The Radical Origins of Pride Month (with Kaila Story)

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Introduction – 0:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Welcome to Relationscapes. It's the place where we learn more about ourselves by learning more about other people. I'm journalist Blair Hodges, joining you from Salt Lake City. Our guide in this episode about building LGBTQ solidarity is Professor Kaila Story.

KAILA STORY: As a feminist, as an academic, as a thinker, I've always believed in the fact that our humanity is tied up with one another. There is absolutely no way for one marginalized group to get to any semblance of liberation without the aid and help and support of another.

BLAIR HODGES: As a Black woman, Kaila Story hasn't always felt safe in queer spaces, where racism often rears its head in slurs or cringey condescension. As a queer woman, she doesn't always find safety or affirmation within Black spaces, either. And as a scholar, Kaila says progressive people who preach about liberation under rainbow flags often end up recreating systems of exclusion against each other.

And she says that must change. Her book is called The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity, and she joins us to talk about it right now.

 

Autoethnography – 01:46

 

BLAIR HODGES: Kaila Story, welcome to Relationscapes.

KAILA STORY: Hi. Thanks for having me, Blair. I'm so excited to be here.

BLAIR HODGES: Thank you. I enjoy being introduced to new words and new concepts in the books I'm reading, and especially for something that I knew existed but didn't really have a name for. Your book has a really good one that I don't remember encountering before: autoethnography.

KAILA STORY: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: So maybe everybody but me has heard of autoethnography. But just in case, I want to start there and have you explain it, because it really describes what this book is.

KAILA STORY: Yes. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method in which the researcher, myself or anyone else, takes their own lived experiences with certain social-political phenomena, whether that be bias or privilege, and they expound upon these lived experiences by connecting them to larger social-political issues and structures.

So we can think of it in the tradition of Audre Lorde's writing. For instance, in her book A New Spelling of My Name, Lorde charts her life in a really nontraditional way in terms of writing her own memoir, but also elaborating and expounding upon how her lived experience reflects the lived experience of many other folks. And these are the systems that are actually negatively or positively affecting that life.

And we can draw conclusions about where we are as a society, how we relate to one another as human beings, through this kind of research method.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you mentioned qualitative, and that's usually set apart from quantitative, right? So quantitatively, more statistic-driven, that kind of thing. Qualitative is really about stories.

And it's connected with theory, too, but it's very story-driven and experience-driven, right?

KAILA STORY: Yes, very much so. Very much so. It's that you have this experience and you feel like, one, I'm not the only one who's experiencing this, and I probably am not the first one to experience this. And how is this connected to larger issues?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Okay. So an ethnographer would kind of embed themselves in a community and be an observer. In autoethnography, you're already the embedded one, and you're kind of reflecting on that.

KAILA STORY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes.

 

Black Queer Invisibility – 04:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: And you start your book off, too, in a similar way, with a personal story. This was when you were going around with your friend. I think you were getting prepared to get married, right? And you were going around, and everybody assumed, because your friend presented as male, that you were the two getting married.

They didn't see you as a Black queer woman. They saw you as getting married to this guy. And so that's the story you start this book off with.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. I mean, it was me and Jay. And Jay is my former co-host of our podcast, Strange Fruit. And we were so excited. Jay was excited, and he's a Black gay man, and I'm a Black lesbian woman.

And this event was supposed to be for LGBTQIA wedding vendors, so you wouldn't have to wonder, you know, are you going to be a homophobic baker? Are you a homophobic florist? Right? And so you were supposed to be put at ease immediately by that. These are all vendors who are LGBTQIA-inclusive.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. So you weren't aiming to get in front of the Supreme Court?

KAILA STORY: No, no. I was so excited. And every booth we went to, whether it was the calligrapher or the invitations booth, they were like, “So when are you guys getting married?” Right? Because it wasn't just for LGBTQIA couples. Certainly, straight couples could come there, too. And the presumption was that we were straight.

BLAIR HODGES: I probably would have made the same assumption. But you said they kind of should have picked up on it, right? That's your sense. Not to be stereotypical, but—

KAILA STORY: Yeah, not to be stereotypical, but I think the way in which we even relate to each other—we don't relate to each other as lovers or newly engaged or fiancés or anything. I think there was a friendship, a deep friendship, that you could sense from that.

And I don't think that Jay has this kind of traditional femme-leaning expression in the way he expresses himself.

But at the same time, we had already interviewed on our podcast the folks who were putting on the event. And our podcast was years old, and we really didn't know these other Black queer people in Louisville who were doing this kind of work. So not that I assume they should know us, but that they should catch the vibe or just wait to even say, “Hey, I'm getting married.”

Me and my wife would, like—so they didn't give us that opportunity. It was like, “Hey.” And they were like, “Oh, how long have you been together? And when are you guys getting married?” And that wasn't the only time.

The other story was going to Starbucks. I would routinely go there, and then I finally brought Jay. And they're like, “Oh my God, you finally brought your husband.” Now, for myself, I'm like, I never wear a wedding ring. I wasn't married. And I told the barista. They said, “Oh.” No, we're gay. And she was like, “Oh, I'm so sorry.” And I'm like, “Don't be. We're not, you know—we're happy. We're happy to be gay.” [laughter]

But I thought, because I was having these experiences—and those are just two of them—but I had been having them since I had come out, since I had realized that I myself was a lesbian. And I felt like this has to do with my race.

Even if I was in queer spaces, at queer nightclubs, bars, I was assumed to be there because I was friends with Black gay men or gay men, and that I was somehow straight. And there was a suspiciousness that I was treated with in spaces. You know, “Are you here to be homophobic?” Right?

And I thought, this has to do with my embodiment, right? What they're seeing is a Black woman, and they're making these assumptions that Blackness and queerness can't exist simultaneously.

And I'm like, how does that happen when we have a Bayard Rustin and a James Baldwin and an entrepreneur, Lorraine Hansberry? I felt like, at this point, me growing up in the '90s, I had a real critical awareness of Black queer figures in the past. And so I just didn't get it. And so I was like, okay, microaggressions, racism.

 

Creating Spaces in Women's Studies and Black Studies – 08:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: And this kind of situation would happen in different contexts you found yourself in, where the different combination of your identities—a Black feminist, queer, femme-presenting person—people would try to puzzle together who you were.

Like when you were studying gender and women's studies in college, you noticed that your colleagues, a lot of whom weren't Black, would kind of resist talking about race. When you tried to bring race as a component into the discussion in gender and women's studies, you saw resistance there.

And then later on in grad school, where you did Black studies, you found that a lot of the people there, who were more often Black, would see your queerness and feminist politics as a white thing and kind of not want that in the space.

So you experienced a disconnect in college—undergrad and grad—in these two different contexts?

KAILA STORY: Yeah, certainly. It was really wild times. But a part of my identity was ejected or rejected from my peers and also professors in each academic space.

And so in women and gender studies, when I brought up race or I brought up class, all my peers felt like, “You're being divisive. We're talking about all women.”

BLAIR HODGES: That's the word they always used here. “That's divisive.”

KAILA STORY: Or, “Why are you going to this specific issue when we're talking about all women?” But to them, that meant white. And universality, or being universal, also registers to many white people as white.

And so this idea of a default human, a default humanity, is inextricably linked to that of whiteness. And so when I'm trying to talk about sexism and racial inequity at the same time, they're like, “Oh, you're just trying to play oppression Olympics,” or, “You just want to talk,” you know what I mean?

And there was no issue with queerness in that women and gender studies space. There was no issue with the fact that I identified as a feminist at all.

And so then when I get to the Black studies space, I certainly don't have to argue about the impact of race in any kind of way. But I have to argue about my feminist identity and my queer identity, where I'm being told that queer identity was introduced during enslavement, all of these conspiracy theories, that somehow there is no such thing as Black queerness.

And I'm thinking to myself, how is that possible when the architects of Black studies are overwhelmingly, to me, Black and queer?

Like many folks in academia, we have Du Bois, of course. We have really foundational figures historically. But we also have Baldwin, right?

And so then I would get in classes in which they talk about Baldwin, but they talk about his analysis of race, never about how he was a Black queer man, and never about how his queerness informed his politics and his insight with regard to certain issues.

BLAIR HODGES: Marginalization, especially because race and sexuality and gender identity all can be part of marginalization.

KAILA STORY: Exactly. So it was wild. I mean, in each space, I pushed back against those things. And in each space, fortunately for me, I did have colleagues—peers and some professors—who were great mentors and great mechanisms of support, because I don't feel like I would have been able to be finishing well.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And especially as a grad student, you're still figuring so much stuff out as well. So it's like you're there to explore questions and ideas, and out of the gate, some things are getting dismissed because of discomfort, really, with either race or sexuality or gender identity, depending on the context.

So, to me, I see this book kind of growing out of those personal experiences. The book is called The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf, and the name is inspired by some art and poetry. Tell us about the inspiration behind the title.

KAILA STORY: So, yes, I'm paying homage with my title. I'm paying homage to Ntozake Shange, a Black feminist creative who wrote the choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf.

And the reason why is not only because of the foundational work in that choreopoem. Shange deconstructs all of the types of harms and violence that are directed toward Black women during the '70s. And she wants to unearth and make transparent that not only do Black women suffer at the boot of racial capitalism and socialized patriarchy and misogyny, but there's also an interiority in Black women's lives in which they're suffering from domestic violence and intimate partner violence at the hands of Black men in their communities as well.

So they're navigating racism and sexism from the outside world and then navigating sexism and misogyny from within their own community.

And so it was really controversial, timely, and I thought the way Shange handles, with such care and tenderness, the intricacies and nuances of Black women's lives, I wanted to do that for Black LGBTQ people and Latinx LGBTQ people in the book.

And so I lift that, right, using the symbolism of the Pride flag that just got the Black and brown stripes added to it a couple years ago. And how the Pride flag, which is supposed to represent the unity of our community and all of the wonder in gender identity and sexualities, still exists alongside racism within our communities. Misogyny still exists in our communities, and unfortunately, transphobia does as well.

 

Rainbows and Flags – 13:39

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk more about the rainbow as a symbol. So you mentioned the flag. There's the Progress Pride flag, I think I've heard it called, right? That was updated in 2017, people have probably seen this.

The classic Pride flag is the rainbow, obviously. The Progress Pride flag added kind of a triangle on the side with Black, brown, and also colors that represent trans folks. Some versions will have a yellow field as well, and some have a circle representing intersex and, I think, asexual identities as well.

So it's trying to be more specific. Why the new flag? There are some queer people that didn't want a new flag and some that do.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. And I talk about this in the book, but AJ Hikes, when they're working at the Philadelphia LGBT office in 2017, decides to add the Black and brown flags to not only talk about the significance of Black and Latinx LGBTQIA people in the foundation of Pride, in the resistance at Stonewall, in doing work on behalf of our communities—namely folks like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera—and how they were at the forefront of our first Pride march at Christopher Street.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, these are trans women of color, specifically.

KAILA STORY: Yes. Right. Sylvia, Latinx. Marsha, Black. And so these are our foremothers. These are literally the folks who were at the forefront. Also Miss Major. Also Victoria Cruz, a Latinx trans woman. Miss Major, a Black trans woman.

So these are the folks who were advocating and working on our behalf alongside all other folks. And so it was a gesture to show and honor these folks who came before us, and also the work that was currently going on and still continuing with Black LGBT organizations and Latinx LGBT organizations specifically.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that element of it. It was as much an awareness-raising campaign amongst LGBTQ communities—perhaps even more so than it was front-facing to other people, right?

It was all queer folks facing marginalization should be standing together and recognize all the intersections of that and how it impacts people of color and trans folks and everybody in different ways, but trying to bring everybody together. That was a message for queer communities who had had racial divisions.

KAILA STORY: Yes. It wasn't this thing to say, like, here for the cishet community, right? Or for mainstream communities. It was literally a teach-in for us as a community and an acknowledgment that although folks share gender identities or sexualities, there are still barriers and biases that we have to navigate through and we have to get rid of.

Especially in the time we're in right now—and basically, in reality, the time we've always existed—there has not been a single moment in history in which queer or trans identity has not been contested, policed, scrutinized.

And so we've always needed to be with one another. And we can't do that when you have racial bias at the forefront, you have gender animus, you have transphobia.

So it was all of those things. And yeah, people were outraged. Specifically, white cis gay men made their outrage known all over social media, like this is ugly.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it's "divisive."

KAILA STORY: Yeah. And it was the same response. It's like when you bring race into the equation, when you talk about race or ethnicity, then it somehow becomes, like, “This is divisive. You're dividing everyone.”

And it's like, but this already exists! People are already online on gay dating apps getting fetishized. There's all types of racialized bias all over.

BLAIR HODGES: And anti-trans stuff. There's the "LGB movement" that's literally like, let's remove the T from it. Queer people making fun of "the alphabet soup, the alphabet people."

KAILA STORY: And yeah. Or gay folks in this current administration saying, like, “I'm a normal gay.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yes.

KAILA STORY: “I'm a regular gay.” Like, what does that mean? And why is there this deep investment in basically trying to create gay respectability or queer respectability?

 

Respectability Politics – 18:12

 

BLAIR HODGES: Say more about that respectability angle, because this goes all the way back. This isn't a new thing.

KAILA STORY: So gay respectability is really rooted in the term Lisa Duggan gives us. Lisa Duggan, queer philosopher, feminist icon, talks about homonormativity, homonationalism, in addition to Roderick Ferguson's work on what it means to be that type of gay and this homonormative gay.

Which means to be a politically neutered queer person without a political investment.

BLAIR HODGES: You blend in. You're quote-unquote normal.

KAILA STORY: You happen to be queer, right? You happen to be queer. You're not intentional. You don't see your queer identity as a political identity. You have no political investment in it. All you want to do is be able to spend money, buy things, right? So all you want to do is be able to capitalize on your consumerist identity.

BLAIR HODGES: Individual, right? Like, individually directed. I want my spoils just like anybody else can, and I'll wear the right clothes to do it, and my voice will sound the right way, and I won't look scary to people.

KAILA STORY: And in fact, homonormative folks, it's not just this kind of general apathy to being civically engaged or politically engaged. It's also a deep investment in naming oneself a normal gay or disparaging other queer people and other LGBTQIA people that are in your community.

BLAIR HODGES: You're one of the good ones.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. Saying that they're out of control, they act too flamboyant, they're making this happen. “I'm not like that,” right? “I'm different.”

BLAIR HODGES: This happens with race as well. This is the same thing that goes back to, like, Booker T. Washington had the whole respectability thing. We're going to be the best Black people, and whites will accept it, but we have to earn the acceptance by living up to it, sort of a thing.

KAILA STORY: Yeah, certainly. Taking on mainstream social mores, code-switching, changing their speech, their dress, to conform to what mainstream society says is professional, says is, you know, whatever mainstream society defines as decorum or tact. And so trying to mimic oneself after that, thinking that that performance and that behavior will keep one above the fray.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KAILA STORY: And that they will not somehow—racism won't come down on them. Sexism won't come down on them, right?

It's the same thing for many women feeling pressured not to cry or be emotional in any way in a workspace because they already know, in that workspace, sexism is abound. And so they don't want to be stereotyped in that way.

BLAIR HODGES: So men certainly aren't emotional! Come on! [laughs]

KAILA STORY: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And the Progress Pride flag itself is so emblematic. I mean, that's what flags are supposed to be, I guess, but so emblematic of this entire dynamic.

And when it came out, it enacted the whole problem it was speaking to. The way people responded to it was like, “Oh, that's ugly,” or, “We don't like that,” or, “This is divisive.” That's not respectable.

We're trying to have this mainstream Pride that we can have all our corporations come and sponsor all our parades. And we're going to convince everybody in the world that we're just these normal people, and that's how we'll earn acceptability.

And so these divisions, they are present from the very beginning. We see it in queer communities. We see it in Black communities. We see it in feminism. This kind of ongoing battle between respectability and not respectability.

 

Friendly Fire – 21:46

 

BLAIR HODGES: And so The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf is also, as a title, reminding readers of the original Pride flag. Back in 1978 was when that one was created.

And like we said, that rainbow was supposed to be representative of the whole community. But the reason it wasn't enough is because these other prejudices continued within the movement.

I'm always tempted to believe that a marginalized person will find common cause with every other marginalized person. And it just, unfortunately not the automatic response.

KAILA STORY:  It seems to be so obvious and so plain that someone who was racially oppressed would understand what it would be like to be sexually oppressed. But that's actually something that people literally refuse and have a deep investment in denying.

For whatever reason, they don't want to find the common thread with another person that is marginalized. They want to say, “You're making up your marginalization. Your marginalization is not that heavy. Mine is more severe.”

I mean, James Baldwin really nailed it when he said that he thinks a part of the reason for racial animus in LGBTQ communities had to do with white gay people feeling robbed that they weren't able to capitalize on their whiteness due to their queerness.

So they weren't able to enact whiteness or white privilege in the same ways because of queerness. And so they wielded it in bigoted ways toward others in their community.

BLAIR HODGES: It's a scarcity mindset too, right? It's like there's only so much justice and equality to go around. I need to get into the charmed circle. I need to get into the cool club, and then I can help keep other people out. And by doing that, I'm proving that I belong.

KAILA STORY: Exactly.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And I have to say, some of that, I think, is born in a need for safety, born in desperate circumstances. And when marginalized people are pitted against each other, it only benefits the oppressors.

And I feel like it really—I don't know. I'm a white cishet guy. These are things that I've had to listen to stories to really start to hear.

KAILA STORY: Oh yeah. For me, I've always believed that as a feminist, as an academic, as a thinker, I've always believed in the fact that our humanity is tied up with one another. There is absolutely no way for one marginalized group to get to any semblance of liberation without the aid and help and support of another.

And I'm not sure why folks want to keep investing in these siloed and alienated ways of being with one another. They would rather view the difference and therefore reject the other human than see the common thread and see the similarity.

But we also have to be honest about the fact that white racism, in particular, is something that is homegrown. It is something that is socialized from the very beginning of one's life, unfortunately.

I mean, if African Americans learn that they are Black by the age of three because of their experiences with white racism, then white children certainly know what race is, what racial difference means. And so there isn't necessarily a growing out of that, even if one goes to college, right?

And folks continue to racially segregate themselves as well. And so then we're all at the gay club thinking that everybody's got us. You know, we're all at the gay club, everybody's gay, we got all this in common. And not really.

We still live in a deeply segregated America. We still socialize with one another in racially segregated social groups. So we have to get there in a way in which we see the fact that people's lives improve when those lives on the bottom improve.

BLAIR HODGES: It really does lift all boats. And if you don't do it like this, the possibility of oppression persists. So if you're building your liberation on a system that discriminates against someone else, then that discrimination itself can always circle back.

KAILA STORY: I completely agree.

And I think that, for instance, when I think of reproductive technologies, IVF, when I think of the idea that shows like Love Is Blind, which typically show cishet couples—cisgender and also heterosexual couples—trying to find love, and then when they find them, they say, “I found my person.”

Where does that come from? Where does that nongendered language come from? “I found my person.” “You're my person.” Right?

The idea—even Disney is trying to expand ideas of what true love means and that we need more than just romantic love with Frozen, right? And Elsa figuring out, yeah, right, that's the love of her life.

When we think about the idea of gay folks trying to foster, adopt, and have their own families, that expanded the possibility of cishet people, one, saying, “I don't want no family. I don't want kids.” Right?

So queer and trans people's existence and the ways in which they've made their families have expanded definitions of family, have expanded definitions of relationship and connection. And cishet people have all benefited from that. They use the language.

If I see one more post from a cishet person saying, “I'm so excited for my Friendsgiving, chosen family,” you're like, yeah, chosen family. Yeah, this is, you know—

BLAIR HODGES: You also mentioned when you're in the club and all these white folks will start speaking to you in AAVE or start—because you're Black, they think that. And there's so much borrowing already from drag culture, too, which was so rooted in Black culture, that now queer communities will borrow Black aesthetics without any kind of recognition that that's really what they're doing.

KAILA STORY: And that's the thing, because that means that Black people are being viewed—even if they're Black and LGBTQ—they are being viewed as ornamental. They're being viewed as dolls or things, little commodities that we can imitate.

I think of mascots, too.

BLAIR HODGES: Like, oh, that's—

KAILA STORY: Yeah. But as soon as I walk in—and it's not even like they haven't said hello. We haven't said a word to one another. But they'll just start snapping, “Girlfriend!” and it's like, girl.

And that's, you know—there's a presumption that I'm excited when they do that, right? Because every minoritized person is excited when folks who are in a space of racial privilege mimic what they think Blackness is. We love it so much.

No, it's so ridiculous.

BLAIR HODGES: Not all Black people have that same aesthetic anyway. So it's making a presumption from the get-go of who a person is.

KAILA STORY: Certainly. Exactly.

 

Media Representation – 29:19

 

BLAIR HODGES: You mentioned Love Is Blind. I want to talk about media for a second. You've got some good analysis of media in the book.

For example, you talk about how humans learn to value different kinds of bodies and different kinds of people based on media representations. You really focus on how TV shows and movies and stuff make a big impact on us.

And I think there's maybe still some skepticism about that out there. So I want to hear you talk about what TV does to us, what scrolling Instagram can do to us, and how we should think about this.

KAILA STORY: Yes. Well, for me, as an only child growing up, I was always a media kid. I loved television and movies.

And I would notice that, especially growing up in the 1980s when I'm little and in the 1990s when I'm a teenager, there were no Black people on TV. I mean, in the '80s, you had Dallas, you had Dynasty.

BLAIR HODGES: Later on.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. Then you had The Cosby Show, and then you had A Different World.

BLAIR HODGES: But yeah, we had a few Black shows. But look, The Cosby Show was coded white in some ways?

KAILA STORY: No, certainly. You know, it's a doctor, middle-class Black family. And if anything, we can argue whether or not they were supposed to be middle class.

I mean, they owned their own brownstone. Cliff was in private practice, and I think Claire was a partner at her law firm. I mean, so they were—I mean, yeah, I think she's wealthy, you know?

But it's the same thing when we think about Home Alone. Home Alone is one of my favorite films. It's one of my favorite Christmas films. But they were supposed to be this normal-income family.

And I'm like, excuse me. They had five kids, and each kid grew up and had their own bedroom. And the bedrooms were elaborate. They're all going to Paris for Christmas. They have a two-car garage. They live in the Chicago suburbs. But somehow we are supposed to believe that they're a regular everyday family.

And that's what I mean about whiteness and wealth somehow registering to us as universal. That story in Home Alone is a universal tale. And people watch it at Christmas, regardless of race and place. They all enjoy it.

And so we are getting sold, over and over again, this idea that to be universal, what it means to be regular, average, ordinary, is also to be white.

And so I do think media has a particular relationship in our culture, seeing as how we live in such a segregated America. More often than not, people grow up in neighborhoods where people look like them. They might have the same income as them. They certainly mostly have the same race as them.

And then, you know, I don't know how many students I've taught who say I'm their first Black professor, who say I'm the third Black person they met, that they were 23 years old before they saw another Black person. Right? Black people aren't in their town.

So we have this idea that we grow up in this multicultural America, and we really don't encounter the multiculturalness until we're adults.

BLAIR HODGES: I feel like more Black people do precisely because of media. Even if you're in a predominantly Black area, you're watching, especially back then, all the network shows, and most of the people were white.

I feel like Black people had a better sense of white culture because white culture was so predominant.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. I mean, Black folk, Latinx folks, Asians—every race of human being knows everything it means to be white. They know about white hair products, white skincare, everything, because of the bombardment of images and television shows and films.

And we don't get that for our communities. And then when we do, when that tries to be inserted in any kind of way, I mean, look at the outrage over the mythical mermaid that was Black.

Literal fantasy.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. The mermaids—hey, mermaids are, like—

KAILA STORY: Mermaids are actually creatures of the imagination. And guess what? The imagination can have many different races, right?

And so the outrage when they were going to have a Black character in Star Wars. This is literally science fiction, so it literally can be anything.

BLAIR HODGES: Because white's the baseline, right? And why are we making it divisive by doing this?

 

How Bodies Are Valued – 33:47

 

BLAIR HODGES: You also talk about the valuation of people. So if white people are predominant in media, that also sends messages about who's worth something.

And it can even speak to the self-esteem and self-regard of Black folks and how they feel about their bodies and themselves. And then it also gets into queer communities because of the lack of queer representation.

So you, for example, say you never saw on TV two Black lesbians pursuing relationships.

KAILA STORY: No. And the only time I did was in Black art—Black art that wasn't deemed queer.

So The Women of Brewster Place, which was based on a book by Gloria Naylor, was a miniseries in the '80s. And you have the characters Theresa and Lorraine, and they were Black lesbians. And I remember them fondly when I was a kid.

And also Shug Avery and Celie in The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

And so Black art, in particular, kind of is way before this idea of mainstream queer art or white art. So ideas of Glee and, like, “Oh, we're so excited for a show like Glee.” And it's like, we've had television shows and films that feature queer characters.

But when I was growing up, when I was really searching—right? Because those films come out when I'm a little kid in the 1980s, and that imagery registers to me much later, when I recognize, hey, I'm gay.

But when I went to Blockbuster trying to rent all these gay films because I'm like, I'm gay. I need to know what the tea is. What does it mean to be gay? What relatable stories are there?

I wanted to know. I wanted to have a girlfriend. And what does that mean, to have a girlfriend?

And so, yeah, every lesbian film I checked was interracial, right? The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, which is one of my favorites. Go Fish, Bar Girls, and The Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye, which is an interrogation of this very phenomenon, right? That we only see queer identities when it's in proximity to whiteness.

So even that film, though, had another interracial couple. And then if we move forward with ideas of interracial couples in terms of lesbian identity, I kept seeing it over and over again. And it was something that was bothering me because I already had experience encountering racism in queer spaces.

More often than not, in my experience, the most volatile racial incidents have been in queer spaces. The first and only time I ever got called the N-word was at a queer bar by the queer owner, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Wow.

KAILA STORY: And that's toward the end of the book when I talk about that. And again, I did get his bar taken away from him. I didn't want to teach him a lesson about racism, because that doesn't seem to work with racists. So I'll take your money. Yeah, so that worked, in conjunction with the Fairness Campaign.

But yeah, I was at a queer bar. We were kind of campaigning for Obama, me and my group of friends. He brought dogs in there that were unleashed. I was scared of dogs at the time. And then he called my one friend the N-word, called my other friend the C-word and B-word.

And so then I said, well, you know, I told him who I was. And he was like, “Well, you can come here anytime.” And I'm like, “Oh no, you just called that friend the N-word, this friend the B-word and the C-word. So I guess I'm all three of those, honey.”

But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come back and take your—I'm gonna take this bar, honey. Because, you know, like that, you know.

And so to me, what I recognized in that moment is, wow, I'm probably not the only Black queer person he's talked to like this. And I bet this is the only time in which it's mattered to him, because now there's a threat of him losing his business.

For me, I felt like this was a replication of the lack of visibility in even queer film and queer television when it came to specifically lesbian identity.

I mean, we've had two iterations of The L Word. We had the first series of The L Word, and then we had the reboot, Generation Q, honey. Still the same thing. Ain't no two Black lesbians in it ever. It's like, what is going on?

And so, thank God for Lena Waithe, who gives us season five of Master of None with a Black lesbian couple, who gives us Twenties, that series where you have this Black lesbian protagonist who's masculine. She gives us the reboot of Boomerang, where she had two Black lesbians in that.

So literally, contemporaneously, when I'm thinking of Black lesbian-couple visibility, it's pretty much Lena Waithe, who's a Black lesbian herself.

BLAIR HODGES: And it's so strange to me because these are great stories, just for the sake of being interesting.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. And we just don't have, by equivalent—when I think of Black gay men and Black gay male visibility—we've had such great icons give us such great content.

So Ian Patrick Polk, right, with Noah's Arc. And now I feel like he's an executive producer on P-Valley, too. Love that man. Love it. And hopefully it'll come back. Hopefully P-Valley will return. He gave us The Skinny. He gave us Noah's Arc. You know, Tarell Alvin McCraney gives us Moonlight. We have Blackbird.

And so this is about Black gay men giving us examples of Black gay men in relationships together.

Even Empire. When I think about the show Empire, they had Jussie Smollett's character, who was a Black gay man. And then when they have a Black lesbian, they have her played by Naomi Campbell, and she's with Marisa Tomei. So I don't know what they're trying to do.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. It's the same story.

KAILA STORY: And Orange Is the New Black. So we're supposed to believe that in prison all the Black women were straight. So that's one, right? There was only one Black lesbian in the whole prison in Orange Is the New Black.

Because, you know, Laverne Cox's character, she's straight. So, pooh, she don't have no girlfriend for like six seasons. And then they give her the Asian girl, right? So then she has the Asian girlfriend.

So it's just, to me, it's like, girl, okay. Anyway, y'all can just make it up. Y'all can just keep making it up.

BLAIR HODGES: Because I feel like there's cover there, too, because you can present it as sort of progressive to have interracial relationships, which, true enough, used to not be on TV. But it's like, why is that so commonly happening?

KAILA STORY: And that's the thing. I want to be clear. I have absolutely no issue with interracial relationships. I love them. I'm here for them. The more visibility, the better.

My issue is, why is that representation to the exclusion of a Black lesbian couple or a Black lesbian family?

I feel like 9-1-1, the television show, gave us a Black lesbian couple. Tracie Thoms was one of the women in the relationship.

But even shows like The Fosters—I love The Fosters. I loved both moms. I loved both characters. But I would love to see more visibility with regard to Black lesbian couples and Black lesbian relationships when it comes to telling stories, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And you're calling on creators to avoid the stereotypes and to include more depictions with dignity and dimension and humanity. Not just for the representation of it, but because these are better stories.

Like, give us better media. We want better stuff.

KAILA STORY: All the stories. Especially because all of us suffer from not having community with a wide range of diversity in terms of our friendships, our community connections, our work connections.

It would be so wonderful to be able to have more examples of the depth and beauty of our humanity. So, yeah. The more, the better. Yes, exactly.

BLAIR HODGES: It makes life richer. Me watching shows about people that don't look like me, that don't have my background, they're still dealing with fundamental human emotions and circumstances.

And seeing them play out in different contexts only adds richness to my perspective.

So, yeah. There's more about this topic in the book. It's called The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity by Kaila Story.

And Kaila is a professor in the Departments of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville.

 

Columbusing – 42:24

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, Kaila, I want to talk about Columbusing. This is another term that I first encountered in this book.

And you have a chapter on ball culture, and this is where Columbusing gets introduced. So describe what Columbusing is.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. So Columbusing is the act in which a group who is in a privileged position, whether that be gender or race or class, basically lifts or co-opts, takes a pastime, an expression, an aesthetic from a minoritized group, and pretends that they, in fact, were the ones who discovered it.

And so I remember several years ago, I think Cosmopolitan said, “Oh my God, look at these sticky buns.” And it was this white woman with these little buns all over her hair. And I'm like, you mean Bantu knots, which is a traditional African hairstyle.

They just did something, I feel like, in Elle or Vogue where they had Tracee Ellis Ross and they're like, “The cloud bob.” You mean the afro?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KAILA STORY: They were like, “The cloud bob.” And Tracee Ellis Ross got mad at that too because she didn't know she was being used like that. But yeah, they were like, “The cloud bob,” you know, and everybody was outraged.

And so that's literally what it is. It's the erasure of what created the hairstyle, the pastime, the expression. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And this happened in ball culture, which is early drag and trans folks. These celebrations, ball culture, were places where people could go to have a show and especially marginalized people could gather.

And a lot of stuff has grown out of ball culture. A ton of vocabulary has come out of ball culture—throwing shade. Everybody knows, whether they know it or not, everybody knows stuff that came out of ball culture.

And it's not just the fact that it's been Columbused and kind of taken over. Some people might say, “Oh, who cares? That kind of stuff can belong to everybody.” Your concern is that that stuff gets stolen and reframed and taken out of the original context where it was born, and it allows the people who stole it to ignore the oppression of the people who created it.

KAILA STORY: Yes. Especially when it's being wielded or weaponized in a racist way. And you're literally taking from Black queer speech in order to somehow cuss me out as a Black woman, right?

So, yeah, it is something where, for me, my students would do it. They would come into the classroom and they'd be like, “Hey, Dr. Story.” Or they'd be like, “Yass.” Or they'd be like, “Work.” You know? And now we have the gesture, the little finger, and folks are using it.

And the problem is, I'm fine with everybody using it. I think that Black queer speech is some of the most innovative speech. It is so much fun. It is—oh my God.

BLAIR HODGES: That's the reason it's spread so far.

KAILA STORY: Right. And so I know why people want to speak like that. I know why people want to talk like that. I get it. Just know where it comes from.

And also, you can't be racist when you do it. So you can go ahead and have your racism. Go ahead and have your transphobia. But don't be using all of the gestures from those folks who created it.

Don't use the gestures of the folks who created it to bring them harm. That's the problem. And that's what's happening.

BLAIR HODGES: That's right.

 

The Radical Origins of Pride Month – 46:05

 

BLAIR HODGES: And you talk about how Columbusing has even happened with Pride Month itself, which has been Columbused a little bit. Its radical origins have been largely hidden or forgotten about.

There's a sort of newer corporate Pride. Even though corporations under this administration are fleeing away—and I'm still not shopping at Target—it's this apolitical Pride that has emerged.

Pride started out as a protest. I'm glad we have celebrations and parades and all. That's really cool. And also, if you're cutting out the heart of it, which was a movement for justice and equality and pushing back against all the cultural bullshit that queer people were having to put up with, that's got to be an element of Pride too.

KAILA STORY: Yes. And that's what's been happening, I'd say, over the course of several years now.

I would go to Pride events, whether that be Detroit or Philly or Chicago, just the places I've lived, and they would be much more resource-oriented than consumerist-oriented. In the sense that there would be HIV/AIDS testing, there would be breast cancer screenings, there would be things that folks in our community needed, and it would create a space that was comfortable and safe enough for them to be themselves while getting this type of care and these types of resources.

And that's become less and less as the years have gone on. And Pride now is just a big kind of apolitical party. Like, here's some coffee, it has a rainbow on it. Here's yoga mats, they have rainbows on the store. You know what I mean?

And so you just kind of walk through and it's a big marketplace. And I feel like there's a place for that too, right? There's a place where folks can go and be free and have joy and let their hair down.

But there was definitely much more information and many more resources—social and political resources for our community—in earlier Prides.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Voter registration.

KAILA STORY: Yes. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the early Prides were literally resourced by the community. Other activists, small business owners—you know, major corporations didn't start investing deeply into Pride festivals, I'd say, until the late '90s, maybe early 2000s. Yeah, I'd say early 2000s.

And so it hasn't really been that many years where Prides have been organized around that model.

BLAIR HODGES: And I would say marriage equality is what really pushed it. To me, 2015 kind of marked this transition where it really opened the floodgates. And now we're seeing the backlash. Now we're seeing corporations pull back.

KAILA STORY: Well, marriage equality did that, right? It allowed same-sex folks to get married. And it also made plain that this is a consumer bracket. These folks in this community are gonna get married and buy homes and they're gonna spend money.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you became a demographic as well.

KAILA STORY: Yes. And so let's invest in this. Let's do gay shirts at Target. Oh, not no more. Let's do Black shirts at Target. Not no more.

BLAIR HODGES: No, I think they'll have like two of them and they'll be back on a special shelf.

KAILA STORY: In the corner. And they're only available at midnight.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, exactly. Come on, Target.

All right. By the way, let's go now to a word from our sponsor. This podcast is brought to you by Target.

[laughter]

Okay, so yeah. We've talked about Columbusing. Don't do it.

If you want to learn more about Columbusing, again, it's in the book The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity by Kaila Story.

 

Standing Together – 49:51

 

BLAIR HODGES: All right, Kaila. Right now, as we've hinted at, it's a particularly fraught time for queer communities. There's so much under attack that it's kind of hard to keep track of all the different innovative ways they're coming up with to harm queer communities and trans folks.

And so I'm just wondering how you're personally holding up in the face of this. And I know so much of your work is community-focused and really invites people to look at how systems impact communities, not just individuals. But at the end of the day, we're all still individuals as well.

So I just wondered, personally, how you're holding up and how you're making it through in this particular time period.

KAILA STORY: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: Because it's not just the queer stuff, too, obviously.

KAILA STORY: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: People of color are also—it's all across the board.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. Every day is a new type of emotional terrorism, to borrow from my friend Esther Armour, who does work on emotional injustice. That's what she said: every day is a new type of emotional terrorism.

Whether it's an attack on Black people through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, chipping away, undoing DEI, the whole abortion issue that just came up with the Supreme Court, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, so women having less and less rights. Now you have strategic and nationwide attacks on LGBTQIA people. I think there were 700 bills that were anti-LGBTQ introduced just this year, and that's been the highest ever.

BLAIR HODGES: And has there ever been a more clear argument on behalf of the reality of intersectionality than how they're going after all of the intersections?

KAILA STORY: Literally. Literally. They're making it so clear that bigotry and bias and discrimination exist. They're really making the case for it.

But it's been very difficult. It's been more difficult for me to teach my students in terms of them being hopeful about their futures as young queer people, young Black people.

BLAIR HODGES: You're seeing more pessimism.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. I see more pessimism. More so, I see more fear.

BLAIR HODGES: More fear.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. These young folks are afraid of the economy they'll enter. They're afraid they can't pick a job they want, that they're going to have to choose a job just to make ends meet. They feel isolated. They feel confused as to why there's so much harm.

BLAIR HODGES: Environmental stuff, obviously.

KAILA STORY: Climate change. See, it's coming at us from everywhere. Every angle.

BLAIR HODGES: So what are you doing? And you're supposed to be helping the students, too. So I'm just wondering what you're doing.

KAILA STORY: I'm supposed to be giving them hope. And so what I do is I give them information, and I certainly provide them with education. And I'm honest with them about these things.

I create a lot of space in my classes to check in with my students about how they're feeling and about some of these things that are happening in real time. So if my class is at 1 p.m. and they just undid the Voting Rights Act, we're going to talk about it.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, right then.

KAILA STORY: Right. We're going to talk about it right then. And if not, we're going to talk about it next week, and we're going to relate that decision to the stuff we've already been learning.

Like you were saying, they're literally proving the case. If students entered my classroom and said, “You know what? Racism is over with,” or “Sexism is done,” or “People aren't homophobic anymore,” what are you talking about? Literally every day they further and further make that case.

And so I've been trying to reach for my joy where I can find it. I swim. It's becoming warmer, so I'm excited to swim. I take walks with my dog all the time just to touch some grass and talk to my neighbors, just to remind myself that not all human beings have lost their—you know—that there are still kind, gentle, thoughtful people in the world.

I remind my students of that. So those kinds of things, leaning into that. And then, more so, leaning into community.

I think this is such a fearful time. Between storms and weather, every day is like an alert day here in Kentucky. It's thunderstorms, lightning, hurricanes, you know.

BLAIR HODGES: And then the planes crashing.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. I mean, planes crashing. You're going to be in TSA for 17,000 hours.

BLAIR HODGES: There's a genocide going on. Now we're at war with Iran. Like, what are we doing?

KAILA STORY: It's like, what is happening?

And so every day it's something else. Every day is something else. So, yeah, leaning into community. Not trying to isolate myself or hide just because it's scary. Community is going to save us every time. Our connection to one another is going to save us every time.

But we've got to lean into that and not isolate ourselves and just become fearful. And we also have to recognize—and I have to recognize this as a Black person, as a woman, and as a queer person—we have been through so much worse.

And even though this, to me, is the worst of the worst, we've been here before. And again, the way that community showed up, we've got to do it. We have to show up for one another. We have to show up because even if harm has somehow not come your way yet, you have to know that it is.

And you have to know that in order to stop it, we have to support one another. Right?

 

Calling All Allies – 55:40

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's right. And your epilogue does such a good job of this. It's really got strong words for allies, in particular people who aren't queer, people who aren't marginalized, but who seem to want to help. And I do think there's a good number of these people. We need more of these people. We need them to do more.

So you've seen a lot of people in your life who claim to be allies but aren't actually helping very much. You have some examples of that. I wanted to kind of close with some call-outs that identify less effective ways people think they're being allies and what people might do instead.

KAILA STORY: No, certainly. And I think this is an important thing. Allies have always been important to any major mass movement for social justice, whether you're talking about civil rights, feminist rights, LGBTQIA rights. We've relied on allies, and they've been important to us.

But when I started teaching and I started meeting folks who were calling themselves allies through student organizing and all of these things, I just saw them kind of invading these spaces of other marginalized students to take. And then I would see it in queer spaces.

When I go to the nightclub, you have—the irony, and kind of the mean irony—before same-sex marriage passed by SCOTUS in 2015, you had straight women all the time coming into gay bars with their wedding sashes on. Like, what the fuck?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. For their bachelorette parties and stuff.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. So it's like, okay, so you're gonna come to a gay club with your wedding sash on, right? And so I would ask them too, like, why are you here? Gay people can't get married, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, but—

KAILA STORY: Gay people can't get married.

BLAIR HODGES: Get celebrated here.

KAILA STORY: Yeah. So gay people can't get married. This club is actually not designed for you. This is a gay club. Why are you here to celebrate your cishet relationship? Why are you here?

“Oh, because it's just such a safe space.”

BLAIR HODGES: It's fun and safe.

KAILA STORY: Oh, it's fun and safe. Yeah. So you're here so you don't get sexually harassed, you know? Right?

So instead of advocating for yourself and justice in your own space, you're just like, “Ah, mess all that. Let me go over here,” and then treat this environment as if it's my own personal concert.

So you have these women with their wedding sashes. They jump on the stage when drag queens are performing. They would block the tip line because they didn't know about tipping. They would say, like, “Oh my God, I love gay people. My boyfriend is so homophobic.”

I mean, so to me it's like—

BLAIR HODGES: They're bestowing their acceptance upon you. Isn't that enough? Aren't they? And that's benevolent.

KAILA STORY: That's the thing, Blair. Allies need to know, right, and accomplices need to know, that marginalized groups don't need your compliments. We already know we're wonderful. We know that the world has it wrong.

We don't need, like, “Oh, you're so pretty,” or “Oh, I love gay people. I love trans people. Y'all so fun.” We don't need all that. We need justice. We need work.

We need you to go into the environment that raised you, okay? Go into the environment that raised you and tell them how much you love gay people. Oh, you don't want to do that. Oh, so you ain't no ally.

Go into the environment that raised you and tell them how much you love Black people and how you hate racial bigotry. Oh, you don't want to do that. You don't want to confront your racist grandfather.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, I set a boundary so I don't have to.

KAILA STORY: Right. So all you want to do is spend time in a Black space or a queer space and go on and on about how much you love Black people, how much you love queer people. But you never want to confront actual racism. You never want to confront actual homophobia and transphobia.

None of that does us any good. The compliments and all this favor that you feel like you're showing marginalized people—nobody wants it. No one has ever wanted it. And no one has ever needed or required it.

What we've required, and what allies have not done, okay, is work on those people who taught them racism. Go and talk to those people who taught you homophobia, who taught you transphobia. Correct them. Enlighten them. Advocate for these groups.

Oh, but you don't want to do that. You just want to go to the gay club, or you just want to date the Black athlete. Girl, go on with that. You ain't no ally.

BLAIR HODGES: Go on. Yes. And I feel like we might fail at that. I could fail at doing that, but I still tried. And I feel like trying to change hearts and minds takes personal stories and personal witness.

So I think you're right. Redirecting our energies into the communities that raised us with these prejudices, and paying attention to who we're voting for.

KAILA STORY: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: And writing our leaders and staying connected and using our voice on social media when we're there and showing up to the march, and also putting our money toward the organizations that are funding the march. There's so much more we could be doing.

I love that you mentioned this already, but you talk about not just allies, but accomplices. You also mention co-conspirators.

I want to read this paragraph here from the epilogue. You write:

“While allyship denotes an individual who comes from a space of racial, gendered, or sexual privilege to stand with a minoritized group or an individual who's already engaging in anti-racist or LGBTQ activism, that's allyship. An accomplice focuses their work on dismantling the systems of domination that are in place within our society that are engendering the dehumanization, the harm, and the discriminatory practices that minoritized communities are expected to navigate.”

So this is just a great call to be like, hey, allies, that's all well and good. Be an accomplice.

KAILA STORY: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: That's a really cool reframe.

KAILA STORY: I love that. Yes. Because I think allyship has almost become commodified in some sense. It doesn't have as deep a meaning as it once did. And I think that accomplice, co-conspirator—there's a deeper investment. The folks who call themselves that actually show up.

A couple years ago here in Louisville, Breonna Taylor was murdered by Louisville law enforcement. There was this kind of standoff between law enforcement and the people in the streets because there were uprisings as a result of Breonna and George Floyd.

And there were a group of white activists who got in the forefront of that line. That's what it means to be an accomplice. That's what it means to be a co-conspirator. Put your body there. Our bodies are there. Our bodies have been there. Put your body there because you know your body will be regarded with more respect, more humanity, more dignity. So use your privilege on behalf of others.

That's what it means to be an accomplice, and that's what it means to be a co-conspirator. So if we're going to create a human chain of resistance and have a standoff, where we're not backing down, we're not leaving this space until justice comes, then get in.

And so these folks, they got in the front and they formed it. They're like, “Come through us. Are you gonna do this to us?” Right?

BLAIR HODGES: And they weren't the leaders of it, too. This is the thing I want to remind people about, especially. We don't have to bear the burden of being the heroes.

KAILA STORY: Exactly.

BLAIR HODGES: We don't have to bring all the ideas. We have to be there listening and finding out, learning from the marginalized communities themselves, and letting them lead and just lending our efforts to that.

It's kind of the easiest—

KAILA STORY: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: It takes the pressure off. You're just there to help. You're not there to white-savior everything. We're here to listen, learn, and join in.

KAILA STORY: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: And, like you said, put our bodies on the line.

KAILA STORY: Yeah, exactly.

BLAIR HODGES: All right. Well, again, the book is called The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity. It unpacks the myth that marginalized people always band together. They don't. It's a call for more marginalized people to do that, and for allies and accomplices to help that come about as well.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 01:03:47

 

BLAIR HODGES: Kaila, I always conclude interviews with a segment called Regrets, Challenges, and Surprises. This is a moment for you to reflect on the book itself.

It's been out a year. In fact, the paperback just came out. I'll mention that for people. Congratulations. That also, by the way, means that it sold. They don't put every book out in paperback. They put the good ones out in paperback. So good job.

Is there anything you would change about it now? Do you look at the project itself with any regrets? Or challenges? What was the hardest part about writing it? Or any surprises along the way? You can speak to any of those.

KAILA STORY: Okay, perfect.

Well, I feel like I don't have regrets about any part of the book. The only regret I have is I wanted it—I wanted to talk more. I actually wanted to talk more because then I could have gotten into how some of this stuff manifests internationally. More stuff in the UK, more stuff in other countries. I would love to expound on that.

BLAIR HODGES: Pretty U.S.-focused.

KAILA STORY: Yeah, it's very nation-focused. And so that's a regret.

A challenge was that I really thought this was not going to be that difficult of a process, writing a book, because I had written a dissertation and I'd written essays and—

BLAIR HODGES: Sure. Yeah.

KAILA STORY: Oh my God, it was so difficult. And not because the ideas weren't there or the words weren't there, but just to make the book as conversational as possible. To try my best not to have an academic voice in the book. And it comes in.

So that was probably the hardest thing. I tried my best with that.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, and you were trained up so heavily in that academic voice.

KAILA STORY: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: That to switch out of that register would be tough.

KAILA STORY: And that's the thing. What's interesting to me is my writing voice comes across that way and my speaking voice does not. If you listen to any of those podcast episodes of Strange Fruit, honey baby, I'm very conversational, and I'm talking about the same stuff, but it's so different.

So that was a surprise for me, that writing this book made me recognize that my speaking voice and my writing voice—that my writing voice is literally this academic voice. So I'm trying right now to really do writing exercises and kind of unlearn that. I don't want that. I don't want that.

I mean, it's fine for academic journals and stuff like that. I'm at a Research One, so we have to publish that kind of stuff. But I've always wanted to be a professor who actual real people read, not other professors, not other academics.

BLAIR HODGES: I mean, it serves a purpose.

KAILA STORY: And so, I mean, this was bell hooks' gift, right? This is Kiese Laymon's gift. This is Joan Morgan's gift. Brittney Cooper. So I want to be able to write in a way that makes people feel warm and comfortable in the way that they do with my speaking voice. The way that my students do. Those kinds of things.

So that was a surprise, to know that I had two different voices in my head. The regret would be wanting more worldwide conversations in the book. And the difficulty was trying to write this book and trying my best to write in my speaking voice and not in my writing voice.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, you went with Beacon Press, and that's kind of a big part of their wheelhouse, I feel like, getting academic folks to write more broadly.

KAILA STORY: Yes. I mean, I had a wonderful, wonderful editor. Actually, I had two. I had Maya Fernandez, a wonderful, exquisite editor. And I hired a developmental editor, Will Myers. He used to be at Beacon.

And they're like, “What is this?”

BLAIR HODGES: What are you saying?

KAILA STORY: Yeah. And for them, who are, again, learned, formally educated folks, they would catch my academic jargon every time. They'd be like, “Look...it's jargon.”

BLAIR HODGES: “I will interrogate the implicated status quo.” [laughter]

KAILA STORY: Yes! It's like, who is this? Who is writing this? Who is this? Yeah, because it's not the way I talk, honey. It's not. It's not.

BLAIR HODGES: I know. It's funny because I listened to your podcast a little bit, and this is such an interesting first public-facing book because I can see that hybrid of really stretching your writerly muscles to resist that voice.

And then to hear the podcast—and I think there's, what, like 300 or so episodes? It's called Strange Fruit: Musings on Politics, Pop Culture, and Black Gay Life. It's all back-catalog stuff at this point.

But yeah, your voice—I see you bringing that into your writing more. That's got to be kind of exciting.

KAILA STORY: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, Kaila, thanks for talking to us about the book. Again, it's The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity. And Kaila, this has been really great.

KAILA STORY: Thank you so much, Blair. I've had the best time. Thank you so much for reading the book, and thank you so much for saying it's good. And this talk today—I had a great time.

 

Outro – 01:09:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Another Relationscapes journey comes to an end. Thanks for being here with me.

If this is your first time listening, welcome to the journey. I hope you'll check out some other episodes while you're here. I like to recommend fellow traveler episodes—episodes that might resonate with you. If you liked this one, you might like my interview with journalist Christina Cauterucci. Her episode is called “Queer History Repeating.”

If you're enjoying the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts, or rate it in Spotify. Check out this review from SP_review:

“Relationscapes is compelling, informative, and inviting. It explores relationships with depth and clarity. There's a thoughtful, steady presence to each episode, and we tackle complex interpersonal dynamics without being preachy or abstract. It's accessible and also provides guidance in a way that's actually actionable.”

SP_review, thanks so much for that review. That's exactly what I'm going for.

Another way people can help me grow the show is by recommending it to a friend. So if somebody in your life came to mind while you were listening to this one, send them a message with a link.

If you'd like to see some video clips from this episode and some other bonus stuff, you can follow me on Instagram or TikTok. It's @_relationscapes.

Mates of State provides our theme music. I'm your host, Blair Hodges, an independent journalist in Salt Lake City, and I hope to spend more time with you soon here on Relationscapes.