- Hey, it's Rowan, and today I'm here with Echo.
Ooh, Echo is my roommate.
At Wickham, we're currently at Wickham, we're on the bed.
So basically today we were kind of wondering
what we could talk about.
And Echo sent me a message on Twitter.
So I brought up the fact that I'm very like
white passing, generally
or at least that's the way that
I've perceived the world.
Because whenever I bring up the fact
that I'm half Hispanic, people,
they did this like, "Oh, I didn't know,"
And, it's very interesting.
I've gotten some very interesting reactions to it.
I am, on my, I've been told on
my dad's side that I'm mostly German.
And then on my mother's side,
I'm Hispanic, because I've been told
that it's mostly Spanish and Mexican
but I usually just say Hispanic
'cause that's kind of like all-encompassing.
- It's really interesting to me
in terms of the idea of passing and
not passing and what that could do.
Because there's a big conversation that I've made
a video about which I'll link in the cards,
to do with straight passing in the LGBT community.
It's this idea of, here's a perception
of what you should look like, how you should behave,
or what you should do if you're this kind of person
especially a marginalised group or
an underrepresented group.
And then if you don't quite fit that
there's a difficulty there, 'cause like
I don't know how you experience it,
but for me, it's sort of like you're not seen as part
of a community and then you kind of have to prove yourself
within that community and then is it a privilege
that people don't see you?
- Yeah, I feel like you get certain privileges for
being passing and then I feel like it makes
the majority look bigger than it really is.
- Have you seen yourself be treated differently?
- Yes, I've seen like, there's been a couple times where
I won't realise that someone has certain racist tendencies
against like, Mexican people, until I bring it up.
Or, I've had people call me "wetback"
I've had someone call me "Little Miss Mexican"
and just these little things that
they wouldn't have done if it didn't
somehow come out that I'm half Hispanic.
There was one point where my younger sister was telling me
that she went over to go shooting,
because that's a thing that you do in America,
you just go out and like shoot at dirt or targets
and things out in the desert,
and my younger sister went with one of her friends
and their family and then when they were on their way
she had brought up the fact that she's half Mexican
not realising that her friend's father was really racist
and she no longer felt safe from that point
because they were going out in the middle of the desert
with this guy who hates Mexican people
who does not like what she is, with guns.
It was just, hearing her say that
when she got back was so terrifying.
- A lot of people joke about the fact that
like at university everyone used to be like,
"Oh, this is Rowan, she's gay" because that's like,
oh that's what you always do, right,
and you're always just like, "Hi, I'm Rowan, I'm gay."
But for me, I was like, you don't understand that
why I do that, which is that I've had so many conversations
with people who are super homophobic
but when I don't come out first of all,
I invest my time, I invest my companionship in people
and I try and become friends with people
and when it comes out that I'm gay
immediately they're like, that colours
every single thing that they think about me.
- Yeah. So what would be your opinion on getting to know
someone to kind of humanise the idea
of being gay, for example?
Like, you can talk to someone and then let them
get to know you as a person so that they realise
you are a full complete human,
and then bringing it up so it becomes an addition
to yourself rather than - Yeah.
- a defining element of yourself.
- So, I think that this kind of thought process
with LGBT people kind of has waves and different
eras of activism have done things.
So back when Harvey Milk was in office,
there was a big thing about like,
"come out, come out, come out", 'cause they need to see us
they need to know that we're everywhere.
I'd love for it to be that I could just go
and they'd be like, "Gay people aren't sinful, after all"
but I feel like especially when it's religion-based
that's such a big part of someone
for them to question that part of their religion
is more than just them questioning their thoughts
on gay people, it becomes questioning a lot
about their religion so it's just something that
often is just not gonna happen from just one person
being like, "Let's be friends!" because it will
crop so many more questions and be such, like,
potentially identity-shifting to kind of change what they
believe about their religion which is such tenet
of who they are, it becomes, yeah, a lot
more tough than one person.
So it's the kind of thing that I'll do
on a wide educational level and I've gone
into schools and done workshops and stuff like that
but in terms of investing my time and my love
and friendship - And social relationships
- and social relationships - with people
- into someone, I'm like, "I don't owe you my time"
and you hate me, but I'm like "I can fix you",
I feel like that becomes a bit of a weird--
I wish that that could be a thing,
I wish I could just have a casual friendship with someone
and then they'd be like, "She's human, after all".
It just doesn't quite happen like that.
- Oh, trying to change the world, one person at a time.
- Yeah, exactly.
Do you feel like there's, you've talked about how
sometimes it's quite, the treatment that you get
because people assume a part of your identity
that isn't true, what are the negatives
to being white passing, do you see?
- Ooh, I think a big part of it is that I end up
kind of completely disconnected from my own culture.
There was a point when I was a little kid that
my grandmother came to me and said
"Never let anyone call you Mexican".
She actually just told me "Never let anyone
"call you Mexican, because it's an insult.
"Always say, if you're going to say anything,
"say Hispanic or Spanish, but never
"let anyone call you Mexican."
And that stuck with me as a kid growing up.
It's just so weird,
there's just all these little things like that.
I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household.
I don't speak any Spanish.
Apparently when I was a kid, when I was
really really little before starting to go to school
I spoke half-Spanish, I would speak Spanglish.
And then as I started going to school
it was trained out of me because I would spend time with
other kids and they would be like,
"Why are you calling that, that, that's not what it is?"
And it was just completely trained out of me.
So I have no accent,
I'm not anything like my family
so it's very disconnecting.
And now that I'm older and I've spent all this time
kind of like teaching myself to be normal
I feel really disconnected with my family.
I feel weird going back to family reunions
and looking and acting completely different.
- Do you feel like because people see you as the other side
that you identify more with one side
than the other, or as biracial or multiracial
like how you would kind of see yourself?
- Ooh, so what I internally see myself as?
- Yeah.
- That's weird.
I feel like I try and see myself as just multiracial
but I feel like I act more white.
I don't know though, I don't know, it's weird.
I don't know what I would say I identify as.
I feel like I would just say multiracial now
but I feel like, I'm trying to think of specific examples
but I know that when I was in high school I used to
do the whole like, you laugh about the whole situation
and say like, "Oh yeah, I'm technically Hispanic,
"and this stuff on my mom's side, and then I'm also..."
You have to give the whole spiel of your entire thing
and say it with comedy, try and play it off like
"Oh, this is no big deal", but this is my whole
family history. - Yeah, exactly.
- I think a big part of it is that it's not
something that you do intentionally.
It's more something that you realise you're doing
and then you have to start correcting for your own behaviour.
I remembered what I was trying to say earlier.
When I was a kid, or when I was in high school
and middle school I would do the whole
"Oh, it's okay that I have these opinions
"because I'm Hispanic, it's okay 'cause I know
"that it's true, 'cause I have family members who do this".
It's that perspective that I look back on
and it just makes me like, "Ahh, I can't believe
"I actually thought that as a kid."
- I think it's one of those things that
it's a thing that you were since birth
and you knew you were since birth
so it becomes this internalised thing that you're aware of
while also being aware of your own identity
or you have something like being LGBT
which most people don't work out about themselves
until later in life so they experience
at the time it's not internalised homophobia
it's just homophobia.
So they kind of experience that and then they
have to come to terms with it and that's I think
what makes that transition really hard.
It's not like, inherently, that being gay
is really hard to come to terms with
it's just because you've internalised so much stuff
and so it's really interesting that I feel like
even though you know that you're this thing
and you have these attitudes you still
go through a process that's similar, I suppose
when you get to the age where you're like,
"Wait a second, I need to sort through these
"cognitive dissonance feelings
"I feel about my own identity".
You still have that even though
you've grown up with it and even though you've...
- It constantly makes me wonder
because I look the way that I do
if I was exposed to more
racism growing up or more microagressions growing up
than someone like my cousins who look really Hispanic.
Because I feel you're less likely, I don't know,
people are more open if they think
"Oh, they're not there, we can talk
"about them behind their back"
not realising that they're talking about my family.
- There's probably a version of this in
every marginalised identity and every kind of
religion or disability, where because you grow up
in a culture which is telling you that
this is the bad bit of yourself that
you should not associate with it,
or like, "Oh, its okay to be Hispanic,
"but you're not like those Hispanic people."
Like you're the cool Hispanic person
who doesn't speak with an accent
and so you're better, which is like
"Oh you're the cool gay person who's not
"really flamboyant", they don't talk about it all the time.
So you're like a better gay person.
- They still take the time to attach
the negative association to your identity.
- Yeah, exactly, so it's like oh, you'll represent.
And it's really weird, I feel really weird about that
'cause I feel like I'm the anecdote
that they can say like, "Oh I have this gay friend who,
she's super feminine" and blah, blah, blah.
Like, "Oh yeah I have this Hispanic friend
"so I can speak for it because she doesn't speak
"with an accent or she doesn't care about this".
And so, like this is--
And it feels really annoying to be like
unwillingly complicit in this whole situation
where they can kind of say
so that like on TV you never see
any butch women and especially
no butch gay women who aren't jokes.
The only one I can think of is Boo
from Orange is the New Black.
- I love Orange is the New Black.
- Who I adore.
- She's fantastic. - I adore her.
But I'm like, I genuinely can't think
of another one that isn't just
a punch line who as an internal--
and same with feminine gay men.
They're often the punch line of a joke
or the thing in the sitcom who they're not a real character
they just sort of come in and come out.
And it's very, very few very effeminate men
that you see on TV.
It's Emmett Honeycutt from Queer as Folk,
maybe Kurt Hummel from Glee when that was on,
and I think that is that kind of dehumanisation
and seeing it as like, "Oh, they're the wrong kind of gay,
"they're too gay. If they could just
"act more like us it would be fine."
- They worry about that portraying
something like a person or a character
that has those traits will come off as insulting.
You just have to make them complex characters.
They have to have a depth.
If you can show that they are multifaceted,
that that's a part of them, but it's not all of them.
I have something interesting I can point out.
I did not realise internalised racism was a thing
until Nathan Zed.
- Oooh!
- Yeah, there's one video where he flashes that phrase,
or those words, "internalised racism"
for half a second and its just supposed
to be like a "boop", and I actually had to go back
and pause it because what he was describing
was very like, "Uh, this sounds like what I grew up with"
and because of that I started doing more research
which is weird because in the video
he's talking about how he learned
about it and had to do more research.
None of this was intentional.
I don't know...
Being white passing and all that stuff,
none of it was intentional.
Slowly, I don't know how to say it, but acting more white
it was not intentional at all, it was just
a thing that I slowly realised I was doing.
I was full-on rejecting all of my culture.
I refused to learn Spanish,
I hated Spanish music, I hated my own culture.
And just absolutely hated it when I was a kid,
And then when I was older I was like,
"Okay, fine, it's there", and now that
I'm older it's taking time to learn to be
more proud of my culture.
- Yeah, my older brother's gay
and I saw him have this negative reaction
towards his sexuality, and I remember
when I was younger him saying "I hate the community,
"I hate the scene, I hate the gay scene", whatever.
And so much of that I think was tied
to internalised homophobia and all that kind of stuff.
'Cause now he's a lot happier in himself,
a lot happier in his sexuality.
I have really close friends who grew up
in very religious communities and things like that
who were super homophobic, super transphobic
and then later on realised that
they themselves were like that,
and I think that there's always gonna be
this question for them of like, "If I wasn't this,
"if I wasn't gay or if I wasn't bisexual
"or if I wasn't trans, would I always
"have been homophobic and biphobic and transphobic?"
- Would you have just accepted everything
that the culture has been teaching you?
- I think that is really tough to deal with
because I think we'd like to think that
every gay person would not have been homophobic
if they were straight, but its so weird.
I feel like society messes you up so much
around your own identity.
- It really does, especially as a kid.
Especially when you're young.
- I mean, we sort of didn't quite
come to conclusions we just sort of talked
and things - But that's good
- but that's nice, - chats are nice.
- I liked that.
So if you have any thoughts about this
whatever your identity is or if you
have an identity that isn't based on
race, ethnicity, or sexuality,
like maybe on gender, on disability,
or something like that, or religion
that you want to give your experiences
do so in the comments, I think this is
a really interesting topic that everyone
has very individual experiences with.
- Also, just in terms of me, specifically
I feel like I'm still learning
so anything that you have to say is welcome.
- And I suppose until I see you next time, bye!
- Bye!