Episode 33: From the Inside, Out (Part 2)
This is one transgender climber’s story. And it’s hard to sum up in just a few sentences not just Lor’s identity, but the human being that they are. The impact that they’re having on our community in a meaningful way, and how it’s growing because of it. Just by simply existing.
This is part two of a two-part story.
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Music by: Kakurenbo and Chad Crouch. A HUGE thank you to Chad Crouch for creating absolute magic, and to Peter Darmi for mixing this episode.
Cover photo by Kika MacFarlane.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
(KATHY KARLO): Hey. We wanna take a quick moment to emphasize that we really love therapy. If you’re listening to this podcast, then you know that we take mental health awareness pretty seriously.
Therapy isn’t gonna give you all the answers. In fact, it’ll probably raise a lot of questions. We’re also not gonna bullet point all of its benefits. But—did you know that one in five Americans experience mental health issues? Yeah, that’s more than 40 million adults each year.
And if the last few years have taught us anything at all, it’s the importance of taking care of ourselves. So, on the regular, canceling weekend plans to stay at home and be an introvert ball is ok. Disappearing to get your life together and resurfacing in a foreign country with a new name ten years later…also ok. It's called self-care.
Therapy is also self-care, and it’s a lot easier than getting a new identity and starting all over. Even though it’s hard and will make you work for it and you’re gonna feel really uncomfortable and pay someone for that discomfort—it’s there for you. Good therapy agitates. Good therapy is hard.
This podcast works with Better Help to connect you to licensed therapists. Therapy is beautiful—everyone should go. Go to betterhelp.com/climbing to sign up and receive 10% off your first month. It helps support this show, and, more importantly, it helps support you.
- This podcast is presented by Patagonia. Not bound by convention, Patagonia’s in business to save our home planet.
- This podcast is sponsored by deuter, one of the leading backpack brands that will help you hit the trails with confidence and comfort, but most importantly–your snacks.
deuter has a history of first ascents and alpine roots. Their head of product development even climbed Everest once, in jeans (hashtag not fake news.) deuter is known for fit, comfort, and ventilation. Founded in 1898, deuter believes in good fitting backpacks, so you can focus on way cooler things like puppies, pocket bacon, and gettin’ sendy, whether at the crag or in the alpine.
(FEMALE VOICE): Today we’re going to talk about “allez”. “Allez” means “come on!” in a way, or to encourage. Ok! We are done with the simple and normal uses of “allez”, now let’s cut to the chase:
(KATHY KARLO): Allez Outdoor Personal Care products are made by climbers for those who love the outdoors. Their rich and repairing ingredients for their skincare collection are inspired by desert landscapes, and their simple and recyclable packaging makes them eco-sustainable. Allez commits to protecting the open spaces that we love by partnering with the Access Fund and 1% for the Planet. That’s Allez Outdoor: “A-L-L-E-Z”). Allez Outdoor—made by climbers, for those who love the outdoors.
- This podcast gets support from Gnarly Nutrition, one of the leading protein supplements that tastes “whey” better than they need to, because they use quality natural ingredients. So, whether you’re a working mom who runs circles around your kids on weekends or an unprofessional climber trying to send that 5.13 in the gym, Gnarly Nutrition has all of your recovery needs.
The only question you need to ask yourself is: Are you a sucker for anything that tastes like chocolate ice cream? (Yeah, me neither.) Gnarly Nutrition is designed to enhance your progress—and taste like a milkshake, without all the crap.
(LOR SABOURIN): Visibility is a really interesting topic because there’s two truths in it. I can speak to that for the trans community—I think it’s true for other communities, too. But visibility is so important because the trans community has been taught that we need to hide to feel safe.
So, when you see people being visible, you’re like, “Maybe that’s not true! Maybe I can express my identity and live openly, and be safe—” and that’s so freeing. And so, in a way, you’re proving that to yourself, and you’re also proving that to other people.
And, at the same time, visibility attracts violence. Another version of being visible is the fact that I’ve gone through a medical process for affirming my gender, which means that to the world, I am visible as trans. Whereas before, I looked a lot more female. And so, I could easily pass as a cis woman. It didn’t feel like passing to me—it felt like hiding. But it definitely made me safer.
So, being visibly trans just when I walk into a room—it is both super affirming and I get to live in this body that feels really right to me. And I can show to other trans people that, “Hey, there’s another trans person here. It’s pretty obvious, you know. They’re existing in this place, and they have friends, they have a job, they have a community,”
And also, like I was talking about in the example of being chased out of the bathroom with a weapon. Right? It’s like, being visible can cause me to have and experience situations of violence. So, it’s both. It’s like, I prove that I’m safe in a lotta context, and it also backfires in that I see more of the side of the world that isn’t safe.
(KK): Hey, a quick heads up. This episode includes discussion of transgender violence, suicide, and sexual assault. Visit fortheloveofclimbing.com for resources at the end of the transcript, and reach out to find support if you find yourself struggling with any of these topics.
Episode thirty-three is part two of a two-part story.
(LS): My name is Lor. I use they/them pronouns. And I guess the best way to describe what I do is: I take these really big-picture, hard-to-understand concepts about mental training and write curriculum that makes them feel tangible and approachable and experiential—so that people can learn to approach mental training as a skill and something that they can incorporate into their lives.
Right now in life, I’m focusing a lot on my personal climbing—that’s been a really important part of self-care for me. And I’m in grad school—I’m studying adventure-based counseling. And so, I’m really making a lot of connections between adventure sports and trauma therapy and the healing process and how we can use the resources that people already have for resiliency and empowerment to help them heal from really big things in their life.
(KK): You’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast. This is not a climbing podcast. Well, sorta. This is a funny, sad, and somewhat uncomfortable podcast about choosing vulnerability and talking openly about our pain. This podcast is presented by Patagonia. Here’s the show.
(LS): Yeah, there’s definitely this base layer of stress that has very little to do with my perception of my self and my gender, and so much to do with the world’s perception of my gender and my safety. And I think my appearance confuses people. I would say that I pass very well as non-binary. I have an androgynous appearance and I think being able to have the healthcare that I’ve needed to feel ok in my body and feel androgynous and have it match up with my gender identity is amazing. Like, such an amazing gift.
And people see it and they don’t know what to make of it. And so, that leads into these experiences of confusion and so, pretty much every social interaction I have with a new person involves some form of confusion. Which can range from curiosity, which can be ok if someone’s kind and curious. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, can lead to fear and violence.
So, in my day-to-day life that looks like, you know, walking into a place that has gendered bathrooms and making the decision about which bathroom to go in based on what I appear as—and knowing that the consequences that I’ve experienced for that have ranged from being screamed at by a woman that thought that I was using the wrong bathroom, to being followed out of a men’s bathroom by someone with a knife and chased out of a gas station. So, I mean, my physical safety feels at risk any time I have to pee.
(LAUGHS)
Which is like, I mean—that’s just stressful.
And it leads into my professional life. Like, if I’m meeting a new client or something—not knowing how to discuss my gender with them and almost feeling like I have a responsibility to make them feel comfortable around it. You know, it’s super amazing that people lead with intros with pronouns more often now, but sometimes it puts a lot of pressure on me.
‘Cause you go around a circle of people that are all cis-gender. And then, you share your pronouns—especially as a non-binary person and you share “they/them” pronouns—and people have this awkward, uncomfortable look to them of like, “Oh, shit. Now we actually have to adapt our approach to this person.” And they feel uncomfortable about getting it wrong, and that projects onto me.
And so, when I’m teaching, I’ve had to really train myself not to offer my pronouns apologetically. And not to offer my existence apologetically to people—which is hard! And honestly, that gives someone who’s learning about the process of sharing pronouns—it gives them the opportunity to continue learning.
And I think a lot of people that are cis and want to support trans people—like, they really wanna be super loud about it and that’s awesome and I love absorbing that support. But they also need to recognize that the more you make someone feel uncomfortable around trans people, the more violence and discomfort we have to experience.
And so, I think giving the space to a trans person to opt in if they feel comfortable is so important. And giving cis people the opportunity to learn and grow. That might sound like kind of an unpopular opinion, but the last thing that I want to do is force a learning process on someone that causes them to react with violence towards me.
I mean, gender’s an internal experience. Right? So, it’s an internal understanding of something that is an innate part—
(PAUSES)
—Hm. I was about to say “an innate part of who you are”. But it’s more an innate sense of what you are. And I think so often, trans people and non-binary people, maybe especially, are asked to explain what their gender means. And when someone asks me how I know I’m non-binary—I could ask them the same question:
“How do you know you’re a woman?” or “How do you know you’re a man?” And I think that there is a popular response of referring to genitalia or XX chromosomes or whatever. And I think that is a copout answer because that’s saying, “Oh, you haven’t really done this internal reflective work to understand.” I could say the same thing. My body feels androgynous now and that feels so affirming, but that’s not how I know what my gender is. It’s not based on my body.
So, everyone’s experience of gender is personal and one of the things that I said to someone early on as I was exploring my identity was—and I articulated this is an experience that I expected them to have—it was another queer person, but a cis person. And I was like, “You know how it’s so cool that we have these super balanced masculine and feminine sides that really inform each other, and you can lean into both in this really beautiful way.”
And they kind of paused and said, “You know, I do think that everyone has masculine and feminine characteristics. But I don’t think I understand what you’re saying. Like, I don’t think that’s my lived experience of having this very even give-and-take between the two.” And I paused and said, “That’s interesting! Yeah, my experience is different from yours. How cool.”
And I know other non-binary people whose experience of gender isn’t that. You know, it’s not this very even blend of masculine and feminine influences that inform each other. Some non-binary people feel that they don’t have masculine or feminine influences—that it doesn’t feel like either.
Some people feel like they have maybe more of one or the other that is coming up at different times. Or maybe they feel like they, at one time, feel very feminine and that’s their entire experience. And at other times of their life, will feel very masculine, and it transitions between the two. And none of those are wrong, because they’re just people’s internal expression of what’s going on.
I think that if you’re cis and your gender identity aligns with your body and what you’ve been told is your gender from the time you were born, it could be a cool experience just to say, “What makes me know that I am the gender that I am—beyond just my body?” ‘Cause the variation of bodies and hormones and even chromosome variations and how they play out in how people’s bodies look are so different.
We think of it as an either-or, but if you had the whole world take their clothes off and look at each other and you’re like, “Ok, let’s explore gender!” Like, it’s definitely not an either-or thing! We’re looking at sex characteristics, even. So, allowing yourself to listen to what’s going on internally around gender—it’s really powerful. And if it doesn’t have all of the baggage of being afraid of being hurt for it, then it ends up being really fun.
(KK): I was wondering if you could help connect these dots? Like, how “just” a comment can actually be a violent statement.
(LS): Yeah, let’s use a super benign one—just to really go in there. Like, something that seemingly could be said is benign. Putting out an article that is promoting visibility and someone responding like, “I don’t care. Why are we talking about this? Everything is about being PC now, and you’re trying to sensor me and I shouldn’t have to see this.”
In theory that was no violence towards me. That was just someone’s frustration with shifts in culture. So, let’s say a trans kid is following my story and they see that. Their response to that is probably going to say, “My existence is frustrating to other people. I am causing people to have to change when they don’t want to. And therefore, I should hide more of myself. I should be really scared about making people feel uncomfortable.”
And they get this message that then, they’re a discomfort to people and that they’re too much. And so, they start to shrink away again. And in those situations, oftentimes that ends up being those situations that we talked about where you internalize that hatred, you try and diminish yourself, and that gets played out into violence that they perpetrate on themselves. That’s like a very—I chose one that people are like, “How could that even be read as violence?”
(KK): Allyship in general is just kind of seen on this continuum and I think that ranges from apathetic to aware. How do we combat that “not my problem attitude” or the whole bystander effect?
(LS): That has been something that has been so personally painful for me because when I first came out to some people, I had this experience where I shared my pronouns with them. And when we would be talking one-on-one, they would be very affirming and they would use my pronouns correctly, so I knew that they knew how.
And then, we would be in a group of people and they would purposely misgender me. And they would say things like, “Well, I don’t want anyone else in the group to be uncomfortable.” And that, for me, was like a blow to the chest of prioritizing the comfort of themselves and other people over recognizing my needs as a human.
And the thing is, is that when someone feels uncomfortable about someone else’s gender, they can leave that behind. Like, they might think about it for a while, but they’re not gonna think about it all the time. But to me, I mean, it’s that message again: the world isn’t safe. And that was something I was taught really early on.
You know, I think that actually ties back to what you were saying before. A more blatant thing that someone might leave on a comment thread that would be violent would be talking about me being gross or deviant, or they’ll talk about trans people parading as something that they’re not. And those statements—without being able to see the person or being told like, “You’re the weird one here, you’re the one that’s deviant or wrong.”
I actually, as a young person, I was sexually assaulted and I was told that if I hadn’t been out, that it wouldn’t have happened. So, I was taught that people being uncomfortable with me was a reason that it was ok to hurt me and that I couldn’t expect to be protected by the people around me and I had it coming for me by quote, unquote “choosing to be different”.
And when you know that it’s something you can’t control, it’s just a part of what you are—and then, I mean. There’s actually, in court, people have been let off for hurting trans people and killing trans people with the Trans Panic Defense.
So, the quintessential one is a man sleeping with a trans woman and he can say, in a lot of states around the country, he can say, “Well, I didn’t know she was trans. We got in bed together. I realized that she was trans and then, I panicked and I hurt her. And that was why—it wasn’t ‘cause I’m a bad person.”
And people have been let off for murder because of that defense. And so, in those situations when someone’s saying, “Other people’s comfort is more important than your safety.” That’s really what you get from that bystander effect of—you’re told once again that people aren’t going to protect you. And that’s really scary.
(KK): We’re gonna take a short break. We’ll be back.
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(LS): What else am I doing?
(LAUGHS)
I’m making a film project right now.
Blake is a climbing partner of mine and one of my first friends in Flagstaff—someone that I’m really close to. And Blake, at one point, asked me to come over to the Tourist Home, which is a coffee shop in Flagstaff. And he was like, “So, I wanted to pitch a film idea to you,” and I was like, “Oh, yeah. Sure.”
And he’s like, “So I wanna make a film.”
And I was like, “About what?”
And he’s like, “About you!”
And I was like, “Oh…That’s interesting.”
And at the time, we thought it was gonna be this really small thing. I was like, “Oh he’s gonna make this ten-minute film about me rock climbing and that sounds cool.” And I kind of agreed to do it because I was kind of exploring what it would mean to be more open about my identity—especially in the climbing world. And I thought it could be a cool way to just be a little bit more visible and share that with other people.
And it’s turned into a big thing now—
(LAUGHS)
—it is not a ten-minute film.
And I think that because there’s a really big exploration process with gender when you’re trans—that sometimes people will think that what you’re trying to communicate is who you are, when really you’re just communicating another aspect of what you are. It sounds kind of out there, like nebulous, but it actually isn’t. It’s just like, everyone knows they have just a core human inside of them that doesn’t need anything else to define it.
(KK): Go to Patagonia.com/climbing, or visit the Patagonia YouTube channel to watch “They/Them”, streaming online now.
(LS): One of the things that I think really needs to happen is all of the humans in the world that are talking about all of these benefits of sports that aren’t achievement need to really take a look at how they’re talking about trans athletes. Any athletic director, any school—you’re gonna be like, “Are high school sports about winning?”
And they’re gonna be like, “No! It’s about teaching leadership and it’s about teaching teamwork and it’s about empowering our young athletes!” And then, they’ll go right around be like, “We can’t let trans girls play because x y or z reductionist reason about a trans girl’s body.”
And it is just so hypocritical. You know, at the highest level of sports in the Olympics, in major leagues, we can start to talk about being aware of a person’s transition process and how that influences their athletic performance—male and female, right? And for non-binary people—to give them space to explore how they can be involved in professional athletics.
At that point though, there’s already a lot of laws in place and we need to realize that bodies still, even at an elite level, have so much variation. No one is telling Michael Phelps that we’re gonna add five seconds to his time because of his specific genetic potential that’s better. And if we look at the bodies of young trans athletes, they also vary across the board.
You know, saying that we need to exclude trans girls from sports from a performance standpoint is super reductionist, pretty misogynistic, and if you really look into it, has a lot of racism built in as well—based on the people that are being targeted.
So, really I think, first of all, those restrictions—we need to really let trans people lead and talk to people that understand the variations in people’s bodies. But at a level where we’re talking about recreational sports, so many of these laws happening in sports right now are laws around high school athletes and youth athletes.
And in those situations, I think we really just need to question—who are we trying to protect and what are our values in athletics, and why does a trans person feel like a threat to you? What were you taught that made a trans person feel like a threat? Because I know I was taught to be afraid of trans people. And, you know, I can tell—when people ask me, they’ll say like, “I don’t understand how someone could feel threatened by a trans person.” I can say, “I do because I’ve had to unpack that my whole life.”
And then, from the climbing standpoint, I think it is so cool that we have this sport. You know, the same applies, I think, to competition climbing as any other competitive sport. But with outdoor athletics, we have this opportunity to welcome people to a way to move their body that might not have always been welcomed into athletic spaces. Climbing, we actually have a really awesome opportunity to make space for trans people when they’ve been pushed out of other areas of athletics.
The queer community, in general, has often not been given access to affirming movement spaces. You know, people are like, “Oh, why does the climbing community get so much focus?” And it’s like, don’t we wanna be better? Don’t we wanna create that space for people? And don’t we want to continue improving—instead of just saying, “We already are doing enough.” It’s like, hey—but wouldn’t it be really cool to be the place where people felt safe?
So I think, as a climbing community, just being aware of maybe some of the places where the misogyny that was originally in climbing is still showing through, realizing how toxic that can be to someone who feels really afraid of experiencing violence because of their gender and working to change that? That’s powerful. And it can create a safe space for other people.
I mean, what my dream is for visibility is that the more that we’re able to just live openly and honestly—stay aligned in, for me and my sense of self and my inner safety with who I am, that I can navigate those painful situations enough to the point where I don’t feel as nervous about them anymore.
And there are more situations of love and appreciation and just general, “Oh, cool. That’s cool. You’re trans—I’m cis. This is fine, that’s just how the world is.” And can just open up more space where other trans people can see themselves in the world—so they don’t have to wonder if they belong.
And people who aren’t trans can just get used to seeing people who don’t look like them. And then, they don’t have to be scared anymore because it’s not new to them—it’s not unknown. And that translates into people that I’ve gone through a really long learning curve of helping them learn to use the pronouns that I use—they can then, turn around to the next non-binary person they meet and be like, on it with pronouns.
I can do some of that lifting and it makes other people in my community safer. I do think for the person that’s creating visibility, and this is something that I think we need to be aware of in our leaders in the work of creating more inclusive communities, is that if there’s someone that’s putting themselves out there— likely, they’re internalizing a greater amount of the hate than the general community.
Right? They’re kind of eating it and internalizing it and processing it in order to create more affirming spaces in general. And they get to benefit from those more affirming spaces, but they also take in more of the poison on the way there.
And when I was talking about my own process and when we were talking about these experiences that people have because of other people being afraid—I think we often think of cleaning up our side of the street and doing internal work as something selfish. And I think that developing the ability to be aware and learning to take care of your mental health to the point where you’re not getting triggered by other people’s existence or by requests to change or by feedback is one of the most beautiful gifts you can give to the world.
(LAUGHS LIGHTLY)
And it’s showing up as a more healed person makes it possible to build communities that are more healed. So, I think in terms of investigating your fear and learning to be playful, and exploring the areas that still feel painful for you—that’s directly tied to being able to show up for other people.
(KK): Even though I still have no idea what I’m doing—things are happening. And if you’d like to help out and support us, check out patreon.com where you can sponsor us for as little as one cup of bodega coffee. It really helps keep this podcast going, and for the record—we love bodega coffee. Special shout out to Peter Darmi because he makes this thing sound good.
- You’re listening to For the Love of Climbing Podcast. A huge thank you to deuter, one of the leading backpack brands that will help you hit the trails with confidence and comfort. And a big thank you to Gnarly Nutrition for supporting this podcast and the messages that we share. Gnarly Nutrition supports a community of vulnerability and equality—and tastes like a milkshake, without all the crap. A big shout out to Allez Outdoor for supporting the Access Fund and 1% for the Planet. Allez Outdoor Personal Care products are made by climbers for those who love the outdoors. And thanks to Patagonia. Not bound by convention, Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.
Support companies who support this podcast—we couldn’t do it without them. If you liked what you heard, you can leave a review on iTunes or give us a like—like all good things, you can find us on the internet. Until next time.
Additional Resources: If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please consider reaching out for support.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline
24/7 hotline, staffed by trained individuals, for those in suicidal crisis or emotional distress
1-800-273-TALK (8255); 888-628-9454 (en español)
Crisis intervention and mental health services for those ages 13-24
1-866-488-7386
1-877-565-8860
National Sexual Assault Hotline |
National Sexual Assault Hotline (en español)
24/7 hotline, staffed by trained individuals, for those experiencing sexual assault or violence
1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National coalition documenting hate incidents
Report and get help at: 1-844-9-NO-HATE
Health and guidance for healthcare providers, as well as a list of transaffirming health clinics in Canada, the United States, and England.
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
National civil rights organization with offices across the United States
GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders)
Legal advocacy for the LGBTQ community
Movement Advancement Project (MAP) is an independent, non-profit think tank that provides rigorous research, insight and communications that help speed equality and opportunity for all. MAP works to ensure that all people have a fair chance to pursue health and happiness, earn a living, take care of the ones they love, be safe in their communities, and participate in civic life.