: me to be, for my friends and myself, for my community,
24:13
Speaker 1: to really change the narrative that like, you know, living
24:16
Speaker 1: with HIV and worthy, right, Like you know what I
24:17
Speaker 1: mean that like that this this is not a reflection
24:19
Speaker 1: of our worth or our value. This is a reflection
24:21
Speaker 1: of the ignorance of the world that we live in, right,
24:24
Speaker 1: And I think that would like seeing so many young
24:28
Speaker 1: queer people that I've lost because otherwise the stigma talked
24:32
Speaker 1: into their lives, weren't valuable, and they stopped taking medication,
24:34
Speaker 1: and they stopped caring for themselves. Seeing the ways in
24:36
Speaker 1: which it had just um disrupted so much opportunities for
24:40
Speaker 1: love and intimacy and other queer folks life in my
24:43
Speaker 1: own life, you know, it was always pivotal for me,
24:45
Speaker 1: for me to make sure that we are always explicit
24:47
Speaker 1: about educating around HIV and AIDS and supportive people living
24:50
Speaker 1: with HIV around the real mental health challenges that the
24:53
Speaker 1: stigma brings in this country. You know, you you as
24:57
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about what I'm taking away from our our
25:00
Speaker 1: conversation today, it just brings you to this idea that
25:04
Speaker 1: you know, young Zach, little Zach who was so afraid
25:07
Speaker 1: of people seeing me, seeing me Swiss, or seeing me
25:10
Speaker 1: like beat you, black and white space, all these things
25:13
Speaker 1: that like I wish I could go back and say no, no,
25:15
Speaker 1: be seen, be your full self, show up, and that's
25:17
Speaker 1: where you will find happiness. And it feels like your
25:19
Speaker 1: work is so much about telling people that, sure, you
25:24
Speaker 1: may have been through domestic found situation, but like, show
25:26
Speaker 1: up and be seen in that. Sure you may have
25:28
Speaker 1: an HP, positive starters, show up, it's okay, it's okay,
25:31
Speaker 1: it's okay, Okay, you are okay. And I just want
25:34
Speaker 1: to thank you for that. Talking with Yolo such a
25:39
Speaker 1: breath of fresh air, because despite everything he's been through,
25:42
Speaker 1: all his work, all the support he brings to others
25:45
Speaker 1: that are in dark and desolate places, he is still
25:48
Speaker 1: so hopeful. I'm hopeful because I know that a lot
25:53
Speaker 1: of us the world that we want is here in
25:55
Speaker 1: small pockets. I'm hoping that we can make it bigger
25:58
Speaker 1: and larger. And I and I know I've seen I've
26:00
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to be a community across the country
26:03
Speaker 1: with so many black and brown healers doing dope work,
26:07
Speaker 1: I know, I know the other world as possible. I
26:10
Speaker 1: feel it. It's here, and so I know that for
26:12
Speaker 1: black queer men, for black non binary folks, with black
26:15
Speaker 1: trans women, we can feel differently in our bodies so
26:17
Speaker 1: we can be loved and supported. It takes practice, and
26:19
Speaker 1: it takes failure, and it takes effort, But I know
26:22
Speaker 1: it because I've seen it and I've lived it, and
26:24
Speaker 1: I'm a product of it, you know. And would it
26:26
Speaker 1: be the purple galaxy that you got right and think about?
26:31
Speaker 1: We'll see if it's maybe maybe it's purple galaxy. I
26:33
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, but I imagine it's a
26:35
Speaker 1: lot of different visions from a lot of different folks
26:37
Speaker 1: that we just kind of share, co craft and co create.
26:40
Speaker 1: For me as a visual person that I did that
26:42
Speaker 1: queer black freedom equity, you know, just peace is a
26:47
Speaker 1: purple galaxy. I think it's a beautiful idea. As a writer, philosopher,
26:54
Speaker 1: and community leader, you'll creates space with so much love
26:57
Speaker 1: and care. But it's his story that stands out the
27:00
Speaker 1: most because he was raised with these values that I
27:03
Speaker 1: think a lot of us were raised in with people
27:06
Speaker 1: and in homes that try their best to protect us,
27:09
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to see that despite those efforts, for
27:11
Speaker 1: better or worse, he was still hurt in ways that
27:14
Speaker 1: are terrible, in ways that no person should be hurt.
27:17
Speaker 1: But although this pain marked him deeply, I love the
27:20
Speaker 1: idea that we can touch others through our own stories,
27:23
Speaker 1: even if they're not pretty. Gull's work has reached and
27:26
Speaker 1: connected with people far outside the l g B t
27:29
Speaker 1: Q plus community, and it shows that the issues of violence, pain,
27:33
Speaker 1: mental and physical health are not unique to a specific group,
27:37
Speaker 1: and it offers a new idea or way of thinking
27:40
Speaker 1: that if pain can be this universal, this familiar, then maybe,
27:44
Speaker 1: just maybe the healing journey can be similar to We
27:52
Speaker 1: are so excited for you to be here for season
27:54
Speaker 1: two of In the Deep Stories That Shape Us. Keep
27:57
Speaker 1: coming back every other week and taking these power full
28:00
Speaker 1: stories of Black and Latins people as they take us
28:02
Speaker 1: on their own healing journeys. In the Deep Stories That
28:06
Speaker 1: Shape Us is executive produced by myself, Zach Stafford, and
28:09
Speaker 1: Ivan Chian and mastered by James Foster and our writer
28:13
Speaker 1: is Yvette Lopez. A shout out to our guest Yolo
28:16
Speaker 1: Achille Robinson,