Hello and welcome to another episode of Gender Stories.
I know I'm always like excited, thrilled, elated, but what can I tell you dear listeners or watchers if you're watching on YouTube now, I have the coolest guests.
And today I have the honor of introducing Dr.
Roger Kuhn, who is a Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigiqueer, soma-cultural sex therapist, sexuality educator, writer, activist, and musician.
Roger's work explores the concept of decolonizing and unsettling sexuality and focuses on the way culture impacts and informs our bodily experiences.
He's a community organizer of the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirit Powwow and a board member of the Two-Spirit and Native LGBTQ+ Center for Equity.
His first book, Somacultural Liberation, is available in both paperback and audio.
And his music can be streamed on all digital platforms.
And if you have not come across Roger's music, I would really invite you to stream it because it's wonderful.
I had the pleasure to see Roger perform live when I was visiting New York City back, I think it was December, 2023.
And it was like, oh, it was such a wonderful experience.
I am still like.
Yeah, I'm still smiling and feeling happy just remembering that moment because it was such wonderful performance.
So welcome Dr.
Roger Kuhn.
Thank you so much for making time today.
uh Thank you again for the invitation and what a lovely introduction.
Thank you so much.
It was so cool when I, when you're on stage, oftentimes you got those lights in your eyes and you don't see who's in the audience.
And then when I realized that you were there, was such a joy to uh see you there.
So thank you again for coming to that show.
That was a really fun show.
mean, it was so cool.
I had a really good time.
I hadn't performed in New York in like 15 years or something like that.
It had been a really long time.
So that show to me was so special, so personal, and a lot of my older listeners came out, because that's where I started.
My music days was in New York City.
And then I had new listeners come out too, so it was really just a wonderful moment in my life.
It was so, so fun.
And it was so serendipitous too, because I was in New York for this fundraiser for em an art to nonprofit that has support there, I Giullari di Piazza.
And I was literally staying like, I think a block and a half from where you were playing.
And I saw you were playing and I was like, I have to go.
And I just had the most wonderful time.
And it was also like when worlds collide, right?
There were like sex therapists there, but it was the music scene and I love live music so much.
And, and I think that really encapsulates in a way just how creative you are.
Like you're a sex therapist, you're an author, you're an organizer, you're a musician, you know.
I think you're working on a play, if I remember correctly, right?
So there's just this creativity I feel that oozes out of you.
And that just feels...
almost restorative to witness, that's the best way I can put it.
uh I was going to start from talking about your book, but maybe let's start from that, the creativity piece.
Tell me more about the role of creativity in your life, in your own life.
Like, I'm always curious about, how do people relate to creativity?
think it relates a lot to my gender and my sexual orientation, which I have yet to define fully.
And what I love about being a creative is that it gives me an opportunity to express how I'm feeling.
And I grew up on a farm in rural North Dakota, and I was very blessed to have space around me as a child and no one who told me I couldn't sing.
because I was out in the field or I was out in the woods and no one could hear me.
So I was always able to create these stories and these characters and write songs.
And I was singing to the trees and the animals.
And I always had a little dog companion that would come with me.
So it's been very much a part of how I understand myself in the world is to be a creative.
uh And my main medium has always been music, though, as I've gotten older in life, I've also recognized that writing has been uh It's interesting because I was considering myself a musician and I forget like well songwriting is a part of being a musician though you know was kind of thinking like I've been writing my whole life uh though you know that's different kind of writing it's more like uh academic writing uh or the kind of writing you do for like a book very different kind of creativity though it comes from that same source and that's that source is the same source that is has all this multi-directionality uh and how I experience my way of being in the world, my gender, to my orientation.
And my creativity just is this light that carries all of those things out into the world.
And I think if you listen to my catalog of music throughout the course of my life, you sort of notice these iterations of where I'm at, what I'm doing, how I'm growing, what I've learned.
um And I can't imagine my life without creativity of some kind.
uh And I think that even shows up, know, when you're creative, it shows up how you work with clients.
uh It shows how you how you educate people.
I'm also a sex educator.
So it also shows up in the way in which you are with other human beings.
It's not just the artist is like the creative part.
It's like now like the way I drive down the highway is pretty creative sometimes or getting from point A to point B can be a very creative experience how I dress.
can be a creative experience.
I think it's all a part of I fear the day that artists can no longer create art.
I think that I think that to me is like the final point when we have known that we have fallen from whatever semblance of decency and humanity that we have when when artists get censored because I don't know that it's happened as much in my lifetime.
I mean, I remember when I was growing up, there was a lot of censorship around hip hop.
uh Less so now, though I'm beginning to understand that, like, in these times that we're living in, that the artist's job is to disrupt.
The artist's is to, the creative's job is to use their creativity as a medium for transformation and to allow other folks like yourself or whomever who maybe aren't musicians or aren't sculptors or painters or what have you to recognize like you're not alone.
There are other voices who feel similar and my medium may be music or writing, medium may be dance, your medium may be sculpture, whatever it is, we are all needed.
All creatives are needed.
Whatever your creative is, cooking, right?
The artists need to be fed that are doing the protests.
Like there is a need for all creatives to show up to support one another to continue the work.
of liberation.
That's kind of how I feel like creativity for me is an extension of my liberation practice.
I might cry actually a bit.
I was getting quite emotional when you were talking.
um yes.
uh Wow.
I think I haven't got quite this emotional right at the beginning of an interview before, you've so many things that you talked about really touched my heart, but didn't just touch my heart.
think they also touched my like.
cultural upbringing.
was brought up in Italy and I spent a lot of time in Sicily because that's where my maternal grandmother is from and she was my main caregiver growing up.
And really when you were talking about that freedom of singing and creating, was like, yes, being brought up in a culture where everybody was singing.
We didn't have a lot of entertainment in the 12 hours car ride from Rome to Sicily, which we did numerous times a year.
And so we would all sing.
In the evening, we would all sing together, and there would be dancing, and there would be people cooking all the time.
And just like I really have come to appreciate how not only being rooted in time, place, language, but also just this culture of creativity for the sake of creativity.
You make beautiful food because you care about your community and your family.
You sing together because it feels good, and also it's shared.
em you know, passing on of culture as well, right?
Like the folk songs, the prayers, the music, even our uh religion is so like, expansive and creative, you know, the processions, you know, in Sicily for the festivals, you know.
We have the Madonna della Nime, which is Mary of the Snow, so all the kids would like collect all the jasmine so that we could make the snow in August.
Also, the hell does it snow in most places in Sicily?
you know, but that was the miracle.
But even the religion expression was so creative.
And I remember in my early 20s, the first time I went to Northern Europe, I went into a Catholic church in Germany.
And I was like, is this a Protestant church?
And they were like, ah no, it's Catholic.
And I was like, oh, really?
And then I went to service.
And I was like, this is so sad.
This is not my experience.
And so even seeing how the same religion can be transported into a different culture, into different contexts and can be made so constricted somatically rather than expansive.
And so as you were talking, I was really feeling that, that expansiveness that comes from creativity, that expansiveness that comes from like culture and connection and community and movement and music and...
And I don't think it's an accident also.
My brain is like trying to harness 500 thoughts at once.
You you started talking about gender as well.
And I don't think it's an accident that there's so many of us who are kind of...
em gender-experience, Two-Spirit, trans, non-binary, whatever we want to call words to capture a much more expansive experience, I think, that happens inside of us.
don't think it's an accident that so many of us are creatives, healers, educators, right?
For me, there's something like spiritual about the expansiveness of creativity, but also of the...
fluidity, expansiveness, I don't even know what the word is for gender, right?
And we were talking a little bit about this before certain recording that that internal experience can be so much more expansive than one we can represent on the outside.
And so, yeah, I wonder if you have any thought about that connection between gender, spirituality, creativity, um or even healing or anything, just go for it.
oh And I was raised Catholic, like, in a German community.
The little town that I grew up in...
It's fine.
But the little town that I grew up in in North Dakota had a very predominant German speaking community.
My grandparents, my father, German speakers.
And so being raised in the Catholic Church, I don't know Catholicism outside of that.
I left the Catholic Church in my teen years.
Though when I've been introduced to Catholicism, ah Catholicism as it's seen in Central America to me was like, it was like, it was colorful, it was bright, it was beautiful.
uh And the same with, you what I've recognized about Catholicism and other cultures around the world.
Though the interesting thing about being raised as a, you know, from the sect of Christianity is that you, at least the way that I was taught was that God was male.
that there was, you know, God with God the Father.
And there was always this sort of curiosity I had as a little kid of like, really?
Like this all-knowing, all-creating thing is like this is a male.
uh Because I did not have a good relationship with my own father.
And so I didn't want God to be a father.
I wanted God to just be.
I wanted God to be accessible because my father was not.
And so it felt stunted to me that like, because in my mind, fathers were not nice people.
They were strict, they were mean, they were all these things.
So I early on adopted into my own thinking and consciousness that if there were to be a God, the God that I believed in was transformative, was a shape-shifter, was all of these things, was fluid in this way.
And that brought me closer, I think, Two-Spirit.
uh allowed me to also then come closer to my own understanding when I was told that I was a boy as a kid.
It's sort of like, I mean, know that my body looks like that, though I don't feel like that.
Though there weren't other kids.
The town of Griffin was also very small.
So I didn't understand or see other kids that were kind of like me, that I like...
I wanted to be on the gymnastics team as a kid, you know, and no, no boys were on the gymnastics team, but I really wanted to be on the gymnastics team.
I also have three older sisters, so I wanted to be a cheerleader.
I wanted to play with Barbies, though I also wanted to play with He-Man and I wanted to play with Thundercats and I wanted to, there was a way that, there was just this fluid way that I went between these two things that I thought, well, isn't that, isn't that life?
We just kind of move through these ways the same way that God does.
And I've always just kind of held that belief in myself that uh although I've dabbled in many different sort of religious practices and ideologies, I was a practicing Buddhist for many years.
I'm at this point in my life now where as I've gotten more and more in touch with my internal understanding of self that like I call the spirit all the time and it's never this white beard, flowing, clothing kind of thing.
It's like this light that's there for me.
And it's always circular.
It's like this circular orb, which is how I see gender, which is how I understand gender.
My gender is like this circular orb that because I don't believe in the binary, uh it's, you know, if it's the circular thing, I can go up, down, left, right, around, inside, which is what I think that spirit is too.
Spirit is doing all those things.
And I feel like my gender is doing all those things too.
And it's through my connection, because I do consider myself a deeply spiritual person, it's through my connection with spirit that I feel more comfortable in my proclamation of my identity as what we say in Muscogee, which is like sort of the English translation of that is Two-Spirit, though the Muscogee translation of that is the middle.
I am one that is in the middle.
And I love that idea.
to me, like, spirit is in the middle of what is known and what is unknown.
um Just like my gender, there's parts of my gender that are very known and parts of my gender that are very unknown.
And so I reside in this middle, which means that in my curiosity, in my exploration of spirit and gender, I can go anywhere.
There is no wrong direction that I can turn.
in my investigation, in my curiosity, in my exploration.
ah That's what I love so much about my understanding of my gender identity.
I love that so much.
And I so resonate with so much of what you said.
I'm also not Catholic anymore.
And also recognizing that my flavor of Catholicism was very animist, was very like, syncretistic.
There was a lot of like...
What I would call witchcraft, honestly now, I recognize like my aunt was definitely like, one of my aunts was definitely like the village witch, uh you know, in Sicily.
But of course she would be very offended.
She was just a good Catholic who just knew how to take the evil eye out, you know, and heal people, because that's what you do.
Right?
And which is really interesting.
And but I so relate to that expansiveness and to this like, how could God be one thing?
I remember like being really like arguing with the priest Stephen when I was a teenager going, I don't think there is a hell.
think we put ourselves in hell when we cut ourselves off from God, you know, and God is not.
was very grateful that I came into my teenage year as the liberation theology.
Mmm.
America was like really starting to like explode culturally beyond, you know, its confines and, and also where there were like feminist theologians starting to talk about God as mother.
And I think one of the popes, I can't remember which one right now, but started to talk about God as mother.
And I was like, yes, this makes more sense.
God has no gender.
You know, we have no boundaries between us.
just like spirit has no boundaries.
Spirit is in everything, you know?
And, and people are like, you're so young and naive.
I still feel that way in my 50s.
In fact, I think I feel more strongly about it now than I did, know, because I don't have that cultural gaslighting of adults around me going, oh, you don't understand yet, if that makes sense.
Yes, because when you realize and sort of study how religion has been weaponized against gender and how it's been, you know, how like it's been this tool for colonization and it's this tool of the decimation of other cultures and of peoples, then it's like, well, I want nothing to do with that.
You know, that's the part of it.
I love the the Catholic part of uh community.
love the Catholic part of like the I love the artistry of Catholicism.
I love the stained glass windows.
uh I don't like the excuse that it's been given like granted like, well, God said we could do this to your people in particular.
God said we could do this, you know, what uh or how like, you know, uh two spirit people, know, during the during the early colonial days were so misunderstood by the church and by the colonizers.
So it's like, could I trust that?
Though I didn't know that as a kid.
I didn't know that when I was growing up Catholic, but that's what I knew that I came from this mixed household.
My father's white, my mother's Native American.
So I knew that that was my story, though I didn't.
And I knew that my grandparents and my cousins all lived in this community of Native people in the South, though I didn't quite understand.
the reason why we live like the way we do, or the reason why there are these reservations near the farm that I grew up on is because religion gave people the right to steal land and murder people.
what?
That was all missed in my early childhood.
Even in my teen years, it wasn't until I kind of left that community in North Dakota that I started to go, oh, well, no one ever told me that.
um I wasn't educated in that particular way.
And I don't think most folks, at least where I grew up, are educated in that way to sort of understand how religion has been used as this tool.
So to come back Two-Spirit to me has been very healing because I was very mistrusting of it for a really long time.
And still I'm still mistrusting of religion.
uh Though I'll tell you whenever I travel, one of the things that I always want to do is go to a church.
I always want to see like How are they worshiping here?
How are they celebrating?
I want to see the cathedral.
I want to see the church.
I always love to look at churches when I travel, or temples, or um spiritual centers, because that is to me one of the most sacred ways of being in the world, is connection Two-Spirit.
However the person does it, I just want people to know the truth.
Absolutely.
And so many of those churches and cathedrals that were built because of Christian supremacy were built on sacred places, right?
If I think about, you know, back to my own kind of uh homeland for want of a better word, but like, you know, the Madonna di Montevergine was like the protector of like gay and trans people and queer people and people still go like the church tried to stop them on February, know, for the candelora was built on a site where we think that Cibale was worshiped, right?
The Phrygian goddess were like the galley as Christa says.
And so I feel like there is this kind of line of spirit and gender defiant, expansive.
whatever we want to call it, on an international level.
Because even Two-Spirit, know it's this pan-Indigenous term that folks in North America kind of came up with to like...
know, recapture what had been taken by colonization for many people, right?
It's like, but a lot of those sites are built on sacred places and you can almost feel it, right?
Whether you know it or not.
And so I so relate to a lot of that.
And I also really connect to what you said about that connection between gender and colonization.
I I felt so strongly that I wrote a whole book about it, The Rigid Gender Binary, right?
It's part of that colonial legacy and ongoing.
colonial project, right?
And we see it, I feel like it's not an accident that unfortunately within indigenous communities like girls and women and two-spirit folks, are the most impacted by systemic violence, you know, and so, yeah, this kind of, it's almost like every time there is like oppression of creativity, oppression of spirit, imposition of religion, you know, the Catholic did it with the doctrine of discovery and all the harm that that keeps doing, I believe, you know, but.
They all seem connected, right?
Restriction of spirit, there's only one way, one God.
Restriction of gender, there's only two genders, right?
And restriction of creativity.
That art is okay, that art is not okay.
It's almost like you can feel an oppressive regime, but how constricted they want us to be, right?
And how policed.
gender has to be, you know, I was just recording something yesterday, I was like, well, if gender is naturally in air quote binary, why do we have to police it so hard?
We wouldn't need laws and, and, and punishment if this is the natural and air quotes state of being.
That is not, that's why they got to police it so hard, right?
It's like, so much to say about that.
So which leads me because I do want to talk about your amazing book, because if people have not read Summer Cultural Liberation, should.
Like you don't even, I don't think you need to be a therapist or an educator or a somatic practitioner to get a lot out of this book.
And um like you said, your music is your main medium, let's call it, for creativity.
And you're also a writer.
And so what pushed you to write this wonderful book that I recommend all the time?
Like what motivated you?
What was the, this is the thing that I to put out into the world because I know how much work it is to put a book out.
Yeah, well, know, I, um, Somacultural Liberation was an idea that came to me when I was going to what's called a job talk.
I was applying for a job at a university and, um, whenever you do that, you give like a presentation called a job talk, right?
And so I wanted my job talk to be something new, something that the folks hadn't seen.
And because I was applying for a position within a department that I actually graduated from several years beforehand, I knew what the kids were learning.
I knew what the students were.
I knew it because I was a student there.
I was a kid myself there at one point.
So I was sort of thinking about the way that culture has always been something really interesting to me.
I'm an anthropologist as well.
so culture has always been a cultural anthropology has always been a really big curiosity of me.
So I was thinking about uh how culture, I'm thinking about really my own self, like how the cultures that I'm in.
Sometimes it depends how free my body is.
So if I'm in a group of like folks who are like me or like hanging out with you, my body feels free.
I feel like, yeah, this is expansive.
I feel like this opening, right?
When I'm around folks who I feel are judging me or different than me or have been cruel to me or I assume they're gonna be cruel to me, there is a literal closing in of my body.
Like I feel like a tightening, a constriction, particularly like in my chest and my pectoralis muscles.
And so I thought, well, if soma means body, so if body and culture, understanding those two concepts helped me feel more liberated.
Soma, cultural liberation, my gosh, right?
And that was sort of like the idea that came with, and then I put together a presentation.
uh It went over so well.
I got a standing ovation at the end of that job talk, and I was like, if I do not get this job, I was like, I better get this job.
And I got the job, and it was great.
uh And then I went on and I guess when I was doing the job talk stuff, I was also in the midst of my doctoral research.
So I was doing a PhD.
And then when I finished, um a lot of times, not always, but a lot of times people take their dissertation work and turn it into a book.
And I was just kind of like, I just needed to break from the dissertation stuff.
So um though I did want to write, and this was kind of like during the COVID days.
Yeah.
So I had been offered a couple of years prior to my book, I had been offered an opportunity to work with a company called North Atlantic Publishing who did publish my book.
And this came about because I wrote a chapter in a book called Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices.
uh Thank you.
Yes, I wrote a chapter in that book called Fieldwork, which is about how I use the five rhythms, which is a dance modality to kind of help free my body up a little bit.
And so the president of that company uh I'm sorry, the editor of that book, Diverse Practices, wanted to do a volume two.
And so put me on an email because he wanted me to take over as the editor.
He put me on an email with North Atlantic and said, hey, how about a volume two?
North Atlantic wrote back and said, we're going to pass on volume two.
However, if Roger Kuhn wants to write a book.
And I was like, ah, no, I'm not ready for this.
Right.
So I literally shelved that email for a couple of years.
And then one.
day I kind of woke up and I was really thinking about like, want to write some cultural liberation.
I want to dive more into that.
Like, what did that really mean?
Like all those years ago when I put together that job talk.
And so I sent an email.
I actually responded to the same email that was sent to me literally like two years beforehand.
And within about seven minutes, I got a response back.
So the person was, at their desk, clearly, or something, checking their email early in the morning and said, let's set up a meeting.
And then I was like, okay, it's on.
I've got to do this.
Mm-hmm.
inspiration for writing that book was, I think like one of very first lines of the book was like, you know, this is a book about connection.
And it's meant to be a book to a guide or a roadmap, if you will, about connection with ourselves.
If I connect with myself, if I understand the way culture shapes and informs my bodily experiences, it allows me to connect to you more.
because I can then see like, you too have a culture and it's shaped your body.
And it's allowed me to uh unlearn all of the ways that we are supposed to be, that bodies are supposed to be.
And in writing that book, it was very important for me to bring the Indigenous perspective because that's what I know.
That's all it's the only way that I know to be in the world is through this lens of someone who is biracial and bicultural.
That's, know, and then add throw on queer, throw on gender expansive, throw on two-spirit, throw on all the, that's the only way I know how to be in the world.
So of course I'm going to write from that perspective.
And it was important for me also to dedicate part of that book, I think it's chapter five, uh to helping folks who do not know what two-spirit means or understands.
Like I'm going to have a whole chapter on that.
And then throughout the book is also sprinkled in a lot of information that folks may not know about the Native American experience.
um Because a book like mine in the somatic field, it hadn't existed before because, uh know, um and it still doesn't, right?
um And so even though I left the university that I was teaching at, I had hoped that I used to teach a class there called Somatics and Society.
uh And I had hoped that like, my book will be used for that.
That's what I wrote that the book for.
And then in realization, it's like, no, I wrote the book for everybody.
for anybody that kind of wants to understand these kinds of things.
And oftentimes, know, folks ask me like, well, what is, you know, what's next for someone cultural liberation?
And I'm always like, I don't know.
I think that like, you know, you've got the book or someone else has the book.
And like, my hope is that you take it or the listener takes it and applies it not only to their own life, though, the communities that they work with and help all of us understand that when we are in this constricted state, right, not a lot of not a lot can get through.
And sometimes it's important to utilize that uh in certain circumstances.
The more though that we can stay here in that expansive place gets us one step closer to liberation.
And I'll take that any day, one step closer.
And that's what I hope people take from my work is that they can get one step closer.
It's some of cultural liberation is just one more tool that folks can use.
and the exploration of their growth in their life, whether that is how they understand their value system or how they understand how their body reacts to uh a certain stimuli in the world.
The more information that we have, the more knowledge that we have and how we understand that knowledge, I think is transformative and it's very, very healing.
The same way that we, when we learn and understand who we are or how we identify and the reasoning behind the...
the identification in those particular ways, it just gives us that perpetual aha moment.
And that's what I'm, that's what I long and longing for in my life is to, to be in the perpetual state of wonder.
I just want to be in the perpetual state of wonder as much as I possibly can because culture shifts in shapes all the time.
There are certain things that are very, you know, static about our identities, though, you know, before we hit the record button, we were talking a little bit about getting older, right?
And it's like, yeah, like, you know, I'm on this cusp of being 50.
And I'm very excited about turning 50, though there's also like this, my gosh, like, what does that mean?
There's like these, this meaning, right?
And like, this meaning that like, you know, there's a lot of supposed to's, right?
Like at uh certain oh points in our trajectory of life, certain developmental markers that other people have determined we're supposed to be at.
So at 50, Am I supposed to do this or supposed to be that or supposed to not buy Thundercats anymore?
Like, my gosh, I just came out with a He-Man Thundercat collaboration.
I have to have that, Like, exactly, right?
So it's like all of these ways that like culture has told us we're not supposed to be because of our age.
So then if I do those things and I feel bad or guilty about it, like, but that's not my understanding of my of my own culture.
That's someone else's understanding.
So then there's that sense of like, it's not mine.
I don't have to hold this.
I don't have to carry this.
This is not mine to carry.
What's mine to carry is the new Chitara Tilakapo.
you know, it's like that to me is like that's mine to understand and to be with and to play with and to be joyful about.
And I hope that soma culture liberation is just that for folks.
hope it gets them thinking and gets them more importantly, feeling and experimenting.
and dancing, and dancing I don't mean necessarily like the act of dancing like I might do, but dancing in their mind, in their body, in this way of I can be whomever I want to be as long as I'm not hurting anyone.
That's the important thing here.
It's like, it's not about, you know, my work and the work of so many folks who do liberation work, sometimes, feelings get hurt sometimes by the things that I've said.
or the statements that I've made about how Christianity has actually been harmful to many communities, or how men sometimes, or cis men in particular, have been uh privileged at certain times.
And that sometimes, these are like evocative statements, supposedly to be making, though the reality is like, well, I'm not saying these things to cause harm to any folks that follow religion, or that are Christian, or that identify as cis men.
It's just to state that like your cultural group has harmed mine.
And em if you're not willing to take responsibility for that and try to heal from that, OK.
And I don't know.
I don't have to think you're cool.
I don't have to be cool with you.
And that's all right.
um I, you know, I'm I just got turned on to this podcast.
I haven't even listened to the very to one episode yet.
It's called I've Had It.
It's like these two cis white women.
ah And they're like, I've had it with, you know, and they'll go on about what they've had it with.
And there's something about that that I really like that they're kind of very bold and they're talking about this.
But I'm like, I don't, I'm afraid to say that.
I'm afraid to be like, I've had it with because there's so many things that I can get attacked about.
And I've been so attacked in my life, you know, just for existing.
Mm-hmm.
a queer little native kid in the world.
I've been so attacked.
I'm so exhausted by it.
So even though I love this idea of I've had it, I'm not ready.
I'm not at that point in my life yet where I can stand up and say that so loudly, which may surprise folks because I've written a book and I'm a musician.
do all these things.
that writing Somo-Cultural Liberation, releasing music, is my sort of external, my creative side is very external, but who I am at my core is very quiet and private.
uh you know, I always say I live a very external professional life, though in my day to day, like, I don't really want to be around people.
I'm very quiet.
I just I'm just like this little insular little creature that those kinds of things, though it's like, well, yeah, because who I am is still someone that's recovering from years of trauma from a world that doesn't want me to exist.
So even though my art is my way and my creativity and my writing is a way to push back on that, I can only do so much of that because it's also physically exhausting for me.
And the older that I've gotten, you I can't get on stage like I used to when I was younger because my voice gets tired um or Writing requires me to physically and mentally be so focused in a way that I don't really want to be doing at my point in life anymore.
So it's interesting because even though that's why I always say I'm one step closer.
So my cultural liberation is not the be all end all, it's one step and I will take one step toward the light rather than remaining in the dark any single day in my life.
And if I can find tools other than like my book or other books or podcasts or whatever it is that get me one step closer, I'm going to take it.
I'm going to take that initiative.
That is my challenge in my life is to not be the loudest person in the room.
My challenge in life is to take one step closer to the light.
Oh, I love all of that.
There's like at least 10 threads that I want to pull out from what you said.
So I'll just like slow myself down and feel it.
And I was even feeling like just the expansiveness like enter my body as you were talking.
And I was like, yes, yes, yes.
There was this like resonance in so many ways.
yes, I'm also very...
introverted, I guess, if you want to use that paradigm, that people always think I'm extroverted because I can get on a stage, I can speak, can write, I can perform.
But um my family teases me, like, you're just Italian, which is true, because I remember when I moved from like Italy to the UK when I was 22, and everybody was like, you're so extroverted.
was like, There was such an emotional dissonance.
was like, am I, I'm like the kid who hides in the bathroom with a book on New Year's Eve.
Cause it's like too many family members at this point.
there's like 30 people and everybody's loud and I need a little, I need to retreat, you know, from all the things.
And that, all of the sudden being in this very different cultural context, I was read very differently.
you know, and now I live in the Midwest and I'm like so blunt.
And so I've spoken, even when I'm just like, feel like I'm like being.
so subtle and kind, like, hey, have you considered?
But even that, And so was thinking about the cultural aspect, which is so missing in Somatic work.
I think that's one of the things that got me super excited when your book came out, Somacultural Liberation, is because I love the Somatic work.
I was kind of drawn to Somatic work.
even before I knew what the word somatic, you know, I remember training as a systemic therapist, you know, whenever it was 20 plus years ago.
um you know, and naturally being drawn to things like family sculpting techniques, but also naturally when I was working with families and kids, let's get up, let's do a thing, let's, let's shake it out, let's dance it out, let's write it on the board.
I was always a very active therapist in the room, right?
And in systemic therapy, there were some examples of that.
So there was a little more freedom to do that.
I was even drawn to drum and art therapy, like they're too psychodynamic.
I don't want to.
mess with psychodynamic folks, I'm just going to stay in my systemic world.
And when I finally like somatic kind of exploded a little bit more on the scene and I did my training, I was really struck with somatic experiencing and then doubled and other somatic stuff.
I was really struck by the lack of cultural lens and to me is such a...
disservice on numerous levels, like, right, one because I was like, okay, so you're just doing a lot of things that we know people do in culture, move together.
oh dance together, grieve together, right?
I was like, oh, and then it was like, my God, Anglo-white folks have to be taught that because that's been taken, right?
That is, I think sometimes that's the deepest wound of white supremacy for white folks is the lack of culture, cultural belonging, cultural identity.
ah in this desperate attachment sometimes to a culture they don't really know or understand.
Like I remember when I first moved to the so-called US, people be like, I'm Italian too.
And I started speaking Italian.
They were like, I don't speak it.
And I was like, so you're, oh, you have Italian heritage.
And I understand historically how your language has been taken from you and how you have this very.
uh very limited and almost like frozen in time and kind of traumatized idea of culture, because most people didn't emigrate for fanzies, you know, historically.
And so I was like, there is that this is a huge gaping wound for white folks here in the so called US, this kind of lack of identity, lack of culture and this trying to engage but without.
without relationship is really hard.
I really witnessed it a lot.
so, yeah, with Somatic, I was like, well, you've taken a lot of this from a lot of different cultures, probably, that you don't acknowledge, especially indigenous cultures here, you know?
And so I love that your book, in a way, is like Somatic, yes, but that cultural lens has to be present.
You know what I mean?
Well, I think that, you know, as someone that has been around the somatic world for quite some time, uh you know, I've recognized that there is a tendency, I'm uh going to make a broad sort of statement, that somatics seems to attract a certain kind of person.
Someone that is interested in, uh it attracts folks who are interested in culture.
Yes.
Though I found that it attracts folks who are interested in culture though they're not willing to identify that that culture was misappropriated.
They just want to be a part of the culture.
They want to be the culture.
They want to do the culture.
They don't want to say like, that culture was taken from folks.
And if we practiced it, we were demonized.
Though if you practice it, it's somehow exalted and elevated.
It doesn't make sense.
So.
you know, being around this world and studying somatic psychology and eventually teaching somatic psychology, it was always like, well, gosh, culture isn't everything about somatics.
It's just missing that piece of the critique.
And so it was almost like if you critiqued somatics, you were critiquing the very um practices.
It's like, well, yeah, I'm critiquing the practice because the practice existed here and the practice existed here.
And you're not mentioning that part.
You're saying that this came from from this person, it's like, that person didn't create that, or like that person didn't create that, I don't want to say names, but there are people in the somatic field who are very well known and credited for like starting these kind of movements and modalities, it's sort of like, yeah, they've been doing that in indigenous cultures, indigenous cultures around the world, I'm not just saying to the Americas, but indigenous cultures around the world have been doing very similar practices uh that...
weren't called that and weren't packaged like that, but because we live in a sort capitalistic consumerism driven world in the United States, uh it gets appropriated in that way.
And so my work is also a calling in to folks to say like, yeah, we owe a lot of the field to these people, to these ancestors whose work was literally stolen from them, taken from them, and then people profited off of it.
And so we need to listen to folks who come from these cultures who say, you know, when you like, I think in the sex world, the sex therapy world, like, right, there's like this whole, uh you know, I'm not a part of this because I don't, I'm not a tantrista or a tantric person.
uh Though, you know, I've also heard some folks say like, you know, tantra is misappropriated in the sex therapy world and they're doing it incorrectly.
like, so listen to people that come from this culture.
And there's pushback on that.
It's like, what's the pushback on?
Like, clearly this person knows because it's their culture that they're coming from.
uh Or, you know, was on part of a group called uh ASECT.
And a few years ago, there was uh someone that came onto the listserv was talking about, I don't even remember exactly what it was, but they use like the term shaman in there.
You know, like, it's such and such a shamanic tradition.
you know, and like people were fighting about the word and like, well, shaman isn't owned by indigenous people.
It's like, that.
Yes.
you forced that on us.
So then you want to then use that word in a way.
it's like, folks, forget that, like, you know, there are indigenous people on this listserv.
And one of my challenges that I have with being in these spaces, like the sex therapy world or the sex educator world or the somatic spaces, is that I am often one of very few, if only the one, from this indigenous community.
So if I speak up, it's like, I don't get to be anonymous.
Like everybody knows like, oh, there goes Roger Kuhn again.
It's like, well, you know, I sometimes just want to be anonymous and make a point.
Though about that claim, what I love so much is like, know, folks who are in community with you, they do the work.
They are willing to like, you know, those white body accomplices.
who are willing to do the work to literally use their body to like get in front of you.
So like, I don't have to take the brunt of that because I remember like going to the ASEC conference, which was like maybe a couple of weeks later and I was literally afraid that someone was gonna come to me and be like, how dare you say blah, blah, blah what you said.
And it's like, all I did was educate people about, know, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
Like that's all I did and it's true.
and though like then to be fearful of, to go into a space where I once felt so open and here to be going there in that clenched tight space, it's like, wow.
And that's why I think it's important for more Indigenous authors to be in the Sematic space, more queer authors to be in the Sematic space is because one, I don't want to be alone, but also our point is incredibly valid.
And Indigenous, again, I'm using it in a very, very broad term, not just meaning to the Americas.
But the indigenous people around the world, like we need more of their body stories.
We need more to be informed from that bodily perspective from these folks because culture is relevant to everything that we do.
Your podcast, Gender Stories, are about culture.
You know, it's like, how do you separate culture from anything?
I don't understand how to do that because it's, to me, culture the same way that spirit.
It's all It's all interwoven together.
It's the way we are in the world and how we, sort of like our epistemological understanding is a cultural understanding.
Oh, I like, feel like vibration, like I'm vibrating inside.
Like it's hard to see it outside, but literally I'm like, I can feel like the, because I'm like, yes, yes, yes.
And I think that I so resonate and that I actually remember that conversation debate.
And I think I was, I was already pretty scarred by ASEC at that point, you know, I've been like.
dipping in and out over the years um of living here.
And it's nice to see some shift maybe in the field, which was exciting.
And there's so many threads I wanna pull up, but I'm gonna start from the last one, which is like, I'm with you.
I cannot talk about anything without mentioning culture and also the historical context within which, right?
Like culture is both shaped and destroyed and erased and...
We resist, And I think there is so, you know, sometimes there is so much defensiveness or taking it personally when I'm like, okay, this is not a personal attack.
This is just like a fact, or this is just like, you know, and same with being pagan for one of a better word for like over.
almost 30 years actually, yeah, from my mid 20s.
So yeah, it's almost 30 years.
I'm getting old and I really feel young that 50 felt really big and now I'm like, Oh, I'm 54.
This is great.
But when I was 49, I was like, my God, what is happening?
Um, the caspits, it's something, but you know, it's I, yes, people take it so personally and yet I'm like, but we need to talk about this because this is part of the work of collective liberation, right?
This is part of like, if we're not aware of what has happened to people around us, how we come to be here, what is the relationship with the land and with the traditional custodian and stewards of the land, we're still here, you know, like one of my...
I was really, yeah, being in pagan community, that's what I saying.
was really, one of the things I was always really upset about is like, just the, I saw the pain and the hunger for culture and spirituality and ritual, but so upset that people weren't willing to also acknowledge.
ah how complicated it is, especially on Turtle Island to be practicing things that so many folks have been criminalized for.
And again, it's not an accident, you know, uh every time that an indigenous culture has been, you know, persecuted, suppressed, they don't just go after people, they also go after music.
You know, the dance practices, the spiritual practices, the drams, right?
You know, I'm thinking about the Sami folks and Yoking being illegal in our lifetime that has been lifted, right?
And the loss of culture that comes with that.
And often when I'm working with trans and queer people from cultures where that impact of colonization is still there, and I see the pain of having to choose do I choose myself in queer community or do I choose culture and all that loose potentially, right?
There's just so much there.
Yeah, and so it's this dichotomy where I'm like, wanna honor spirit and the hunger that I see in a lot of white Anglo folks, know, for ritual, for culture and also like, and.
You gotta acknowledge that this is complex.
You gotta be able to hold this and also not collapse.
in weird ways under because I've also seen the opposite, right?
That collapse of like, well, then we can't do anything.
You know, how do you even like, and I was like, no, no, nobody's asking you to, be like this.
That is not the work of liberation.
All that people are asking is like, just be aware, be conscious, create relationship, you know, but that's part of the problem.
People don't know how to create relationships anymore because of the lack of culture.
I don't know if I'm making sense because my brain is just like...
Well, also, you I would add like when someone says or when I hear someone say that I'm taking this personally or like this feels personal to me, to me, I read that as like something's going on with your body.
You feel sensation in your body and that it's maybe it's a constriction or a tightening or all kind of feeling here.
And that's what my work is about is like, how do we work with that feeling, that feeling that like makes you want to constrict, makes you want to drop in so that you like, no, no, no.
It's not about that.
It's about staying in this expansive state and feeling it.
Feeling it and understanding like you feel the way you do because of the culture in which you were raised in, which may have given you this prescribed set of ideas on ways to be and supposed to that you are living your life by.
So when you don't or when that's challenged, it feels personal.
And so it's like it's not personal.
uh Personal would be a direct attack on someone's body or personhood, yeah.
If you're feeling, if you feel personally attacked because you came from a culture that has harmed others, uh that is likely about how you were raised in your culture, maybe to believe that your culture was superior, or you were raised to believe that your culture didn't do anything because no one ever told you that your culture did that.
So when you learn these things and you get that constriction, my work is about understanding that moment of collapse and staying here and what is required for you to stay here?
How can I help you stay open?
And I believe that the more we understand and know our culture, the easier it is just to do this.
Like, I feel the way I feel because of these particular understandings I have in the world.
Okay, that makes sense.
It makes sense now why I want to go like this and get blocked off.
Though to stay here means that I am willing.
And that's a big part here is the willingness to be in the unknown and the uncertain.
Oh, I could cry.
I've literally been writing about living with uncertainty for the past few days for my newsletter.
it's like because um I feel like it's so important in this moment.
I see people grasping for easy solution, right?
If this person disappears, if this system does the right thing and I'm like, oh no, this is this is so much bigger than that.
And the this desire to grasp and control, right?
Which is part, I think it's part of colonialism, it's part of patriarchy.
It's also very human, you know, I understand that.
But it's just, you know, this lack of willingness to like be here with all that it is and to still be available for relationships, still be available for connection when it's possible.
Which is incredibly difficult right now.
I'm not arguing with that, but that, that is the work, right?
That is the work of like that one step towards liberation, like you were talking about.
And I think that's one of the things that also was really hard, you know, 10 years ago when I started my somatic training was this kind of.
Layer of like, why control over emotional regulation?
You know, I remember talking about it with Cathy Kane was my advanced teacher.
or somebody experiencing and saying, you know, I feel like there is this kind of uh moral superiority of the parasympathetic, calm and regulated state that I have real problems with culturally.
You know, I come from a culture where we go out really easily, you know, and I mean, the times that people in the Midwest are like, calm down.
was like, I am calm.
I'm just excited or passionate.
I was like, this is calm.
Like, raise my, I have a Puerto Rican friend who says, all these Italian memes are pretty hilarious, you It's like how to explain to people that these folks are not fighting right now, right?
But there is something about the when you are brought up, you know, in the so-called United States, North America, because I think Canada does this too, where the white supremacy culture wants you to be so constricted that when you see people be expansive, feels like a threat.
And I think that That's a lot of healing work that I've done even with white community organizers that want to work on dismantling that internalized whiteness.
I'm yeah, I used to being with big feelings and just with expansiveness because people are even threatened by expansiveness of joy.
Like there is no threat, right?
There's just people being like loud and connected and maybe arguing, but also arguing is not conflict.
That's right.
Yeah.
probably talk about for an hour about that.
so somatically, like, how do you find that place in your body that can discern, there is, this is just, you know, up regulation and there's no threat.
There's not always a threat in up regulation.
eh Yes.
Exactly.
learn how to ride a 7, learn how to ride a 6.5.
We don't always have to be at a 2, right?
Although that may be more optimal in the world, though, the world is not like that, right?
There's a certain privilege that I take every now and then, which is I say I'm not going to go on social media for like a month, a month and a half, because my system just can't handle all the sh- you know, the stuff going out like that.
Though it's a very particular privilege to be able to like unplug in that particular way.
Though what I have learned is that if I don't pick up my phone first thing in the morning, I am in a better regulated state throughout the day because I'm not in that...
My social media feed is always like liberation focused, so I'm always seeing really devastating things.
And so if I look at that, I usually get up around 5, 36 o'clock every morning.
And if I look at that first thing in the morning, I'm spending the majority of my day in that, like, there's nothing I can do.
I'm hopeless.
It's left alone, right?
just to name that, if I understand how my body can be best optimally utilized throughout the day, I know that it's not good for me to get on my phone.
That same story.
I'm going to come across it at 11 a.m.
as well.
And if I give myself the first few hours of the day to journal, to read, to be with my husband and my dog, to exercise, to do the things that really allow me to stay regulated, then I can be in that space where I can take that stuff in.
Because I'm a therapist and I know that throughout my day, my window is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller because We hear horrible things throughout the day.
I would say people don't come to therapy because their lives are great.
So I am preparing for folks.
Sex therapy, I'll say this about sex therapy, sex therapy is grief therapy.
I am a grief therapist that has a really fun, funky title.
That's it.
Because again, no one's coming to me because their sex life is great.
They're coming because something is going on physiologically, psychologically, culturally.
uh relationally in their sexual life that is causing them pain.
So I know that I'm about to hear this throughout my day.
So am I going to start my day in pain by picking up my phone and scrolling on Instagram and being reminded of the atrocities in the world that I know are there?
Or can I give myself a little bit of a break and not pick my phone up and check that stuff until like 10 or 11?
And I choose the latter because I know that I've made my dedication to someone that I'm going to be there for you.
And if I have a session at 8 a.m.
and I've got children being murdered on my mind, I'm not going to be there.
My body's not going to be there.
So I just I consciously have learned how to do this as I've gotten in this field for as long as I've been in it because I need to stay here as much as I can to show people it's possible.
I love that I often talk to Supervazis about how we've chosen a field where we're constantly being called to doing our own work if we're going to do this well.
And that means really like being willing to look at kind of our own stuff as it comes up, being willing to grow because more stuff will come up as we move through the world.
And there isn't this division between, you know, like, and I think that the...
What makes us good therapists or good enough is that willingness to do our own work, to walk the walk.
remember seeing a client who's also a therapist and I feel like this is still within HIPAA compliance going, well, you don't really do this, right?
I'm like, no, no, I do.
I would never ask a client to do something that I don't practice myself.
There are modalities I did not train in because it didn't work for me.
When I chose the modalities I'm trained in.
know, whether it's family therapy, whether it's somatic experiencing, whether it's dance movement, I chose those modalities because they work for me.
I know there's other modalities that work for other people in the world.
And I know colleagues who I trust that can send people to, you want to try EMDR?
Here's the trusted providers.
I know who do EMDR.
That's not my thing.
What resonates with my body are those tools.
If they resonate with you, that's great.
And if not, there's other people, because also I don't You know, we're all essential, but none of us are special.
Donald Engstrom-Reese is uh my good friend and elder.
uh there is some elder who says we're all essential but none of us is special which really pisses off some of the younger queers sometimes.
And I think that's important because also that's another aspect of white supremacy culture in the so-called US, right?
It's like this exceptionalism.
I'm like no we're we're all essential and none of like sure we might be exceptional in our own way and that's part of how essential we are but there isn't like something that separates us from other humans.
if that makes sense.
And that's such hard work to do as therapists.
I'm so aware of time and I feel like I want to talk with you for like three hours.
I'm like, oh, there's more of the things that you said that I want to kind of pull out.
But maybe, oh, okay, I'm going to give myself a minute.
You know, one of the things I've been asking people, because yes, there is, you know, ongoing genocide here, of course, ongoing genocides.
in uh Palestine, Gaza, Congo, Sudan, in way too many places, you know, and you know, they've been going on for a long time.
One of the questions I'm asking, especially my uh trans, queer, gender-expensive folks of the global majority, folks who are minoritized in some ways in this culture, is, and you already shared some of this, but what is bringing you joy and comfort and nourishment at the moment?
Because I don't think we can keep showing up to do the work of liberation without...
the nourishment personally, right?
Like we need to have that balance and I need to trust that when I'm resting somebody else is acting and then when they're resting, I am resourced and can step in, right?
We find balance in community.
And so how are you finding joy and comfort, nourishment, restoration, call it whatever you will right now.
I did a thing recently that I'm so proud of, which is I ran my very first marathon.
Yeah, it was a very, very big deal for me because I have never really considered myself a runner.
Though about, I guess it was end of April, I had just gotten back from Australia.
I went on this really great trip to Australia and then I had to start my training.
And it was about three and half, four months of training for this.
And little by little, I ran four miles, eight miles, 12, 16, and I was amazed that I could do that.
It amazed me that I was able to complete 26.2 miles.
And I also ran that the day of the marathon, had an injury, still have it.
I got a training injury.
And so Even though I'm still in a little bit of pain from that injury, there is still a lot of joy that like I follow through.
And I think that that's what brings me joy is follow through.
Is that like I have ideas and I just do them.
I just I follow through on them and I don't put a time limit on it.
Sometimes you have to with a marathon.
got it.
There's like a certain like in this certain time You got to get that those training miles that though like when it comes to writing or creating um I know that like I'm under no timeline Other than my own and when I follow through It just brings me so much joy.
Like I I wrote a book.
I have a PhD I I ran a marathon.
I've been married for almost 20 years.
Like the follow through in my life is something I'm so incredibly proud of because I see so many folks around me, some people that I really love who don't have that.
And it is one of the ways in which I've healed myself is to take an idea and put it out in the world.
And that may mean that No one hears it or several people hear it or no one reads it or several people read it.
And to me, it's not about how many people I'm impacting.
It's I did this thing that I can say to myself when I look back at my life and say, I went for it.
I followed through on the things that I dreamt about.
And when I follow through on those dreams, now I get to create space for another dream.
And I've had so many dreams because I've been able to kind of check a box and say, I did that, I did that, I did that, I did that, I did that.
What else can I do?
What else can I do in my life?
And that's what excites me that like this, this idea that, you know, being, on this cusp of 50, right, means that like, wow, I haven't figured out my life yet and that I don't have figured out yet because now I have like maybe maybe 30 40 maybe if I'm lucky 50 more years to figure stuff out that excites me so I can have a dream and I can follow through on it and then I get to have another dream and another one and another one dreaming for me is limitless there's no end to a dream because I can dream as much and as big as I want to same way I feel about my body about my gender about my orientation, about my creativity.
There is no end to it.
It is all limitless.
It is all possible into how I want to create those things.
And I want to use the little privilege that I have in the world to be able to make that easier for myself and make it easier for others that are traveling alongside of me or who are coming after me.
I love that so much.
As you were talking, I could almost see that little kid singing on a farm in North Dakota that you were talking about at the beginning and the dreams.
And yeah, it's so beautiful.
And I can't wait to see what you dream of next, because so many of your dreams are so beautiful, whether it's this wonderful book, so my Cultural Liberation, if you haven't read it, you should read it.
And whether it's your music that, you know, sometimes I put like kaleidoscope on and like I'm dancing, I'm like, yes, you know, I'm like, whether it's your music, whether it's your book.
uh whether it's the wonderful work that you do within our professional association, I can't wait to see what you dream of next so much.
And I'm sure we will have more conversation.
But for now, I want to be respectful of your time because that's the world we live in.
And I'm sure you have other things to do after our interview.
But one question that I ask all my interviewees is, is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you were hoping to talk about today?
And if not, that's okay too, I think that I feel pretty complete.
um Yeah, I feel pretty complete.
I don't think there's anything that um maybe we didn't talk about that I was hoping to.
I really just came into this like with, what's up?
Like, you know, like let's chat, let's talk.
Yeah.
love that and honestly that's how I love doing the interviews for gender stories.
I understand that sometimes people are like, let me know what the questions are and I'm like, these are the seed questions, you know, but I love that you were like, yes, I'm here and ready and I'm like, yes, let's figure out where we're going together and I love that so much.
Thank you so much and dear listeners or watchers, you're watching on YouTube now, I know some of you are, some of you are still on all your podcast platforming.
All the links to Roger's website, the book, the music are going to be in the episode description.
You can also follow Roger on Instagram.
I know I really enjoy following you on Instagram and seeing all your adventures.
And I was like, yes, you did the marathon as somebody who used to be a runner.
I know how much work that is.
I've never run a marathon, but you know, I've run 10 K's.
I was like that's a lot of miles to put under your feet.
Yeah, it's a lot of on the joints.
So I'm like I was very impressed.
So thank you so much for making the time and Dear gender stories listeners, please take good and gentle care of yourself Find a way to connect to your culture and even if you don't know where you come from, know that spirit knows and all you need to do is listen and find that expansiveness of gender, of liberation within yourselves.
And until next time.