﻿Lane Cunningham Narrator
Andrea Jenkins Interviewer 
 
The Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies University of Minnesota 
August 11, 2015 
 
The Transgender Oral History Project of the Upper Midwest will empower individuals to tell their story, while providing students, historians, and the public with a more rich foundation of primary source material about the transgender community. The project is part of the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota. The archive provides a record of GLBT thought, knowledge and culture for current and future generations and is available to students, researchers and members of the public. 
The Transgender Oral History Project will collect up to 400 hours of oral histories involving 200 to 300 individuals over the next three years. Major efforts will be the recruitment of individuals of all ages and experiences, and documenting the work of The Program in Human Sexuality. This project will be led by Andrea Jenkins, poet, writer, and trans-activist. Andrea brings years of experience working in government, non-profits and LGBT organizations. If you are interested in being involved in this exciting project, please contact Andrea. 
Andrea Jenkins jenki120@umn.edu (612) 625-4379 
 
Andrea Jenkins -AJ 
Lance Cunningham -LC 
 
 
AJ: My name is Andrea Jenkins and I am the transgender oral historian for the Transgender Oral History Project. Today is August 11, 2015, and I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself. State your name, preferred pronouns, gender identity and gender assigned at birth. 
 
LC: My name is Lane Cunningham, my preferred pronouns are he and him, and my gender identity is trans masculine/male. I was assigned female at birth.  
 
AJ: Thank you. I really appreciate you coming in today for this interview. Lane, can you tell me just a little bit about your earliest memory, period?  
 
LC: My earliest memory would have been when I was maybe three or four and my mom and I lived together in a duplex on Clark Lane in Columbia, Missouri. She would let me play outside in the yard by myself and she was maybe doing dishes at the kitchen sink with a window overlooking the front yard. I was outside in the gravel driveway and it was just after a heavy downpour and I had my rain boots on, my goulashes, and I was traipsing through the puddles and the mud and I got down to the end of the driveway and the gravel kind of receded and it was just all mud. I stepped into the mud and I was in the center of this mud puddle and I could not get my feet out of the mud. So I was stuck there in the middle of it and I was panicking and I was waving and my mom later tells me that when I was going like this, she thought that I was just waving “hi” to her and she was just like, “Hi,” and I’m like, “Ahh, I’m stuck.” So, that’s probably my earliest memory. 
 
AJ: Wow, fun. So there was fear – you kind of panicked a little bit? 
 
LC: Oh yeah. For some reason it didn’t occur to me that I could just take my feet out of the boots, I was like, “I’ve got to stay here in these boots.”  
 
AJ: Well you were three or four. 
 
LC: Exactly. 
 
AJ: Tell me a little about where you went to elementary school. 
 
LC: So I went to a few different elementary schools. I started off at Benton and actually ended up switching schools out of Benton because I got bullied on the bus a lot. So switched schools, and this was in the middle of st grade, to Russell Blvd Elementary. That was a good school from what I can remember. Generally speaking I was always kind of the precocious kid who would get their work done really quickly and then bother all the other kids in class, build towers with markers in the center of the classroom, and my teachers were pulling their hair out trying to figure out what to do with me. I have a couple of teachers from elementary school that I was really fond of. I was kind of troubled when I was young, all through my younger years actually.  But there were some teachers who really . . . I could tell even though I was frustrating for them, 
they really kind of reached out to me and showed me that they cared about me and put in that extra effort despite their frustrations. So that really meant a lot.  
 
AJ: Tell me a little bit about the bullying. What was that experience like? Were they calling you names? Were they making fun of your hair color? What do you think that was around? 
 
LC: One particular incident on the bus after school was . . . it may have even been within the first couple of weeks of st grade starting, and I went back about three-quarters of the way to the back of the bus and tried to have a seat and then these two older girls, I think they may have been in th grade, kind of file in after me and push me down into the seat and they start putting their fist in my face and telling me that if I don’t say a bad word, and then they would tell me which one to say, then they were going to beat me up. So then they kept saying that until I would say it and then when I would say it, they’d be like, “Oh, you said a bad word” – like humiliating me essentially. And then the bus driver . . . they kept shoving me back down into the seat and the bus driver eventually had to come and break it up and brought me to the front seat, sitting behind him. But the little boy who ended up sitting next to me, kicked my shin the entire way home and I just sat there and took it – I don’t know why I felt like I couldn’t say anything. So that happened. I don’t know what it was in particular that made me an easier target for bullying than anyone else. I think maybe I was just . . . despite the precociousness, I was also really sweet and kind of trusting.  
 
AJ: So you don’t think it was necessarily around gender identity issues at that point in time? 
 
LC: Well, I actually hadn’t thought about it but it could have been because I definitely was never a frilly girl when I identified as a girl. I always gravitated toward wearing things that were from the boy’s section of clothes in department stores and from Walmart. And so it definitely could have been that. I think that with younger children it’s hard for them to articulate their discomfort when they see someone that’s kind of bucking the norm that they’re used to. It’s definitely possible that that impacted their perception about me and why they needed to sort of oppress me in some way.  
 
AJ: So, you talked a little bit about your mom and growing up, but what was your home environment like? Did you have brothers and sisters, siblings? 
 
LC: Yeah, so my parents got a divorce before I was born and my dad, shortly after, remarried and had two children with my ex-stepmother, I now have a new stepmother, a very blended family.  My brother, George, and my sister, Katie, between my ex-stepmother, Melissa, and my father.  And then when I was nine, my mother remarried my current stepfather, Gerald, and between them there are two girls, Maddie and Audrey, my sisters. So I mostly lived with my mother growing up and I would visit my dad on the holidays. There were a couple year periods and stints where I would stay with my dad, I lived up in Michigan with him for a period of about two years or so in middle school. 
 
AJ: What was that like, in Michigan? 
 
LC: What was it like? It was very rural. We lived outside of town, outside of a town called Mount Pleasant. Mount Pleasant was already a small town itself, so being on the outskirts . . . in fact, so far out that we ended up going to a charter school which was drawing in kids from all the different small country towns in that area. That school, I think it’s since been shut down, but it was honestly kind of a joke. For that two years that I went to school there, I really didn’t learn a whole lot. I just kind of hung out with my friends and the teachers, they didn’t really care. So yeah, that was definitely an interesting situation. I got to experience some fun things at the time that maybe I wouldn’t have if there had been more authority, I don’t know. Looking back I think that it was really unfortunate. 
 
AJ: You probably got really good grades.  
 
LC: Right, really good grades if they don’t care at all. “Yeah, that’s an A.” During Spanish class I remember the teacher would sit there, he would put on a movie dubbed in Spanish while he sat over his computer looking at God knows what – every class, the entire school year. I always felt just this kind of nagging feeling, though, that there was something kind of below the surface for me. In my social relationships, there was just this kind of disconnect where I felt like there was a part of me that I wasn’t able to really talk about with my friends - at around that age and when I was living in Michigan when I was going through puberty and experiencing some changes in my body that were making me uncomfortable. I felt especially uncomfortable because I was coming to this realization that I didn’t feel comfortable the way that my body was turning out and didn’t really understand how to put words to that. Growing up, there was no . . . there was no history project, there were no popular stories that I could have heard that would have provided me with some amount of comfort. So I was really isolated in that sense too. 
 
AJ: So this was around or ?  
 
LC: Twelve or , yeah.  
 
AJ: So, when was the first time that you realized that you felt different from the gender you were assigned at birth? 
 
LC: Well, my mom has said, and continues to say, that I always used to tell her when I was younger, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a boy.” I don’t recall that, but she never really pushed back too hard against any of that. I had trouble with that at my dad’s but at my mom’s, and I was primarily with her, she was mostly just supportive of me just expressing myself creatively and letting me pick out my own clothes, she never put any restrictions on that or the kinds of toys that I played with or how I behaved. She was pretty chill about that. I think the first time that I realized that something was different was when I was at my dad’s, I must have been . . . I want to say 7 years old, and my brother would have been and it was on a hot summer day and our friend Levi was over playing and my brother and Levi were out in the side yard running around and they were just wearing shorts, no shirt or anything, and so I step outside and I take off my shirt and I start running around with them and then all of a sudden I hear my stepmother call down to me that I need to come inside. I go inside and she tells me that I need to put on a shirt because I’m a girl. At that moment, I experienced a few different things. First of all, just kind of . . . like the first kind of awareness of the sexualization of my body, as a then female-identified person, that even at a young age I couldn’t escape just this sort of . . . the shame, I think, that comes with that too. Like, you need to hide your body, first of all, but then also that I felt much more connected with the spirit of my brother and Levi than I knew was being implied by what my stepmom was telling me that I needed to do or telling me about myself. She’s basically saying, “You’re a girl so you don’t get to do that.” That just didn’t sit right with me, it didn’t feel right.  
 
AJ: So your first recognition was around 7 years old?  
 
LC: Yeah. 
 
AJ: What terms do you use to describe yourself now? How has that changed over time, if at all? 
 
LC: That’s a good question. So, I currently use male, man, trans masculine. I also use gender queer.  I would say that I’m masculine of center but I also have this fluid tendency where I’ll wake up and I’ll just feel this kind of a shift in my spirit or presence for however long – sometimes it lasts a few days, sometimes it lasts a half a day, or sometimes it will last longer than that. There are multiple dimensions happening inside of, and around, my gender. Prior to now . . . I feel like I went through a phase when I first came out. Well, there are levels to my coming out. When I first started transitioning, which was about four years ago now, I, at that point, felt very much identified with masculinity. I felt like there was this element of performativity that would affirm my gender. I feel like there is truth in that, that it’s easier for me to walk through . . . or not easier, it’s . . . so I was attempting to achieve a social norm of masculine performance that I feel like wasn’t necessarily natural and was very much focused on the physical presentation of my gender and focused on the physical aspect of it. I think primarily because that’s, for some folks like myself, that’s just part of the transition process but also what’s interesting about it is up until that point it was very much just this kind of inner-manifestation that what wasn’t able to express itself fully until I made that choice to step into that energy of transitioning of my identity, of what I needed to do. When I was a teenager I was always kind of more masculine presenting. I identified as kind of an androgynous lesbian at that point and then, like I said, when I transitioned I went hard into that – like I’ve got to be this super-butch guy. Then after doing some exploration, some meditation, and kind of feeling out my gender and what feels most natural and a way to express it, to talk about it, and also doing research about masculinity just in general and just kind of the construction of it and trying to pick apart what feels best for me from what society is telling me I should do as a masculine-identified person. 
 
AJ: Wow, that’s fascinating. I’m really interested in a couple of terms that you used – gender queer, and then you talked about this fluidity and it seemed like you had some challenges thinking about it. Can you say more about those terms? 
 
LC: Yes. So, my gender queerness is . . . so my gender has many dimensions and expressions. To me, being gender queer means that I am intentionally freeing myself of the need to perform my gender in a way that society expects me to and that shows up for me where I’m just . . . I’m fully able to just express my creativity and how I dress and how I interact with people and how I speak, which frequently pushes back against what society might say is the masculine way. I just try to do . . . I just try to honor where I am at any moment in terms of my relationship with my gender, which it shifts – so when I say that it’s fluid, it’s like . . . sometimes it’s like a wading pool where it just kind of . . . the water just kind of shifts back and forth, flows back and forth easily and I can kind of tell where I’m at. And then sometimes it’s these huge arching waves where I feel like I’m being thrown about and I feel like my . . . I’m grasping for this sense of concrete identity within myself but then I’m able to settle again just . . . and realizing that I get to have this really broad and rich experience of my gender. It’s really emotional sometimes, honestly.  
 
AJ: Yeah, I imagine. Particularly you used a description of waves.  
 
LC: Yeah, that’s emotion and dream interpretation.  
 
AJ: Hm-hmm. What challenges have you faced since you began to express your true gender identity?  
 
LC: Well, first and foremost, I experienced challenges within myself. I recognize and defer to the privilege that I’m afforded for the fact that I can walk down the street and nobody is going to clock me or call me out, and that’s a lot of times easier for me to default to that instead of walking how I really feel, which maybe, on any given day, means wearing some cute little shorts and a crop top, but maybe I’ll instead put on a suit and tie just because it’s easier. There have been some . . . definitely some people, strangers, who have been rude and said cruel things and even had a couple of guys follow me when I was walking to my car from a club about a year ago.  So that was definitely scary. Honestly, the biggest challenge though really has been with myself.  I think, too, I have trouble with being present in the fluidity of my gender – that I’ll wake up one morning and say, “Why am I feeling this way today when I felt differently yesterday.” Maybe I wake up and I’m feeling more of this feminine energy, that’s the best way to describe it, but I was feeling masculine yesterday. So trying to hold on to that instead of just allowing myself to go into it. I think that that really creates a lot of emotional stress for me when I’m resisting that natural tendency. There are other challenges that, I think, too . . . back before I met my husband, that’s when I was really starting to express this more gender queer side of myself and I saw the pool of people who might be interested in me romantically dramatically decrease when I was expressing this more gender queer self and that felt really scary and lonely because I definitely love having romantic interactions with people and developing those kinds of relationships and so that was kind of unnerving. I can’t help but think too that I was also just feeling the sense of . . . continuing to carry this sense of shame I have about my identity and how I believe the right person will come along and it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or what you look like. I do believe that. But there was definitely a layer of loneliness and isolation that I felt.  
 
AJ: You mentioned husband, you’re married?  
 
LC: Yes. 
 
AJ: For how long? 
 
LC: For one month yesterday.  
 
AJ: Wow, congratulations.  
 
LC: Thank you. 
 
AJ: Congratulations, that’s quite something. So what are your thoughts about this recent ruling that the Supreme Court just laid out sort of legalizing marriage equality for all Americans? 
 
LC: Obviously I’m happy about it because my husband . . . 
 
AJ: As well you should be. 
 
LC: Yes. My husband also identifies as a male and so we would not be able to be married without marriage equality. I think it’s a monumental ruling, it’s a monumental event in history. Now it means that I’m going to have access to the same kinds of things that same sex couples didn’t have access to before and that makes me feel really happy. There’s definitely a sense of security in that. I think it’s a shame that in order to gain these privileges that people would have to engage in this sort of agreement, but nonetheless it’s working really well for me.  
 
AJ: That’s great, that’s really awesome. Do you feel that now that marriage equality is the law of the land, that the struggle for LGBT rights are over? 
 
LC: Absolutely not. There is still so much to be won. So I grew up in Columbia, Missouri and then for the past two years, before I moved to Minneapolis a month ago, I lived in St. Louis which is where . . . . 
 
AJ: For how long? 
 
LC: For two years, which is where Michael Brown was murdered last year on my birthday, August ,  . It became very apparent that, not just within our city but across the United States, that who the LGBT movement was for where the LGBT organizations basically refused to take part in supporting the community in Ferguson and were not outwardly mourning, were not expressing sympathy, empathy, anything, and were actually . . . well, I won’t go into too much detail but . . .  
 
AJ: You can, we like detail. 
 
LC: All right . . . yeah, I tried to join a diversity awareness committee for Pride St. Louis, and I’m not at liberty legally to speak about the things that were discussed or what happened, but I ultimately resigned from that position due to frustration about the dynamic within the organization which is seen throughout many LGBT orgs that are in power right now, which is the entire board is a bunch of cis white gay men making decisions for the cis white gay community.  Incredibly frustrating when intersectionality is not acknowledged, it’s a continuation of white supremacy just looking . . . in a different movement. It’s still . . . that organization, Pride St. Louis, is still really struggling a whole lot with the community right now. Since it’s been a year anniversary since then, they promised the organization that I used to be on the board with, the Metro Trans Umbrella Group in St. Louis, they were going to do a town hall with the Metro Trans Umbrella Group to talk about police brutality and trans folks and they’re . . . apparently they cancelled the town hall and since have yet to reschedule. I mean the agenda has always been privileged and there are trans folks who are living and dying on the streets and having to engage in survival sex because they can’t access the resources that they need in order to maybe even get a job or go to school, no less get the legal documents required in order to get an appropriate identification to enroll in school or get a bank account. There are all these barriers, all these basic level needs. We don’t even have a true standard of care within the medical system. I know that when I first started transitioning, I had to educate my doctor about what to do. There are so many fundamental concerns that a lot of the LGBT orgs in power right now are not listening to, so there’s a lot of work to be done.  
 
AJ: Wow. So a couple of things in what you just shared. First of all, you talked about cis, you used the term cis a couple of times – c-i-s. Can you just define that briefly for listeners who may be listening to this audiotape years from now and have no idea what cis means, or minutes from now and have no idea what cis means? 
 
LC: Yeah, right – thank you. So cisgender is someone who identifies with the biological sex assigned to them at birth. So, meaning a body comes out, there’s a penis and the doctor says, “That’s a boy.” And then they’re an adult and they still are identifying as a boy or a man. 
 
AJ: So the majority of the people on the planet, basically? 
 
LC: Yes.  
 
AJ: And it’s a way to sort of distinguish between transgender people and non-transgender people. 
 
LC: Exactly. And I think that there is also kind of a colloquialism inherent within the way that I used it just then. So when I say, “It’s run by a bunch of cis white gay men” or, “Cisgender white gay men,” what I’m saying is that they have basically no idea what it’s like to be trans, there’s kind of this implied sense of disconnect as well as the privileges that come with not having to have had the experience of being trans. So never questioning your gender, that’s probably a lot easier of a life in present social circumstances.  
 
AJ: The other thing that I was kind of interested in, I feel like I read that there were some challenges at the St. Louis Pride where people of color were disinvited from marching in the parade. Are you familiar with that at all? 
 
LC: Only on the fringe. I actually wasn’t there for Pride, but apparently, from what I know, the Black Lives Matter protestors who were marching in the parade along with the Metro Trans Umbrella Group did a die-in and then later were at the festival and security were telling them that they needed to leave and were escorting them out, and I think maybe even physically pushed someone out or led someone out of Pride. So there was definitely a tone of, “Who’s Pride is this?” And I think there are a lot of tensions right now too just because of all the, sort of, corporate takeover of Pride in St. Louis now that is really dictating these system decisions about what to allow in the parade, what to not. It’s complex and . . . yes. 
 
AJ: Pride has become a little heteronormative in some ways.  
 
LC: It is in some ways. 
 
AJ: Lane, what are some of the more positive aspects of your coming to terms with or realizing your true gender identity? 
 
LC: So personally, having come to this place where more than ever previously, I’m able to experience my gender in the way that it shows up in any given moment. I try to really honor that. I find that emotionally, while that fluidity may be a little bit stressful, actually being able to express it has enriched my life and ultimately been so much better for my mental health instead of fighting the urge to just be who I am. That’s been such a beautiful experience coming to embrace myself. And with that embracing myself also comes this access to kind of the breadth of my gifts, my talents. I feel more motivated to play music and to pursue computer programming stuff, which I’ve always been interested in but now fortunately have the opportunity to really study it. Also, just caring about my body and taking care of myself and eating healthy, working out, is very much . . . it has a direct relationship with my mental health which is ultimately better because I’m now trying really hard to honor my feelings. In my relationships with people, I felt a lot of support since I officially began my transition four years ago. So many people have shown up and are telling me that me sharing my experience or knowing me has been so positive for them, that maybe something that I’ve shared on social media, like maybe a link, reminded them of someone else that they know and so they shared that with them and it was good for them, or whatever the case may be. Just that through living authentically and not hiding myself, that that is creating more space for love and acceptance – just like all of the trans folks throughout history who were audacious enough to be who they are and took that space, I’m also able to take that too as sort of a tribute to just living authentically and how that’s a legacy. I think that’s so important for our community that we live authentic lives despite society and the people who tell us not to. So having a lot of support has been wonderful for me. My parents have been pretty supportive, since I’ve been an adult anyway, and I’ve found friends and relationships with people who have also been really accepting and supportive. And that’s, I think, really refreshing too because, you know, we were talking about the fact that there isn’t a lot of documentation about our history. I feel like when documentation started happening, it was also surrounding tragedy. So the first time I realized that I was transgender, that there was a word for it, that there was someone else who felt like me, I was in high school, I was . I was involved in the GSA, which met after schools on Wednesdays or something in a particular classroom. 
 
AJ: The Gay Straight Alliance? 
 
LC: Yeah, the Gay Straight Alliance, GSA, and the movie that we were watching that afternoon was Boys Don’t Cry. So, that’s about the story of Brandon Teena, played by Hilary Swank, from a small town. Brandon ends up meeting a girl, they fall in love and she eventually finds out that he’s trans and, unfortunately, so does her family as well. A lot of violence – emotional, physical, and otherwise ensues. It’s a tragic story. So needless to say, it kind of sucks when that’s my first identification with, “That’s me . . . ohhh.”  
 
AJ: Wow. 
 
LC: So yeah, we need to create more positive stories, we need to control the media about us.  
 
AJ: That’s kind of what this project is going to be all about. 
 
LC: Exactly. 
 
AJ: To the extent that you are comfortable, Lane, talk about some of the medical interventions that you have pursued or hope to pursue as a part of your gender transition. 
 
LC: So, I started on hormone replacement therapy, taking shots of testosterone every week, about three and a half years ago now. I had surgery to masculinize my chest, I think it was last year – in June of  . So that’s the extent of the surgeries, or medical transition, that I’ve had. If we’re talking about a continuation of my gender expression and what that will look like for me, I’m actually planning to, at some point, carry children. So that’s something that will . . . that will be a medical procedure that I’ll have as well that, in the grand scheme of genders, is noteworthy, I suppose, at this time. 
 
AJ: Yeah, I would say. So you and your husband, your spouse, are planning to have children? 
 
LC: Yes, we are. 
 
AJ: Wow, that’s incredible. And you hope to carry a child. 
 
LC: I do, yeah. I really do, I really want that experience.  
 
AJ: I would say that’s a pretty significant medical, maybe not intervention, but certainly a medical event that a lot of men don’t necessarily experience. You will be unique in that aspect – that’s great. This love and relationship . . . so you’re married to a man, so clearly your sexual identity is gay, I would say. Right? 
 
LC: In this relationship . . . this is a gay relationship. Generally I identify as pansexual, queer. I’ve always been pretty interested just in people rather than gender.  
 
AJ: Sure. So do you have a label or term or a box that you put around your sexual identity? 
 
LC: I would say probably the closest is pansexual or queer.  
 
AJ: Pansexual or queer. Two terms which are sort of vague.  
 
LC: Would you like for me to . . . ? 
 
AJ: Please. 
 
LC: Pansexual . . . so pansexual, and queer, to me when I use them to identify my sexuality, it means that it doesn’t matter what someone’s physical body looks like, that I’m more attracted to the personality, the person. I could name other things I’m personally attracted to – I like achievers, of course I like someone who is good looking but their gender doesn’t necessarily dictate that for me. And, I like someone who can make me laugh. So basically it’s not about the physical person, it’s about who they are and so that pansexual piece means that anybody is fair game – so watch out.  
 
AJ: Oh boy. This is just a whole new world. How do you feel about monogamy? You’re married but I know a lot of people who identify as pan are engaged in alternative relationships. Is that a part of your current reality? Or future reality?  
 
LC: No, naturally I’m a monogamous person. I definitely still experience attractions, I think that that is human. But, I really enjoy the experience of just committing to someone and putting all my effort there. I also am naturally introverted and so I can only imagine trying to manage two romantic relationships. For a while I dated but nothing was serious, but for the fact that I like serious relationships, one is plenty for me.  
 
AJ: Oh boy. Have there been times when someone has been really helpful or insensitive or rude in interacting with the medical community or the academic world or criminal justice system? Have you had some experiences that you feel like are either positive or negative that you would be interested in sharing?  
 
LC: Sure. Yeah, and this is kind of funny because it might not be considered best practice, what this doctor did, but I really appreciate what he did because he operated within the system in a way that he felt would meet my needs. So when I first moved to St. Louis two years ago, I started . . . I looked up what doctors would be covered under my insurance and I just kind of picked one.  The guy I ended up going to, I was the second trans person he had met and had in his office. He was very open about asking me questions about what I was comfortable with and what I wasn’t comfortable with. The first time that he wrote me a script for testosterone, he was like, “You know, I’ll write this for you, I’m not going to send you for bloodwork right away because that might tip off your insurance or something.” I forget what is was . . . or exactly how he framed it but he was like, just get bloodwork done in three months down the road. And so he tried to help me navigate the insurance system, the medical system, in a way that wouldn’t create a big hardship for me. I really appreciated that a lot. It’s just unfortunate that he had to do that at all, that he had to maybe compromise best practice for the sake of helping me out when he knew that the way that he was helping me was me accessing the medicine that I needed and he didn’t want me to be prevented from doing that and he shouldn’t have to push back against the system to make that happen for me. It will be nice once there’s some official standards for care of trans people. 
 
AJ: Yeah. 
 
LC: It will be much safer physically and emotionally. That waiting room was fine and no one ever questioned my name or anything like that. I’ve heard horror stories where, like, front desk attendants are loudly arguing in the waiting room with a customer about not being able to call them their chosen name. It’s like, “What is the big deal? Come on.” 
 
AJ: I’m telling you this is my name . . . 
 
LC: Right, it’s outrageous and humiliating, and ultimately could be dangerous for someone, if we’re being honest. If someone is outed in a situation where there are people around who are not savory. Fortunately, I had a good experience at the doctor. 
 
AJ: Any involvement with the criminal justice system at all? 
 
LC: How soon is this going to be released? Who is going to see it?  
 
AJ: Well, it will be a little while before it’s released, but it will be public. 
 
LC: Sure. I’m probably going to decline to answer that one.  
 
AJ: That’s perfectly fine. How about in your schools or education situation? 
 
LC: Any involvement with the . . .? 
 
AJ: School would have had to have been like negative experiences around your identity in those kinds of institutions? 
 
LC: Yeah, definitely in public school, in high school. That was when I started settling into this more masculine expression of my gender and I remember just walking down the hall and there was a group of other students who were following me down the hall, probably trailing about feet behind, just making all these awful comments about what I was wearing. That happened somewhat frequently. I grew a pretty thick skin for that kind of thing and didn’t . . . I guess it’s possible that it did hurt my feelings more than I led on at that point, but you have to. I had a lot of friends and I was friends with a lot of different people in high school, but I definitely hung out with the kids who were kind of more outliers, they were my main friends. I actually dropped out of high school the beginning of my junior year.  
 
AJ: Oh boy, OK. 
 
LC: I was just not able to really focus on my studies, just a lot of stress. 
 
AJ: You found your way back?  
 
LC: I did, yeah. I got my GED within six months and then went to the University of Missouri and graduated.  
 
AJ: That’s great. I know that’s a somewhat common narrative for a lot of trans young people to have to leave school for a variety of reasons. What do you think the relationship between the LGB and the T is like? And you sort of talked about it a little bit specific to St. Louis, but on a broader scale, what do you think that relationship is like?  
 
LC: Well, what I find to be kind of ironic is that a T could be L, G, or a B, yet the T is so frequently the specific concerns of the T, the value of the trans experience is not afforded by the L, the G, and the B. For some reason . . . I mean, not for some reason, our community is just . . . the trans community is ostracized from the LGB community that for the fact that they are not having a trans – they, the LGB, are not having a trans experience even though we’re supposedly a part of the same community, they are unwilling to acknowledge that there is plenty more work that needs to be done in order to get our whole community up to speed, up to have accessing our rights and even in some cases basic resources. So, the relationship – there’s tension there. Some of the biggest disparities in terms of . . . certainly wealth distribution and access to opportunities is greatest between the gay community and the trans community. So, yeah. 
 
AJ: Is there a trans agenda or do you think there should be a trans agenda? If you think there is, what is it?  
 
LC: The trans agenda, I feel like, has reached a really pivotal moment where we are, in this age of technology, able to really connect with each other and share about our experiences with one another and to come out of isolation and we’re starting to access more resources and power as relationships are built. We’re getting jobs in important decision-making organizations where we can advocate, we as trans people can have the opportunity to advocate on behalf of our community and join our voice with the broader conversation. The trans agenda is just one of what equity looks like, which I think that there are so many different components to equity including the disparity of race equity, of gender equity that continues to be pervasive. There are intersections in immigration, making sure that if a migrant person is . . . an immigrant person is detained, that they are kept safe. The trans agenda is, at this point, one of survival for such a large part of our community. I think that we definitely need to start . . . we need to continue having those conversations and pushing through to get our voices heard at the broader table – because if we don’t speak up for ourselves, it’s very apparent that no one else is going to. 
 
AJ: Well stated. 
 
LC: Thank you. 
 
AJ: What, if any, has been the impact of your trans identity on your professional life?  
 
LC: Fortunately, I have worked for businesses that were very supportive. Not completely knowledgeable, not with the perfect policies in the office that provide unisex restrooms or things like this – gender neutral restrooms, or necessarily trans specific protections in their policies, but the organizations themselves, the leaders in the organizations, have always been supportive of me. For instance, when I first came out and when I started to transition four years ago, I was working in a very small office and all of my offices mates were incredibly supportive of me and immediately began to work on respecting my wishes for calling me Lane, using he/him pronouns. It was really interesting because the folks I worked with then were also willing to ask me questions because that was the kind of relationship we had, where it was safe for them to . . . as I was educating myself about what it means to be trans through living it, I could then also have that conversation with the people at work too. So that was really cool, that felt really important. And then at my most recent job, I had to take a leave of absence for a couple of weeks when I went down to have surgery on my chest. My boss was super supportive. I told her what I was doing, I told her I was going down to have surgery and she was happy for me. So that was really cool. I would say probably the . . . and this is just miniscule in the grander scheme of things, but the thing that’s been the most stressful for me is when I do apply for new jobs and I know that if they’re doing a background check they’re going to be able to see my previous name, sometimes you even have to write it in on the form, and so then I just think to myself, “Is that going to ultimately disqualify me?” Or if I didn’t get hired for the job, would I ever know that it wasn’t because I was trans, because that’s what they found out? 
 
AJ: Sure. 
 
LC: There’s definitely that nagging in the back of my mind.  
 
AJ: Tell me a little bit about your music, you’re a musician. What instrument do you play? Are you a singer/songwriter? What? 
 
LC: Yeah. I’m definitely a singer/songwriting type, but also I love making digital music too using DJ programs on the computer. I like playing around with my voice a lot. I also love playing guitar, that’s been pretty consistent for me for . . . gosh, when did I start? About years now.  
 
AJ: Oh wow. What genres? Are you a folk singer, disco? 
 
LC: Honestly a little bit of everything. I like to compose my own melodies to songs, really any song.  I did kind of a cool rendition of Let’s Stay Together. 
 
AJ: By Al Green? 
 
LC: Yeah. 
 
AJ: Nice.  
 
LC: I also did one to Sweet Dreams by Annie Lennox.  
 
AJ: Annie Lennox, a classic.  
 
LC: I’m a huge 1980s kid. I like to take songs and then adapt them, change them around, and mold them into my own. And so a lot of that is just finger picking melodies and playing around with the vocal part of the song. I really love to write love songs – those are probably the songs that I write the most. I’m a huge romantic and . . . yeah, simple little love songs, they come really naturally. 
 
AJ: Oh, sweet. So, one last question, Lane. There have been some dramatic changes in the landscape for transgender people over the past years – like just sort of this rapid visibility and awareness of the broader community, some of the issues and ideas around being transgender.  Where do you see the community in the next , , years?  
 
LC: My mind immediately went to Hunger Games. I’m just thinking in the grander scheme of things, there’s always this political apathy I have with that piece, just . . . I’d like to think that we’ll have . . . so I feel like it’s inevitable that there will be a surge in knowledge about the trans community in various realms. So if we’re thinking in terms of . . . if we’re talking about medical stuff, I feel like that’s soon to come and as that’s normalized, I would like to think that insurance, as it already has been, will continue to evolve to make that more accessible. We’re starting to see, also, community-based programs that are allowing people who don’t have insurance or are low income are able to now access hormones and things like that. So I think that resources like that will continue to evolve as the awareness around the trans community and what our needs are come to light. So that feels really positive to me because I know that people who desire to have a medical transition will be able to access that. I know that for me personally that was very important to my transition process. I think that as we continue to show up in the broader cultural media, as we continue to create our own media and shape the conversation about what it means to be transgender, that the experience of being trans, I hope, will, be de-mystified to the point where we can celebrate that expression of diversity like other cultures already are. To me that would look like just getting to see even more diversity walking down the street, just in how people express themselves in terms of their gender, that we won’t be judged by what we look like and instead we’ll maybe be more easily able to access opportunities that the broader culture accesses. So I guess I hope that there’s more equity, I hope that more people feel . . . I feel like more trans people who are really struggling, I hope that there will be more resources so that we can, as trans people, work within our community to uplift the parts of our community that are struggling. Because as we keep talking about it, as we keep talking about all these disparities, people will . . . they have to listen, that’s just the eternal optimist in me, but I hope they eventually listen. 
 
AJ: I think that we’ve got to remain hopeful.  
 
LC: Yes. 
 
AJ: I really want to just express my deep gratitude for you taking the time to share some really, I think, intimate details about your life with this project. So, thank you. 
 
LC: Thank you. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share my story. 
 
AJ: All right.  