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Okay, the date is October 1, 2020. The time is 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, location virtual via their story. The interviewer is Rosie Cain and the narrator is Sheena Sproule and Sheena, do I have permission to record? Yes, you do. Awesome. So to start off. Do you mind just giving me a little background about who you are? Sure. So, my name is Sheena Sproule. I was born and raised on the west coast of Canada Victoria BC and I am I guess I'm thirty-six years old now. Yeah, and so I have spent only a small part of my life, really, identifying as non-binary but I've spent my most of my life identifying as fat and so I personally am really excited and interested to sort of learn about and discuss and explore sort of intersections around gender, sexuality, fatness, representation, and all of those things. So I'm really finding, you know, the these topics to be exciting to delve into awesome.

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And so do you mind telling me a little bit more about you were raised or where you were raised? So Victoria is a little city. It's the capital of British Columbia, one of the ten provinces in Canada. And it's sort of like a little I think it might have been a hippie Community back in the sort of 60s 70s. It's sort of since gentrified a little bit and because it's the warmest climate in Canada, really, it's where you go if you're actually quite wealthy and you've, you're sick of Canadian winters and so you go live there in the climate. I would say is similar to Seattle. So again, it's not like a real paradise. It is very rainy and cold but not, you know, six feet of snow. And that community, I think, because it changed so much during my upbringing. It's become a place that you can't continue living unless you maybe have some family wealth or resources behind you or maybe your job is in government or in health care because it's a very strong retirement community. So as is true of a lot of Canadians who grew up in this sort of rainforest paradise you end up having to maybe move a little bit inward to where there's more jobs and you know land and and living expenses are a bit cheaper. So currently I'm living in Calgary, Alberta which is you know subtle if you kind of take Denver and you kind of take Austin and you mix them together or maybe Dallas then you get Calgary, Alberta. Awesome and I'm from Denver originally, so - Right I totally understand -

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You're getting you're getting what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah for sure. And do you mind just telling me a little bit about your family? Sure, So, I have a very small family. We're not very good at reproducing. My mom and dad got divorced when I was seven years old. I have a younger sister who is seven years younger than me, and she was raised almost exclusively by my mom, and from age seven on I was mostly raised my mother. My dad lived in Victoria with his new wife, I guess until I was about seven years after the divorce and then he moved across the country to Toronto to be with, I guess she wanted, the, my stepmother wanted had to sort of live closer to her family as they were sort of getting into their Twilight years. So I was very close to my dad growing up but we've since drifted apart just because as you get older, you know, you stop seeing things in terms of who, which parent you maybe got along with better? And you start looking at it through a lens of you know, your own adulthood and how you would handle those responsibilities if they came here way so, you know, obviously it sheds a different light on it for me.

00:04:34.000 - 00:08:18.300

My mom is a -- she's a challenging person. She -- she I think there's some sort of generational trauma around poverty and things like that in her family. And I know that both of her parents were first-generation immigrants, white immigrants for sure, but they were also coming out of World War Two so, you know, there was a lot of kind of muscular Protestantism and things like that going on in that family. And yeah, I -- she's a person who -- she and I are very similar on the outside and and I think maybe have some fundamental differences in our perspective of the world being that she's a Baby Boomer and I'm an older Millennial. So yeah growing up with her was very tough and growing up with just her parents and both of my parents are in their own way very gender non-conforming. And so, you know, what we had basically is two people that didn't really want the role that they ended up finding themselves in as parents and being pretty explicit about that really and so, you know, my journey actually that I only really started my 30s is kind of coming to terms with that and what I think about that what it means for me and you know, if I if I wanted to have a family and those kinds of questions, for sure. Yeah, definitely. So yeah kind of jumping into gender identity. So how do you identify in terms of gender? So, you know for most of my life I did identify as a straight woman. But that -- that didn't really fit me very well for a lot of reasons. And what would happen is I would get into a state of, sometimes intoxication. Sometimes even just like sort of hypnagogic state, like a waking sleep and I would start sort of becoming convinced that I was actually a gay man, is my -- you know, my rapport with men and my tastes and my sort of overall personality and all these things really seem to be pointing that to that to me. But as I went and investigated that it didn't feel so clear-cut and so I now at this point identify as non-binary. I used to think that what that meant for me was that my gender fluctuated in its expression and sometimes I was more masculine and sometimes I was more feminine and at this point, I think it's, actually, I would say I'm Agender. I would say that, at this time feels the most comfortable to me to feel like since gender is about performance in my perspective and I feel like I -- don't really perform that like I have stuff that's inborn traits and I have stuff that codes is feminine, but I don't feel like I really perform gender in that way. And so I really do identify as Agender, but I'm also very aware that our gender identities fluctuate and change and and I think that that's a good thing. So I am Agender right now. I don't know if that's going to change in the future.

00:08:18.300 - 00:11:48.500

Yeah, and would you say there's any -- there were any specific events or experiences that influence kind of how you came to understand your gender identity? Yeah, that's a great question. I think you know for me it's partly informed by the fact that my mother and my grandmother who I spent the most time around growing up were very gender non-conforming people. So my mother and her mother -- we all lived in a house for a big part of my childhood and, you know, after my my dad left and my mother and my grandmother are both very gender non-conforming like my grandmother only ever wore men's clothes, she you know, never jewelry never make up, you know, very like she even went by her her deceased husband's name for like 25 years after he passed so you know, that, when I look to women as I'm growing up and I'm surrounded by women. I'm surrounded by women that are not very gender conforming and so I think that kind of makes some room for me. I also had my mother who is kind of the same way. She would wear makeup for sort of a expression of gender, but really at the end of the day like, you know, she's in athleisure all the time. She doesn't have a lot of female friends. She doesn't -- I never see her sort of act out this role of any kind of gender really and many people have commented that she's very masculine in a lot of ways, and you know, I think that both that and the fact that my mother and my grandmother didn't have a lot of female friends in their life, or in the case of my mother very many friends, meant that I didn't see a lot of modeling of what a cis woman I think would feel typically is like a good model of like feminine socialization or behavior. You know, what I would always feel is, in my adulthood is going out into uh, sort of a homosocial group of women. I would feel very out of place and I used to think that that was just entirely down to not having that modeled a lot for me as I was growing up, but I -- It was a confluence of things. I think that that's one piece of the puzzle. But you know apart from that. I didn't really think very much about my gender except that I felt different growing up. I didn't and I didn't feel necessarily different in a gendered way. Like I typically had really, you know, what people would think of as like a normal little girl, right? Like, you know, I liked dresses and make believe and I like you know Ninja Turtles and all these, you know, like fighting games and stuff like that. So I don't think that that expression was particularly -- Like I don't think it was particularly obvious, you know, some people say, oh, well, it was always obvious in my upbringing. It wasn't. But I did feel very apart from all the other kids and I didn't know what that was. And it was also something that was very fundamental to me fundamental to how I express myself.

00:11:48.500 - 00:15:19.000

So I think that -- is something that I've just started thinking about really once I got into my 30s like, you know, maybe there's something there and I was initially very skeptical of like sort of pro-trans rights, but only understanding trans as like a binary and not really sort of understanding or having an appreciation for how much that leaves out. And so that's only something that I really grappled with in the last five years or so. Yeah, yeah for sure and can you tell me a little bit about your experience like coming out (air quotes) or just sharing your gender with others? Absolutely. Yeah, I think that if I had done that at a younger age, I would have found that to be very difficult because I was a teenager in the early 2000s and the sort of the I almost want to say like an (??) of feminism. It was a really funny and really rough time. As far as this sort of cynicism towards other people and this sort of mean sense of humor. And you know, when I look back at what passed for social commentary or sort of political thought at that time, it was (sigh) quite brutal and when I came out I like, I am married, I'm married to a cisgender bisexual man, and when I came out I had been sort of talking about gender. I guess maybe I was feeling my way around it, but I wasn't concerned that he wouldn't accept that. That's just not really in his personality, my husband. But I think that I had been trying to use him as a sounding board to talk about gender. And so I did come out to my husband as non-binary. I've come out to my friends as non-binary. The people that I'm closest to use they/them pronouns for me, but I understand that. I also look and sound and often act very feminine and part of that's my -- just my socialization and how my, you know what temperate -- (to self) what am I trying to say? -- what you know what my actual nature is and then part of it is you know that I have this fat, feminine body. And so I really radiate girl. I've had lots of people who have tried to tell this to who our new friends or just people that I've been chatting with, you know, say like well, you know, that's fine. But you're a girl as far as I'm concerned, you're a girl. You know, I think at this point I would lose my patience with that. But initially I just sort of roll with it because I think that you, you know what you're trying to explain to somebody if you're not binary and there's his gender and they're not interested in hearing it. It's very complicated and I get it. I've been on that side of it and I've sort of said like, you know, like I don't understand what that means and therefore I don't want to think too hard about it rather than necessarily, you know, respecting the person in front of me and trying to investigate why I don't connect with her, their Identity or their explanation or why I don't care to look further.

00:15:19.000 - 00:17:56.000

So I would say I've come out to the people that I'm closest to in my life, but I haven't come out to anyone in my family, but my sister, who just said everybody is non-binary. So (laughs) like I mean, I guess in a way you're right, but also you're not (laughs) so I mean, I guess it's good. Nobody cares in my family and in my world nobody cares unless they're being supportive. So I'm very lucky in that way. Yeah, and did these kind of -- both on the side of positive and negative, did how other people react have any influence in kind of like how you were feeling about identifying? Yeah, absolutely. Because I initially told the people that I'm closest to you know, you can use she/her for me or you can use they/them. I'm not particular. But it's important to me that you know, this aspect of my identity and that you, you know, are aware of it and sort of keep it in mind when you're when you're dealing with me, interacting with me. And I didn't really feel anything until I have some friends who are non-binary and I have some friends, people who are very close to me, who are cisgender men and they started using, like my husband my best friend, started using they/them pronouns for me or occasionally switching like a gendered word. So that you know, I'm like a dude and things like that where I saw a deliberate effort for them to try to acknowledge that verbally and I felt this sense of euphoria. People sort of talk about a dysphoria with gender and I think that's true of a lot of people, it hasn't been a huge factor in my life. But the euphoria feeling like this complexity is acknowledged was really liberating for me. I felt like yes, this feels right. This is how I know that I'm not just like faking it, you know this because you don't -- you can't articulate these complexities very well and since I am a fat person it's hard for me to like look androgynous. So having that verbalized actually sort of took away a lot of the sting of not being able to necessarily represent that complexity in my appearance.

00:17:56.000 - 00:20:32.800

Yeah, absolutely. And like do you feel like there are any areas of your life that are more influenced by your identity as non-binary than other areas? I mean, it's a good question. I think that if I had been, again if I'd been younger when I had figured a lot of this out,I would have probably tried dating different people. I probably would have have made more of an effort to -- have romantic relationships or sexual relationships with people who are sort of more distinctly queer. I have never I've never been able to connect romantically with cisgender women. And so I used to think that that was why I was straight uhm but actually like non-binary folks. In trans women just different people at least for me bring out different aspects of my presentation. And so I feel like that is something that would have been affected a lot more if I wasn't married when I discovered this. As it is, I think that what I wish, is that I could be more -- sort of out, I guess at work and have that -- because what I'd like to do is I'd like to normalize that we don't necessarily know somebody's gender just by looking at it and it doesn't have to be a big deal. Like we don't have to talk about it all day every day. It doesn't have to be a cornerstone of our conversation. But just making a bigger space for people who are not on one side or the other and I do tell people at work, but I don't feel like most of the people that I work with can really wrap their heads around what I'm saying? They just sort of think, oh good. Like if you, if we have like - I work at a university - so, you know, okay cool. If we have a trans student and you know, they're having an issue you can help guide them to resources. Okay well, I would love to do that. But that's that's not necessarily what I would be doing it for. I'm just doing it thinking about, you know, making space for people and making space for myself. So I think those are kind of the two main areas.

00:20:32.800 - 00:23:30.200

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, now we can kind of jump in a little bit to talk about how you identify your body. So how would you identify yourself in relation to your body? I really like fat. I think that that is a really good descriptor. I think every other descriptor that I've had for myself especially like things that are really euphemistically chubby, plump. Oh my God, like fluffy, overweight. Like over what wait? So I find a lot of those words to be words that are used for the comfort of skinny people or people who are not necessarily skinny, but who definitely have a lot of fatphobia. I was really resistant to fat when it started sort of popping up in the social discourse around fat acceptance and things like that. I would say that that would probably been 2016 that I was part of those conversations and I was initially very resistant and then I just decided that I was going to start using it because a lot of people were talking about having a greater sense of comfort with that word. And so I started using it for myself to sort of destigmatize it to the point where I felt like I could use that word like without the stink on it to describe people's bodies who wanted to be described thusly, and so yeah, it just it started being really liberating it started to feel like the same way that I felt about my gender at that point, which was-- right, this doesn't have to be this stigmatized thing. It's just a descriptor. It's just a -- some people love label some people hate them, I'm a label lover. So I really like fat and I really like non-binary and those do describe me and I think that a lot of people feel that way. Yeah. And so you said you didn't always identify with the term fat but have you kind of always identified as being in a larger body or those things? Yeah Okay. Yeah absolutely. I gained a lot of weight. I first of all I was a person that developed very fast as a kid and I was not a fat kid despite being called fat a lot before my teenage years and then as I sort of went into my teenage years, I was definitely in the plus-sized category. And I probably would have used that word, plus-sized, to describe my body just because fat at that point was literally the worst thing that you could possibly be. it was is better to be a serial killer (sarcastic) than to be a fat woman. And so that that journey has basically been for my teenage years on.

00:23:30.200 - 00:26:59.000

Yeah, and would you say you're comfortable with your identity as fat and in relation to your body? Mmm Yeah, I think so. I think I've been really lucky because I was raised with a lot of disordered eating and a lot of body loathing and fatphobia from my mom and my sister. And I feel like I kind of got away scot-free, like I went through a period of anorexia for about a year in my teenage years, but fundamentally, my body is not good enough at losing weight and I mean (air quotes) good enough, right? I don't I don't put a lot of star by that but when I was a teenager, I would you know, not eat and not and not eat and not even get close to being the correct BMI like, you know the healthy weight. And so at that sort of gave the lie to it to me like if I am not eating and I'm working out multiple times a week and I'm counting every little single calorie then -- and I'm still not getting where I need to go then is that really somewhere that I want to be? I watched my mother lose out on years and years of pleasure around food and celebrations and things like this -- to lose 10 pounds, sluggish metabolism that I do and I thought you know for all that you're putting into it. You're not getting much out of it. You're getting a lot of misery and you're getting a lot of inadequacy. So I sort of started justifying what I felt like was my failure, you know in my late teens years and I've had a lot of time to come to terms with like, is this actually a failure though. Did I fail at anything? and at this point I think no, But I do think that growing up in a fat body when fat is really stigmatized if you have -- if you have any issues around gender you're not going to be as aware of it because you're so -- you're so encouraged to dissociate from your body and you're so discouraged to put space between you and your body. You have this concept of your body as this sort of prison that is not allowing you to do what you want to do and really look how you want and be treated in this way that is sort of kind and respectful and given the benefit of the doubt. And that's so hateful that you, I feel like you don't check in with yourself to think like, you know, a lot of things like gender is there but there's also other things like I, it took me a long time to be able to like understand when my body was going through something. And to understand when I you know, was dealing with a chronic illness or to just, to understand if I was dealing with mental health things that were showing up in my body, but you're so dissociated from your body that you don't check in and and I think have a more sort of privileged relationship with your body. I feel that if that makes sense, but Yeah, no it absolutely makes

00:26:59.000 - 00:30:01.000

sense and would you say kind of like that dissociation from your body and your experiences living in your body were primarily influenced from kind of like the social discourse around being fat and presenting as a woman? Right? Yeah. I think you just if you have a fat body and you are for example a teenage girl. I don't think teenage girls have the monopoly cornered on this, or the market cornered on this, but I would say that. You know being a teen it's already pretty horrifying experience here body is changing in ways that you can't predict, you're gaining weight and losing weight and gaining height and kind of losing your mind (laughs) and you're going through all of these changes and it's very visible to your peers. And so you know what, I remember, you know, in those teen years for example is feeling really horrified by my breasts now. Do I feel horrified by them because it's dysphoric? Or do I feel horrified by them because you know, my mother thinks of having big breasts as being kind of gross and over sexual and you know has all these sort of negative feelings about them and she's telling me like you need to hide this because it's-- You know, It's kind of disgusting I guess in her in her mind to be like a fat teenage girl with big breasts and obviously I'm looking at that I can sense her projection. But what I can't do is prioritize my own feelings overall this incoming stimuli about you know, this is what your peers think, this is what your parents think, this is what your sister thinks, and I think as a teenager you're trying so hard to figure out your own identity. But it has to feel safe for you to explore that and you know, even at that time for example the idea that I might be non-binary like that wasn't in the conversation, those words weren't on the table and that was a level of theoretical discourse that was you know very much -- Not what it is currently, right? So, you know I even if I checked in with myself and even if I'd been aware of that dysphoria, I don't know if that's exactly what it was if that was coming to me because of fatness, maybe if I was like a very naturally androgynous tomboy looking person at that age, I wouldn't have had those feelings because there had been nothing on my body to stand out, or maybe I would not have -- maybe I wouldn't have-- or maybe I would have had

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those feelings more so and maybe you know would have been clearer to me because I was just this quite a slight person, you know, and I would have been like oh no, I feel like I'm not really a girl, you know (laughs) so, right? Yeah, yeah that absolutely makes sense. Have you had any negative reactions from people around you in either using the terms that or just how you live in your body? Mmm. It's a good question. I definitely find I don't have a lot of cisgender women that I'm very close to in my life. But I do have, you know, a number of friends that I am on good terms with but I wouldn't say that I would like sit down with them and you know how some big heart-to-heart usually, but they're people that I still want to float the word fat around for a lot of reasons. I feel like the more people in general hear that the less stigmatized it becomes and that's just my personal perspective. But what I find is when I'm in that homosocial group of women than the word fat getting used by me to describe my own body is very stressful. I get corrected a lot like I get told you're not fat. You're beautiful. I definitely am very aware depending on how people react to me a lot about what their relationship is with fatness, but also to an extent what their relationship is with food. That's some extrapolation on my part, but you know to know somebody's relationship with the word fat is to unfortunately get probably a clearer picture than you might necessarily want on where somebody comes down on this. My sister and a lot of my friends, female friends, that I have. I would say that a very high number of them have some aspects of this sort of disordered approach to eating or disorder relationships with food and certainly a disordered relationship with fatness, in my opinion, you know, and and I wouldn't say that I've been treated very differently, but I do think that -- I think I'm better at a lot of people (laugh) at just understanding that that person is projecting their own stress and frustrations on to me, but what I did find actually and this is like a few years back now because my husband and I have been together for 10 years, but when we initially got together, you know gender is such in like 2010 and and fatness is such in 2010 that When it appeared that my husband, who is a straight size man. So when we were getting together a lot of the women that were in his life or peripheral to my life would almost congratulate him for like seeing past my fatness and seem to think that like I had some sort of strange magic power and I did actually lose relationships over this I'd lost friendships over this at the time. And I don't know if it's like as though I'm seen to be like sort of usurping my natural role as if you're a fat woman, then you know, this world isn't open to you.

00:33:49.600 - 00:37:07.400

And so I think that the intersection of gender there like, I don't know really what that means at this point, but I think that we're sort of now having a bigger conversation about what that gender and fatness intersection, like, just for example, this conversation. So, you know, I think that probably those same people have now had some time to sort of wrap their head around maybe that the problem their problem with fatness has more to do with them. In the messages that they've internalized then necessarily like a moral, a morality around fatness, which is I think so much of the conversation we moralize fatness so much. And so if you've internalized that then you probably not even investigating it right so but I haven't had too much sort of- push back around using the word fat except for what always happens which is that people that have a very difficult relationship with that word will often come to me or talk to me in a group setting about their diet or their exercise or all of these many sort of things that we do that I think cisgendered women are encouraged to do is sort of a social grooming ritual of like let's exchange what we're all going through and talk about our struggles and I am pretty outspoken and and have tried to just say like, I'm not really a safe person to talk to about this like there's so many other audiences for this conversation and that's effectively shut it down which I'm really grateful for Just kind of for clarification like is that just because you don't want to have the conversation, it's not something you're interested in or is it kind of can it be triggering for you? I know you said you had like some history with eating disorder, right? Yeah. It doesn't trigger me in terms of an eating disorder. I'm very lucky in that that time in my life hasn't left a lot of negative mental residue or anything like that and I don't ever feel sort of triggered or Back towards that disordered eating, but I would say that I really resent this idea that fat people have to sort of be these sounding boards for skinny people to talk about their struggles or their privileges because it erases you from the conversation. You're not allowed to say hey like while we're spending a lot of time talking about your experience and how you would literally do anything to not look like me, you know, can I participate in this conversation? If we're going to talk about something that you know, you think a lot about, I think a lot about, which is fatness. Let's have a bigger conversation. Let's not just talk about your diet.

00:37:07.400 - 00:39:12.200

Let's talk about -- You know people's, fat people being portrayed on social media or you know, in on-screen and film and media that we all take in. Let's have a bigger conversation because I don't want to be peripheral to all these conversations that are actually about me. Really they're about how I left in there about the place I occupy in the world without feeling like I'm invited to participate as a full member, you know? Yeah, no, I absolutely understand that and kind of before we jump in really to like the intersection of non-binary and fat, have you ever had any like genuinely positive reactions to using the term fat? Uhm yeah guess somewhat, but, but and here's the big but, I guess is that sexually and sort of the way that I display my image, especially on social media and like I would say that I'm a person that is sort of sexual and sensual and I think that it's a good idea to put your own image out there if you're comfortable with it and sort of really represent and so in putting my fat body out there, especially if I'm at all in a state of undress, you know, and I mean like for the most part like bikini photos on Instagram or things like that. I will get really positive reactions from men (laughs) However, there's sort of a fetishization there. However, however, however, we fetishize skinny bodies as a society. So I don't really think of it as being a super negative thing on a grand scale for men to have like a to find that sexually appealing and I know that there's plenty of people in the fat community who are like no more, you know cis men like no thank you.

00:39:12.200 - 00:40:55.600

I kind of think that fetishization is, in my opinion not the worst thing. It's indicative of a social trend changing and something kind of coming up in culture and I sort of seeing these images for the first time in processing how we feel about them and sometimes finding them sexy and finding that shameful and sometimes finding it sexy and finding it exciting. I prefer bigger bodies on people so, you know to me that's not, that's not negative. So I have talked about my own fat body a lot on social media face-to-face, person-to-person not like putting my image out there using the word fat. I don't really get a positive reaction. I think people are either totally fine with it in the case of the people that are closest to me in my life, or they're very uncomfortable and they just try to shut it down and try to change the subject or something. It just feels like a -- I've heard people comment that it feels like a trap when I use that word to describe myself or to describe. I will try to use it to describe other people unless they know that that is something that they really wouldn't like just because I would rather say fat than use euphemisms that I really hate and maybe those people wouldn't like that, I don't know but I would rather say like this fat person rather than those (air quotes) big-boned person like that's kind of a meaningless phrase and we all know what I'm talking about, which is fatness. So let's just use the word and not linger on it, you know? yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So do you think that identifying as non-binary has influenced identifying as fat, or vice versa? (to self) Oh has identified, I

00:40:55.600 - 00:45:04.400

wouldn't say identifying as --that's a good question. I think that these things influence each other for me because again fatness, if you don't lead with fatness as a non-binary person and yet you are fat you can just kind of don't want to talk about it or use the word uhm for me, at least, I feel like I'm inviting -- and this is like a negative socialization thing in my view -- but I feel like I'm inviting commentary that I don't look the part of a non-binary person and I've started to not try that hard to look the part to look a certain amount androgynous first of all because I just am read as a woman and that's just no way around that, like I'd have to change everything about my personality and my look and I would still be left with this fatter body. But it's a thing for me because I want to present -- So I want to present as a person who is not a cis woman, but is not like butch exactly. Because a butch presentation to me means I'm out here trying to attract cis women or maybe you know women who or non-binary people who are looking for something that's maybe a little bit more sapphic in nature. I will say my husband and I do kind of like date a little bit outside of our relationship, but I wouldn't call it a polyamorous relationship. I think it's mostly just like online flirtations and things like that. So so that's the relevance of being a married person who is presenting or trying to figure out your presentation to attract certain people just as a background there, but -- that to me is a real struggle because I look like a butch person if I turned down the femininity and if I turn up the femininity I look -- I look like a doll. I look like a, it looks very patently absurd on me. Like it just doesn't make a lot of sense. And some people can really pull that off. I have a non-binary friend who is six feet tall and probably a hundred pounds heavier than me and has super broad shoulders and is an assigned female at birth so, you know long golden hair and lots of makeup and things like that. And this person can wear like a cute sundress and still be read as actually being quite masc just because of their overall demeanor and so they can wear that stuff, and if I were it I would feel ridiculous and your discomfort is so palpable that other people are picking up that you're not buying what you're selling either. So presentation is a challenge I feel and the fatness of not being able to hide the bulk of your body and you know where for example I'd like to wear men's clothes. A lot of men's clothes are really not tailored to my body. And if I wear them I look -- even if they were tailored, you know, I'm still going to project to me in my mind, I project like butch lesbian and that's a beautiful way to look but it's a misrepresentation of my identity and it doesn't communicate the right things and and it feels a bit appropriative, honestly for me. I don't want to like step into that sphere and feel like I'm occupying a space. That's not for me.

00:45:04.400 - 00:48:35.200

Yeah, absolutely. And so you kind of talked about your mother and your grandmother not really playing into the performance of gender. Do you feel like there is a certain performance to be played in or that's expected to be played when you identify as non-binary? Yes, but I think that it's somewhat contingent on age. So I again, feel like if I was like twenty right now that I would feel a greater sense of pressure to be smaller, be more androgynous basically so that I looked more like what people think of when they think of a non-binary person and I feel like, what that performance looks like has to do with a lot of different things as far as like your actual behavior. I certainly don't feel like there's any sort of unified thing but a lot of the non-binary people that I have known have been people, I mean, it's the stereotype right? It's people who are assigned female at birth, you know, never really felt comfortable with their femininity and you know, like you got one side of the head shaved and the sort of Warby Parker glasses and the you know, like the part of your hair has been dyed and it's over here and you've got like pretty masc clothes and that's your presentation and you are really into Steven Universe and like a lot of sort of things that I consider to be like a tender queer aesthetic and -- and obviously that's got a pretty wobbly definition as well. Being like an older person, being a person who is closer to forty than twenty, I don't feel like I have to fit in with my peers because my peer group is already established they're a group of people who know me like me, and if I change my pronouns tomorrow, and that did happen, and I said, you know, you can't call me she/her anymore you have to call me they/them and maybe I'll change my name to -- You know, all those people would be on side with me. They wouldn't feel like I was faking it and they wouldn't feel like I was acting a certain way. So I do think that there is an element of performance but it's an element that I am not really seeing because my personality is already been really formed in my social group has already been really formed and so a lot of that stuff is really invisible to me, but I have lots of friends who are younger who say it's a struggle to sort of walk this line of being acceptably queer-looking and presenting, you know feminine enough to attract the people that they are trying to attract, masculine enough to attract the people they're trying to attract. And all of this sort of performance around that but again, I'm a little bit older so it's not as relevant to me.

00:48:35.200 - 00:51:42.200

Yeah, and you mentioned that you have one friend in your life who is non-binary and fat also, how does that influence you? Like having somebody in your life who identifies in the same way as you? Yeah, and I'm lucky too because this is the person that I'm closest to who is non-binary and fat, but I actually have a lot of like many people that I went to university with just by coincidence, I don't know what the story is, but they ended up identifying as either non-binary or coming out as binary trans, so trans women and trans men. Like I would say probably sixty percent of the people that I was close to at university that I still, you know, have some kind of tab on. But in the case of my friend, we don't live in the same city, but we did for a while. I think they're twenty-two now, so they're quite a bit younger than me. And obviously we're going through different things and we're at different times in our lives. But a queer community does kind of stick together and so we sort of became friends even though it was kind of unlikely given our age difference. It's really cool to see somebody express these things in different ways than I do. Somebody who is feminine, like much more feminine than I am in their presentation in terms of their dress and you know how they choose to sort of frame themselves on social media or in person. But that person who is so much more masculine than me in terms of their stereotypically masculine suppose in terms of their outward behavior. They always joke about being a (air quotes) dumb jock and about being, you know, just like a just like (air quotes) a bro, and that's obviously an exaggeration of their qualities. But to see that -- to see something that's so similar to me and yet so different. It just reminds me that we have, you know, a lot of very broad ways of defining and understanding ourselves. And that's my friend Dennis, who is you know different than me in a lot of ways and I think probably experiences more dysphoria than I do and has a fatter body so experiences more discrimination than I do around their body as well. To see that sort of journey and and be aware of the complexities is really exciting and also, you know quite liberating. I don't feel like I'm faking it because I know that there's a lot of different right ways to express and identify yourself. Yeah, absolutely. And so you've talked about having a queer community, do you participate in any like LGBTQ+ events like Pride or things like that?

00:51:42.200 - 00:56:25.600

Yeah, I do. It's been weird this year because like -- so the city that I lived in for a while after I moved away from Victoria, the west coast of Canada. I was living in Saskatoon. Saskatoon is a lot like, Omaha. So, you know on the one hand, it's quite close knit and in some ways but also it's not especially known for its sort of progress and things like that. So, you know, that ends up being in some ways a tighter community. I currently live in Calgary and you know, there's a very vibrant queer community here, but haven't had much of a chance to participate in it, you know, I've either been scheduled to work or there's been COVID. I would really like to be more active in the community because I'm a big believer in that especially, you know, any marginalized communities sort of within your sort of larger home community. I think that it's really important to be participating in that so I would say yes, but I don't have been able to participate as much as I would have liked. And in your experience, do you feel that the LGBTQ+ community accepts fat members into their community? Good question, I think -- You know, I think at this point the queer community is so diverse and there's -- it's become a lot more nuanced and there's become a lot more. Both of room to kind of exist. So on the plus side, I think it's kind of like social media in this way that on the one hand -- It's like much more welcoming than it's ever been before as in you don't have -- you can be female presenting. Let's say girl type person, you know, I might look very feminine and go into that area and feel very welcomed and feel like I don't have to conform to, like for example, like a butch kind of look to be allowed to participate and on the other hand, you know, we're seeing more transphobia out of the queer community than I've seen you know in my experience growing up and and so I think that it's sort of a double-edged sword. I think that yeah, it depends so much on how many resources there are in that queer community as far as raising awareness and making it like a big tent sort of sense of community. I feel like it's better than it used to be but we're still having that big conversation about are trans people even allowed to participate and you know, that's a conversation that you know, we're still having kind of over in North America, but like, you know across the Atlantic there's a whole different set of conversations. I think that it is like the big sort of barrier, I think for a lot of trans folk and specifically non-binary folk, the trans community is nothing but positive and then you can have these sort of toxic elements. You can have sort of a trans exclusionary radical feminists talking about like being gender critical. Or you can have this sort of toxic white middle class gay sort of subset of the culture that is very fat phobic and you know, if they think about trans people at all it's as a punchline, and obviously not everybody in these communities, but the sort of most toxic elements there. So I guess it depends on how much those people are running the show and I found that to be really variable between all the places that I've lived. Some of those folks are, you know, really on the cutting edge and and really leading these conversations around social justice. And you know other communities are very close minded and you know, their concept of what the queer community should include is actually very exclusionary.

00:56:25.600 - 00:58:28.600

So yeah, absolutely. And kind of in that realm of community, what social media platforms do you use? Hmm, so I -- my favorite is Twitter, I guess because I'm a word person and I am not as much of a visual person. I am on Instagram as well though I regret it often. I spend a lot of time thinking about deleting my account, but I haven't done it yet. I'm also on Facebook, but try not to be on Facebook, you know, and I would say that those are my biggest communities. There's some sort of peripheral things. Like I used to be on Tumblr a lot and things like that. Those have obviously changed form over time. With Instagram I used to have a secondary account where I posted stuff that was a little bit more vulnerable and again that would be more things like me and my bathing suit and things that I didn't necessarily want to share with like my dad and my stepmom for example. But that I do think that like, you know that avenue of expression should be open to you if you want to use it. The communities on there are -- on both Twitter and Instagram which are my main social media platforms. Really very quite dramatically depending on kind of how you curate it. But then also like that makes it sound like you would never have a bad experience if you curated it well and that's just not the case either. So yeah, I think it's quite a mixed bag on social media. Yeah. Absolutely. Do you follow other people who identify as non-binary and fat? Yeah, so about six or seven years ago, I got really into weightlifting and that became a big part of my identity. I wasn't doing it competitively but it was my main interest as far as physical activity. And so I started you know, Instagram was somewhat new at that time, had been around for a few years, but I started following a lot of fitspo and things like that. And as anyone that has made their social media really reflect like (air quotes) inspiration, I feel like you can only handle so much of that and then that's kind of the point where you want to delete social media and just like go live in the woods because it's very similar to just buying a magazine off a shelf, right?

00:59:15.600 - 01:03:29.600

Like you're you're getting a very tailored image, you're getting an image that is very focused on perfection and competition and they're folks that you know, create those accounts or incentivize to you know get followers by delivering this sort of almost themselves as a product, you know, like you could live like me if you do x y z. So that became really overwhelming and I started making especially my Instagram presence about following fat bodies and following black bodies, and I should say black people, and following non-binary people and following indigenous people and basically the same kind of people that I follow for their thoughts and their perspectives and their insights on Twitter are the people that I want to be following on Instagram. I want to see those people's bodies and images reflected -- disabled community as well. Just because I think that when you're flipping through a picture book essentially with Instagram, and I think it's really important to see a large number of people who look like you have your experience filtered back to you. A lot of the people that I know that are fat and non-binary who have a lot of misery about their body or a lot of you know, loathing or discomfort or whatever it is, are also people that, for whatever reason, feel compelled to seek out those images of people who do not look like them, who are not living those same kinds of experiences that they are, who have you know an infinite number of resources and and access. And I don't know, I think my perspective is, youre kind of setting yourself up for a bad time if you do that. I've certainly learned my lesson. So now I would say at this point my Instagram is entirely just people I know, cats, and fat people or non-binary people or people with other marginalized identities who I really like and respect what they have to say about themselves. And so I trust them to produce either responsible images, so not promoting anything, like just talking about themselves, they're not trying to sell you something. Or people who are, you know, speaking authentically about their experiences and so, you know get all the people who are trying to sell you detox tea out of there. Not interested! So, that's been really good and just trying to filter out diet content or exercise regimes being sold to you or you know things that are going to reinforce this message that you have to change yourself before you're allowed to fully participate in society. And I've been somewhat successful. There are some social media platforms that are better than others and I think things like I used to go on Pinterest for recipes and stuff like that and I just -- You know, there's some social media platforms where you know because of the way the algorithm is written, you know, you really end up in a very narrow, narrow, narrow aesthetic as far as like what is permitted to exist in this world. You can look up fat bodies and get a bunch of skinny bodies on a very powerful search algorithm and it's just because people don't want to use the media platform that way. They want to use it as wish-fulfillment rather than, you know, something that I think is a little bit more authentic to what we all actually look like, how we all actually live. So yeah, that's social media I think is a very interesting thing in that way. Yeah, and are you familiar with the idea of health at every size? Yeah, absolutely.

01:03:29.600 - 01:07:39.700

That is something that I think I used to have in my tagline on a few of my social medias, but I certainly, I certainly subscribe to the the health at every size, but I mean with the little asterisks that I think some people -- kind of like the body positive movement. I think some people are sort of appropriative of it. But I try not to be cynical. I do try to take it at face value when people say health at every size. Yeah. Yeah, and and that was going to be my next question. Are you familiar with the body positivity movement? I am yeah. I used to -- when it first came around it was such a breath of fresh air, that I used to hear people sort of talking out the sides of their mouth about it and saying, and this is fat people, I should say, and saying like you know, this really, this is bullshit. This is not doing what it's supposed to be doing. This is, this movement is not having the right effect or it's not, it doesn't go far enough or there's a lot of criticisms of it. And being a smaller fat person I think that that was invisible to me when I first started hearing those conversations kind of back in 2015ish. I sort of came out in defense of the body positivity movement because to me, yes, it was started by a black woman about bodies, but you know like you can apply those principles very similarly to disabled bodies for example. I thought it was really cool that we weren't just talking about fatness, we're talking about, you know,abilities as well because sometimes there's an intersection of fatness and disability. And you know, even if there isn't, like let's include everybody under this big tent idea and of course the problem is that -- and I see it now more fully and in sort of 2018 onward, is that this movement ends up getting co-opted by people who are not discriminated against based on their size and indeed. I'm not, as a small fat person, hugely discriminated against based on my size either. I might get some, you know, some nasty comments and some negative feedback here and there but you know, I don't think that -- I don't think it's lost me job opportunities and I don't think I'm being paid less because of it and any of the other things that happen to people who are not just small fat. And so what ended up happening is I think a lot of skinny people wanted to talk about -- then people wanted to talk about their own sort of trials and tribulations around performing this perfection and I think that's where it started to become something that resembles what I was saying earlier about how thin people want to use me talking about my fatness is an opportunity to talk about their own struggles around eating and thinness and perfection and I think that those are really worthwhile conversations and I think that they should happen. But I think that that's what the body positivity movement ended up kind of being a little bit co-opted by, or that's the sentiment that I've heard and somewhat seen. And so there you get like a -- Yeah, a perspective where you know, you'll see somebody who is extremely fit, you know like maybe they don't quite have six packs, but you know, they're close. Posting pictures and hashtagging them, you know, hashtag thick, hashtag body positivity and you know, of course the issue there is that your body is celebrated, you know, you're not -- it's kind of ignoring the issue and and speaking more loudly as a person who is very attractive and you know, whose body is very celebrated. And using these words and hashtags almost drown out the conversation that's happening between fat people which I think is really valuable.

01:07:39.700 - 01:10:21.400

And so I haven't felt like body positivity is something that I would want to claim as anything more than one of many hashtags on Instagram if I'm really trying to, I don't know, pull a lot of people into a conversation or something. But yeah for the most part I do understand the criticisms of that movement, at least what's ended up happening. Yeah, do you feel there's any people in kind of body positive spaces or what claim to be on social media? So, yeah, I mean somewhat I feel like if you want to claim body positivity as a non-binary person and you are fat I feel like you tend towards being, having a body more like mine as opposed to maybe a body that's more like my friend Dennis's who is, you know, a bigger taller person, takes up more space, and is treated as somebody that takes up more space, for good or for ill. And I feel like obviously the fatter your body is, in the more sort of discrimination that you're, that you experience based on that, those are the people that I found are talking about or were talking about body positivity not going far enough, sort of earlier in those conversations. So a lot of the non-binary people that I personally follow and that I feel like generate a lot of really thoughtful and sort of good conversations. Those people are talking more about a fat acceptance movement. Something that is very explicitly about lifting up fat bodies and and centering fat bodies and that conversation as opposed to something that's a little bit more amorphous, like body positivity which you know really can mean that you know, you're a hundred pounds soaking wet and you're getting over an eating disorder and you're wanting to talk about feeling positive about your body. And that's great there needs to be room for those people. But that's going to drown out the conversation, I think so, so I don't really see most non-binary people and certainly non-binary fat people that I know participating in that body positivity. They would I think move over to like a fat acceptance model.

01:10:21.400 - 01:14:19.400

And in addition to fat acceptance, are there any other kind of like social media movements that you feel represent non-binary fat people well or you feel drawn to in particular? Yeah, not really specifically, not something that specifically tailored to non-binary people. I think that --yeah, I think that we kind of get in where we fit in. So, you know, again, if you're like a smaller fat or you're maybe a straight size person, you might gravitate more towards a body positivity movement to sort of talk about your specific experience with your body. Besides that and health at every size. But I mean the problem of course with something like health at every size is that it does center health and there's like a huge -- a few huge asterisks around that, right. Like for example, I have a chronic illness, actually have a few but I have a chronic illness specifically that gets in the way of me being as active as I might want to be. I have Crohn's disease, which is an inflammation of the GI tract and it can cause all these symptoms and complications and it can stop me from doing the things that I want to do. And so am I excluded from health at every size? Because is health about what you eat and your exercise, is that it? You know, those things are great. But does that mean that if somebody is an (air quotes) unhealthy fat person meaning that they don't eat according to what you consider to be healthy, if they don't exercise according to the way that you consider -- because it's all about perspective, right? Like we don't sit in these doctors meetings. We don't know, you know, -- and that's if the fat person in question goes to the doctor, which is something I struggle with. Because I don't like things to be so reductive and I don't like my weights to come up as the be all and end all, because it isn't. So when you make the framing about health, I think you're feeding into that sort of old narrative about like I'm a healthy fatty, you know, right like this is the conversation we have a lot. Like I'm one of the good ones, I'm performing, you know, eating right and exercising. And I fall into this trap all the time because I was taught that that's what makes it okay, right if you're fat. And so I find myself falling into that trap and I have to think about whether or not I want to talk about something like a health at every size. Is that going to be exclusionary? Is that going to represent, misrepresent me to the people that I want to share myself with or share these conversations with, is it going to -- Place an emphasis on health or wellness or exercise and diet over your right to respect or to exist in the world or to represent yourself on social media and say like here's my body. Here's how I am and I don't think there's a movement specific for that, but I think that there's like as a body positivity or health at every size, like there's a lot of little pitfalls to these movements. And I think that the conversations that we get to have because these movements are not fully inclusive, I think is actually really helpful. I think that you knowin some ways the failure of those movements to address everybody in every circumstance generates a lot of really good conversation. But unfortunately, I think a lot of the time that conversation doesn't go any farther than the back community.

01:14:19.400 - 01:19:12.900

And so that's when you have this issue trying to -- You know, like does body positivity or health acceptance or health at every size, does that break down any barriers? Does that bring people who are thin and have that privilege into the conversation? Usually not, unless they're just co-opting it a little bit, you know, so I think that's a limitation. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's it's like at what level is fatphobia still intrinsic in these campaigns or movements that are being targeted towards fat bodies and fat people without their -- Exactly, we've become so decentralized from that movement that we're not the people behind these things and then it becomes this corporate thing, right? Now, you know, I mean this company or that company can talk about body positivity or health at every size. And then what you have is not a group of people who are all trying to represent themselves; you have, you know, another cynical corporate bid for retention and we're supposed to be also excited to just be included, right? (laughs) And I mean if one thing has come out of 2020, if there's any kind of silver lining at all, I think that it gives the lie to a lot of sort of this corporatism and the celebrity culture things that were so intrinsic to society for so much of my life, especially like again early 2000s to like 2010. I feel like that is a period of things being you know, so so extremely celebrity focused and and corporate and then you know, social media is democratized that to a certain extent and is allowed people to publish themselves, which is awesome because you have this diversity that I think a lot of us didn't even know existed because you know, we only had what was in front of you that was sort of pre-approved, you know fantasy. And there's lots of downsides to social media, but for all the you know, people who talk about, you know, comparing themselves or you know, even the harassment. I feel like those are big issues, but I personally wouldn't trade and go back to a time when you were limited in who you could see and what you could participate in by, like I don't know, what magazine is on the shelf. So that's my perspective, but I do think that -- Yeah, especially sort of the rise of an influencer type, you know that it almost makes you hyper aware of how you're sort of sorted into like the right kind of person, the wrong kind of person, for public consumption. So you have somebody like Ashley Graham, who is a hugely successful plus-size because basically her body is hourglass-shaped and she's, you know, looks very very very conventionally beautiful and to say otherwise is you know, so fat phobic is to -- you know, to me have your opinion kind of dismissed. But that doesn't mean that everybody's body that's fat is obviously, you know fitting into that. And so we start to see that separation between who's acceptable and who isn't and those different intersections of unacceptability. You know, somebody like Lizzo having all this initial success and then kind of getting chased off the internet by people harassing her. And like, you know, a lot of that has to do with having a black body or you know, not quite catering to an all-white audience and not quite catering to a black audience. And so yeah, I think it's really interesting because I think it's more transparent in some ways than it ever has been so that we're able to more effectively criticize and talk as a community when we see corporations turn a profit off this stuff or trying to co-opt movements. You know that can be a source of conversation and illumination and I've gotten at least as much out of that as I've gotten out of just a bunch of you know, fat folks getting around and kvetching about you know, how society doesn't treat us, right and you get into a bigger conversation about like, okay. Well, what are the cynical forces at play here? So I think that's really really fascinating and I'm have a bottomless appetite for it really.

01:19:12.900 - 01:22:27.100

Yeah, yeah, absolutely and kind of wrap up. What advice would you give to other non-binary and fat people? The biggest advice, biggest piece of advice I think is to, do what I did and try to surround yourself with people who look like you and people who are having thoughtful critical conversations around this stuff because, you know, I mentioned my friend earlier. My friend is a lot younger than me. They're twenty-two and they're feeling a sense of pressure about their fatness and their expression that I don't feel, but I remember feeling when I was that age. And what I didn't have access to at that time that they could access now and I don't really know where the reticence is to do. That is to you know -- kind of if you want to center non-binary people and you want to center-- You know fatness in your life and you think that these things are underrepresented, surround yourself with them! Follow these conversations! You don't actually if you don't have time, if you don't have the inclination, you don't actually have to dig really deep into a theory to find a community of people that have already done that and listen, you know, you don't have to wait any -- I very rarely way into these conversations because I don't feel like I have a super unique perspective. I think that you know, I -- I'm sure you've done a lot of reading and I'm sure you've seen that I'm repeating a lot of these talking points and these are all things I've been thinking about for a long time. They come out in a lot of these conversations and I think you know when you're making that community, when you're making a decision to center those voices and to listen to them and to allow yourself to disagree without feeling like you have to jump in and like your identity is on the line. I think it's really helpful to understand the diversity of experiences and bodies and expressions and all these things. And that's really the best thing you can do is to put that stuff at the center of your social media world because I find if you don't, then you're letting a dominant culture dictate what those influences are going to be and you might find that you're not reflected in them. But we have the ability now to put those first and to, again, curate our social media so that it reflects who we are and it reflects our values. And people talked about that being an echo chamber, and I get that. But when you have a marginalized identity, I think it's really helpful to hear as many different perspectives from that community as you possibly can so, that would be my biggest piece of advice. Once you feel like you're part of a community then you can more effectively choose what parts you want to keep and what parts you want to throw away.

01:22:27.100 - 01:24:58.700

Yeah, and what's one thing that you right now wish your younger self would have known about identity? I think that I would have wished that -- I think I wish that I would have -- felt like I was more permitted to experiment when I was younger. To try different things on. I think that I felt a pressure to have it all figured out as I went through the world. There's somebody on my Twitter feed who I kind of vaguely know from when I lived in Saskatoon, again a community that is much more conservative as a whole, and this person they switch pronouns every couple weeks and they have a big announcement about how this is the, you know, they figured it out. And this is what it's going to be and then they freak out and they decide that no that's not the case and and they've given it some more thought and they always feel so ashamed of these moments and it's like, there's no shame here. Like, I get wishing that you had it all figured out, but you know, we're having the freedom to experiment and to try things on and gender isn't a one-time decision that you make, you know, it's a form of expression that you continue making your whole life. And so I guess that I wish that I felt more permitted to do that and I certainly did not. And what I hope is that -- like that sort of experimentation and trying on different things is part of the growing up process and that does not need to be figured out by the time you're like, you know in university or you know, thirty or forty, like this is an ongoing conversation you're going to have with yourself. So yeah, that's that's definitely something that I wish that I'd had. I guess I also wish I could have checked more in with my body and had less body loathing and so therefore been more clued into what my body's cues were, because whatever your gender expression is, that's going to be a lifelong relationship that you have with your body. And so the sooner that you can make that a more functional and less judgmental relationship the better I think. Yeah, absolutely. And last question, are there any questions I haven't asked that you wish I would have?

01:24:58.700 - 01:25:34.800

I think that that's really good. You gave me some really great sort of jumping off points when I was doing my notes. So I felt like you really covered really broad perspectives and I really appreciate how much thought and how much effort you put into this. This is really terrific. And I'm glad that somebody is looking at the stuff because I feel like so many people stand to benefit from these conversations being part of sort of the academic world, and I hope you continue on. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, so thank you so much for this interview. It's been extremely insightful. Yeah, so I will stop recording now.