My answers to my interview: I came out in 2017 at the age of 25. I was raised in Magnolia Springs, AL where I learned from friends and neighbors that gay people are disgusting, crazy sinners. I had no reference for any other identity beyond traditional southern gender roles and what I could pull from media, which in the 1990s and 2000s was either tokenizing and prejudiced, or taboo in my community. My experience with the queer community was similar to the recount of Barbara Gittings in her partner Kay Tobin Lahusen's book, "The Gay Crusaders" "...there were basically two types of women in gay bars, the so-called butch ones in short hair and masculine attire and the so-called femme ones in dresses and high heels and makeup." The only difference for me, there were no gay bars and like Barbara, I was neither of these women. Anyone who may have identified as queer in my town were either ridiculed or hidden, I couldn't have imagined anything as complex as the person I am today.
