Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: And so growing up, I was always like this tomboy, you know? And I remember saying to my mother's child that I wanted to be a boy, but it wasn't because of my identity. It was because what I saw in my neighborhood was that the little boys in my neighborhood had way more freedom than I did.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: If you have any questions.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: Today on Dear Queer, we're talking to teak Millan, writer and speaker and beautiful soul. Today he's going to tell us more about his experience in coming out as both queer and trans to his mother.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: All right, well, welcome to Dear Queer. We have Teak Millan. He is an american writer, public speaker, activist, and strategic media consultant, currently a national spokesperson for GLAAD, and the former senior media strategist of national news at GLAAD Teek. Welcome to the podcast. What did I miss? What do you want our dear queer listeners to know about you?
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Okay, awesome. Thank you so much for that. And, you know, people. People do my bios and they always say that I'm a national sports person for GLAAD. It must be on my Wikipedia page because I'm not. I love GLAAD. I used to. I work for that. I was a senior strategist there for. For a while.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: And I still work in partnership with them, but I'm not with them in any formal, formal way. But shout out to GLAAD. You know, they're my queer advocacy of family. So. So. So there's just that. So there's that one correction. What else? So, yeah, so far as career, yes, I do all of the things. I'm a consultant and I'm a writer and I'm a public speaker and I'm a teacher.
What other identifying factors? I'm a father, which is probably one of the most important things. It's a touchy relationship, but I'm a father nonetheless. I'm also a storyteller.
Yeah. So I travel with the moth. I don't know if you folks have heard of the moth. It's a storytelling platform around for many, many years. I've done many main stages with them. I've done like 13 cities about. Start hosting with them. I have my story. Miss Mary is in there. The new anthology of point of beauty.
Yeah. What else? And I do leadership and development coaching for corporations and institutions all over the world.
[00:02:34] Speaker C: That's actually how I found you, was through a moth story. That Miss Mary story that I read in a point of beauty. That's how I found you. And I just fell in love with your story and was sent you immediately to Lorne. I was like, we must have teak on. I'm going to follow up with him and see if he'll be a guest because it was so beautiful and touching and that, you know, you just really captured that combination of, like, pain and beauty that can come with coming out and that relationship with family that can be so complicated yet is so fundamental. So it's something that we just have to wrestle with. Right. And, you know, you just captured that so beautifully. So that's why I chased you down. That was.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
[00:03:28] Speaker C: Yeah. So our first question is just about. So we have listeners who are on all sorts of the spectrum in terms of their coming out journeys as well as their gender identities. And can you tell us more about yours? Like, when did you start to explore or understand your queerness and your transness as well? Like, when did these things start happening for you?
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, for me, as far as my journey of gender and my sexuality, it's been an evolution. You know, I think a lot of people think that trans people understand themselves to be trans as children in that there's this place where it's like, you hate the person who you were, you hate your body. There really was none of that for me. It wasn't that. You know, I tell you a quick story. This is in my book. I'm working on a book right now, amazing stories of the book, right? So when I was seven years old, my mother bought me this strawberry shortcake bicycle. You know, it's girl bike with the pink and all of the girl things.
[00:04:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I hated it.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: I hated it, hated it, hated it, hated that bike. Now, I did not understand myself to be transgender at seven, but I knew I wasn't riding that bicycle. You know, there was no.
You know, there was no. There was no language there. Understand. You know, this is, you know, we talk about. I was 787. So we're talking about the eighties, you know, black, middle class family. My mother was a nurse. My father was a mechanic. This idea of transness wasn't even a part of our lexicon. Wasn't even a part of our world, really, you know? Yeah. So I had this bicycle. So I did not understand myself as being trans did, but I knew that I wasn't going to ride this bike. And so growing up, I was always, like this tomboy, you know? And I remember saying to my mother's child that I wanted to be a boy, but it wasn't because of my identity. It was because what I saw in my neighborhood was that the little boys in my neighborhood had way more freedom than I did. They were doing. They were able to do things I couldn't do. I wanted to ride my bicycle all over the neighborhood. I wanted to climb the trees. I didn't want to worry about getting dirty. I didn't want to have to worry about messing my hair up. You know? I felt like being a girl, being feminine was so constrained, just like, socially. So I think early on, I processed it as, like, this, a social thing and not necessarily an identity that was, like, tethered to my spirit, of my humanity. That didn't come until. Until way later. Yeah. So, for me, my gender identity was definitely. It was an evolution.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: Right?
[00:05:47] Speaker A: So I came more. I came more and more into my masculine identity as a masculine woman in the world, as a butch in the world.
And I learned a lot and had and some of the most important memories, some of the most important lessons that I learned was in lesbian community. But at the same time, there was this deep incongruence. There was just something that was amiss, right? So, boom, I was working at this. I was a bartender at this bar called Meow Mix. I was lesbian bar called Meow Mix.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Shout out meow mix on Houston, down.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: On the lower east side. And so I work in the bar, and this guy walks in, this little short white dude, and he has gauges in his ear. It's just really handsome and tattoos, you know? And he puts his flyers down on the bar, right? And so I'm looking at the flyer. He's like, oh, I'm having a party here. So cool. I'm like, yeah, so put your flyers down. So I look at the flyer, and it's him on a cover like this, and it says, like, tata, tatas. And it was his top surgery fundraiser. This was the first time I ever met a transde, right? So when I saw him, it was like a light bulb went off. I had no idea that that was. That was even a possibility.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: I didn't know that I could be a man. I thought I was like, you know, what's wrong? Where me just being a masculine woman isn't enough? Am I drinking the kool Aid? Is something like, am I, like, internalizing some kind of weird sexism? Like, what's going on here? And it was in that moment when I saw him that I knew that that was the route I needed to take. A. And so I'm saying all that to say a part of the reason why I am very out and very public about my story is because being that model of possibility, because he modeled that possibility for me, and he didn't even know me, you know what I'm saying? He changed that moment, changed my life. And so it's important for me to be able to share my story because I, you know, somebody could see me and think, you know, I could be possible, too.
[00:07:41] Speaker C: Absolutely. It's like, you know, you've said it so well that. That importance between kind of what we feel inside viscerally versus what we see outside of ourselves as options. And I can just imagine you with this bicycle just kind of being like, oh, I hate this bicycle. Like, just on the inside, but not really understanding why until you see these other examples that you're like, oh, it's because I want to live like that. And then same thing, like, later in your years, you're like, I should feel happy, but something is still not right. And then you're like, oh, I want to live. I want to be that. Like, that's who. That fits me better. And I think that's so true for, you know, so many queer people in their experience. Like myself growing up, I didn't. I remember having one professor in university who was a lesbian. And I remember it was almost like I describe in an article I wrote that, like, walking by her office and looking in, almost like she was a wild animal. Like. Like that I'd never seen before be like, that's the lesbian. And, like, it was just like, whoa. You know, because it was such a. It was so outside of my realm and my world as well that I didn't have any understanding of it.
So that's so perfect.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: That's why I think storytelling specifically is so important. You know, you talk about being a tomboy when you were younger, and it's like, I think that both of us can very, very much relate to that. But that was the. That was the lane where it was acceptable to demonstrate athleticism and these quote unquote, more masculine qualities. That was the place where it was safe. If you grew up in the eighties and nineties, it was still kind of.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: A disappointment to your mother, but still, it was somewhat acceptable. It was a rougher version of what they ideally want as a feminine.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And girls.
[00:09:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: And I was super sporty. I played all the sports, and that was because it was in that place. I could be in my body and I could be strong and I could be tough, and I didn't have to worry about all these kind of feminine leanings and I played basketball and I played volleyball, and I went to school. The full division one scholarship. I was going to the WNBA, but I was like, that w.
This is right with me.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: I want to talk about the beautiful story in the moth collection of point of beauty called Miss Mary that you mentioned before about your relationship to your mother. And both, again, the kind of rift, but also intimacy that came from coming out to her two times. Right. Why was it so important for you to be your authentic self with your mother? And can you tell our listeners how it changed your relationship over the years or how your relationship kind of the trajectory of it over the years and coming out to her?
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. You know, me and my mother had a really close, close relationship, and she really had a high expectation of me, and she really loved me so much. She just loved me so hard. So I had a high expectation of her, I think, too. And she. And she really raised me to believe that no matter what, she was going to love me. And I really, really believe that. So it's like, I have to be me, and you have to show up, because you promised me that you were gonna love me for whoever I am. And she did. And that's just what it was. You know what I'm saying? And it's, you know, my story, my trans story is not a story of a whole lot of resilience and a lot of, like, hardship and heartbreak. It really isn't. It's really is a love story. It really is how I grew in love in my trans identity and how I grew. My family grew to love me. I don't know, more, but definitely differently or maybe more authentically, or they got to see me in a different way. But it was really important for me to tell my mother. And we were so close. It was just like, I didn't really keep much from her, like the usual, like, stuff that we keep from parents, you know, like the sex and the drugs and whatever, you know, all of that crazy shit. But, um, the love and the authenticity, she promised me, and so I had to make sure that she make good on her and on her promise, and, you know, and she did. And she did. And I remember there were times, you know, when she told me that she admired me for me being who I am, you know, and that I made her think, you know, she was like, I had never even thought about, you know, what this means and, hell, what does it mean for me to be a woman? Like, I had to really think about these things, you know? And there was. It came to a point where she told me that she admired who I was and that it really made her think and it made her her better. And I knew it would because I trusted and I believed in the love that she promised me.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: That's amazing. So it's like you knew you had enough trust that you knew it might briefly create some distance, but you knew that ultimately she would come back to you.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I knew it. I knew it. But also, and as I said in the story, like, you know, that is a risk. As a trans person. You do risk losing everybody that you thought loved you. And it got to the point where it was like, I can't lose myself. Yeah, I'm gonna have to do this, and I really don't think I wanna lose my mother. If I was. I was gonna be ready to, you know, but I really, really believed in my heart that she was gonna stick by me.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: And she did amazing.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: I think. Yeah. For our listeners, and I think Alena mentioned, you know, we have folks at different stages of their coming out journey, and I wonder if you could maybe take us. Take us back to that moment of kind of coming out with your transness to your mom and to your family, anything that might be helpful for our listeners to think about if they're trying to work up the courage or thinking about how they might do that in their own lives. And, yeah, I mean, we come out so often. It can be to our family, it could be to colleagues, it can be at many times just even going down the street.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, for sure. You know what was really important for me? Queer community. I can't emphasize enough how important we are to one another, how important queer and lgbtq community spaces is for our survival and for our sense of self and for our love. So when I first came out, first, I had the unique position where I had moved away to New York. I've been here in New York City now for 22 years now. I'm from Buffalo. But a part of the moving away was being able to explore my gender identity, not under their watchful eye, and being here and immersed in such a. In such a diverse and big queer community here in New York.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: So I had that privilege of community and space. And so being in that space and being in community, it allowed me to create, you know, chosen family of supporters and people who really loved me and understood me before I came out to my family. Because even though, like, I knew my mother was gonna stick with me, I still didn't. You know, there was still this unknown, but I already had so much certainty already in place. And that kind of was like my scaffolding. It kind of just filled me up, you know, I was like, if you lose everybody over here that's related to you by blood, you have all of us who are related to you by choice, and you're never going to lose us. And that helped.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah. I think, too, there can be a thing with family where we don't want to disappoint them. So being able to kind of get yourself grounded and confident in who you are so that I think sometimes family can think they have more influence or sway, even unintentionally. And so if you come to them kind of firm in this, it's nothing. It's not a choice. It's not. There's no, we're not moving around here. This is where I'm at. And it sounds like, yeah, you had that community to kind of help you firm that up and get that, especially.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: If we ever, like, I knew I didn't. So I used to be married to a man, came out of my late thirties, and I didn't tell my mother until I was already, like, in a good place with my ex, stable, had, like, you know what I mean? Like, emotionally a good place. Had things kind of established because sometimes family can try and steer you or make you back step and all that.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:15:46] Speaker C: And so I totally feel that where it's like, no, you need to be in a good enough place so that you're not tempted to crumble. Yeah.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: And not like, in a malicious way, you know? If you're not sure in yourself and you have people around you who are not sure about this identity, then they could take you away from the most authentic part of yourself.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: You know what I'm saying? And so you're absolutely right. You have to be firm in who you are. So as a trans person or a queer person, you have to say, I'm firmly here. Like, this may be hard, but I know that this is who I am, and not coming with all this trepidation, like, oh, I don't know. And I feel bad, and I don't want to disappoint you. People are going to pull you away, and then before you know it, you're back into the cycle of living a life that is not yours to live and trying to make yourself happy in a place that you're not going to be happy. So, like, having that firmness and loving and being confident in yourself enough first is paramount before any coming out. Like, you gotta come out to yourself and accept yourself first. And if you don't accept it and love it, then nobody else is gonna do it for you. And I think that's for, like, any aspect of love.
[00:16:48] Speaker C: I was writing recently and came up with this line that was just basically, we create the world. We need this idea that, like, there's these gaps that our family don't even see, that society doesn't see, that queer people need. Or. I don't know exactly how I want to put it, but, like, this idea that there's these, like, our family, our straight friends, there's things that they just can't understand about our experience. And it's only us that can create that for one another and for ourselves. It's like, we create what we need because the rest of the world isn't giving that to us.
It's not, you know, it's not built in in any way. We have to create those things that we need for ourselves.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Are there any spaces that were great kind of community builders for you that you want to shout out or let people know about?
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, so early. I mean, you know, now is, you know, in my forties and in my, you know, in my demure time, very, very demure.
[00:17:52] Speaker C: Very demure.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: You know, very wholesome.
But, yeah, but back in the day, I see there was, like, those crazy nannies and there was meow mix, and there was Harry Huntley. Henrietta Hudson is still around. Shout out to henriettas. Henriettas is still around.
You know, there was bardot that I used to go to, and there was, you know, two eyes. Where is that? There's this one lesbian bar that's still around that's been around for cubby hole.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: Cubby hole. Cubby hole. Yeah, yeah, the cubby hole.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Cubby hole is there, right? You might say that. Right. So these are all these places where I really created community.
You know, there's nightlife spaces and bar spaces. And again, I think this is a privilege of being in New York City, but I think almost like every town that I've been into or city we've been into, there's been a gay or queer watering hole. You know, that I'm a non drinker these days, but yet, and still, I think that those spaces that we created, community, this historically have been so important for us and for me, is coming up in New York City. I moved here when I was 22 years old with $500 in my pocket.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: And a plan, you know, that didn't happen. My plan down the toilet and life happened to, you know, but it was queer community. It was lesbian community that saved me. That really brought me up. I always say some of the most important lessons that I learned about being a masculine person in this world came from women.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: You know, it really, really did. It really informed my masculinity as a man who passes as a heterosexual, cis man in the world every single day. I've been informed so much by the masculinity of butches, and I think it has made me a better mandeh, you know? So shout out to all of the butchers.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Shout out to all the always.
[00:19:27] Speaker C: Yeah, hold it down. That's amazing. I love that.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: I think, yeah. I think there's something beautiful about a woman who can own her butchness and masculinity and, like, I don't know, dyke culture and all of that, because it's like to be a woman and also embrace, you know, the masculine energy presentations and all of these things that society put on us is, yeah, shout out.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: It's real. It's real. And it's. And for me, it's this idea of creating, like, a different type of masculinity as, you know, I'm in this body, in this privileged body. Like, you know, I'm a black man. Sure. And, you know, that comes with this, with its issues. But, you know, nobody's gonna try to hurt me on a train at 02:00 in the morning.
Nobody's following me down the street. No one's bothering me. Going into the bathroom.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: You know what I'm saying? So there is a level of privilege that I have and of autonomy and safety I have in this trans masculine body. And it's important for me to think about, what does that mean? Do I just revel in this privilege, or do I use that to be in solidarity with my people, with queer people, with lesbian people, with, you know, black and trans folks? Like, what does this look like? And this is a, this is a constant thing that I think about as I, as I move through the world as a man.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: You also, I think, probably have a bit of a superpower, having been also perceived and experienced what it's like to walk around as a female presenting person. It's like you've seen both sides.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And let me tell you, people definitely treat you differently.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure.
[00:21:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: People treat you so differently as a man. And I've been on both sides of it, and I could see it, and it's just like, it just, like, blows my mind. It's like a real, like, like, mindfulness. I don't know if I can curse on here, but it's like a real. Okay, sure. It's like a mind fuck. You know, the way the world really switches when you are perceived differently.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Walk in the world differently. The level of safety, the respect. It's. It's different.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Oh, like, I can present fairly matt masky at times. You know, the back of my head's shaved and all that. And, you know, I notice it the most in. In the airport and traveling and stuff like that than in our kind of, like, queer bubble in Toronto. But, you know, I'll watch it switch. I've had, like, a, you know, some guy bump into me and be like, oh, yeah, sorry, bro. And then as soon as, like, they. They're like, oh, you, like, see it completely shift and they're like, their brain, like, short circuits.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Did I break it? Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: And it's like they watch it in real time.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I remember that would happen to me. And then people will go overboard with trying to, like, like, woman me. Like, oh, they're bro me. And they're like, oh, sorry, ma'am. Miss sweetie, please don't. Please don't lady me worse.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: Like, yeah, they're just digging their hole. Yeah.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
[00:22:22] Speaker C: You mentioned the importance of telling your story and being, like, a visible speaker and performer and the importance of. Yeah, like, representation and allowing other people to see you as an example, knowing that when you were growing up, that would have really helped you and eventually did. When you had that example of someone that you felt more sort of kinship with in terms of your identity, what kind of feedback have you gotten from people in terms of whether it's about your particular story, Miss Mary, or just other speaking events that you do? What have you heard from audience members, listeners, readers?
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, with Miss Mary, my mom's story, you know, it's funny. I do my mom's story, and I've done it live and I do it all the time. And people come up to me after the show crying, just tears crying. And it's not about me. It's about her.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: It's always about her. They want to talk to me about my mother, right? Which is great, because this is how I submit her legacy. She was amazing. So now thousands of people get to know who she was. And so I love that that happens. And you know what else happens to me? Every single time I do that story? Every city I've been to, from here to London to Nebraska to Alaska, people come up to me and they tell me a story about somebody trans. In their family, they have a son or a daughter, they have a little cousin or they have a niece or, you know, they have a parent and they're trying to figure out what to do. And then they want to show up for them the way my mother showed up for me.
[00:23:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: Because it's a possibility. It shows that you can still love through, not necessarily understanding. Right. I always said when you love someone, there is no but after that. And that's what my mother did. I love you. There's no but here. And they want to know how to do that. And they want to share with me that they're there, too. And that's. And that's what really touches me, you know, every single time, people from all walks of life. And that just goes to show that everybody loves somebody who is queer or trans. Someplace on the spectrum. We all know someone. And I. And I also think it speaks to the fact that even though here in the US, in our political climate, you know, it's like the most wrong voices. They are the minority, but they are the loudest, but they are a minority of voices. Most people really just want trans people just to be able to live. Most people don't want to take away our right to exist in this world. I think the majority of people want to kind of understand it, or if they don't want to understand it, they're just, they're neutral about it. Like, seriously. And this is what I find all the time, that the world is much filled with more love than not than what people have tried to lead us, are trying to lead us to believe.
[00:24:58] Speaker C: That gave me goosebumps.
I love that. I love that people are coming up to you on that.
The second way you described it as people coming up to you, first of all, to want to know about your mom, which is beautiful. And secondly, that idea that you've given people an example of how to love their trans friends and family in a way, like you said, that there's no but after it, acceptance and unconditional. And that's amazing because you know that, I mean, that's when you know directly, too, it is changing other people's lives for the better.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:33] Speaker C: That's so beautiful.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: That's what I'm here for. That's what I want to do.
[00:25:36] Speaker C: That's so beautiful.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: I love it. Yeah.
We're going to post links for where people can find your moth story.
Is there anywhere else you'd like to direct them? Where can people find you on socials and that kind of stuff?
[00:25:50] Speaker A: You can find me on teakmillan.com you find all my information there. And also on Instagram, hemister Milan, and also on TikTok.
Follow me. So follow back.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And we'll post links as well.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: It was so nice to meet you.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Take care.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:06] Speaker C: Have a great time, y'all.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Alright. Take care, y'all. Bye.
[00:26:10] Speaker C: If you liked this episode, please share it with someone.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: This has been another episode of Dear Queer. Just a reminder, we are not actually experts. Any advice given should actually come from our experts. Experts who we will bring in from time to time. Music brought to you by Sean Patrick Brennan. Produced by myself, Lauren Hogarth, and your host, as always, Elena Papienis.
I'm getting that.
