S1E20: Tyra; Transwoman, Mochi Baker, Author, and Former Biomedical Researcher

Today Nix and Wolfie talk to Tyra(she/her) a 45 year old transwoman who came out less than two years ago. She discusses what happens when you grow up without Queer role models, transitioning at middle age and how its important that Queer owned businesses are established in Salem. 

Resources:

The Gender Dysphoria Bible: https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/

Mochi Mayhem: https://www.instagram.com/mochimayhemyum/

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Ahoi, gems and jewels.

SPEAKER_05 0:02

And non-binary ghouls. I'm Wolfie. I'm Nyx.

SPEAKER_04 0:05

And you're listening to The Treasures of Queer Salem.

SPEAKER_05 0:08

Where two of your favorite troublemaking pirates discover the riches of the queer sea while aboard the Salamander.

SPEAKER_04 0:13

Today we are interviewing Tyra, she her. She's the owner of Mochi Mayhem, a small local bakery that focuses on delicious, gluten, and dairy-free mochi. She's also an author and volunteers with several queer community organizations.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Did Captain eat mochi? Everybody should eat mochi.

SPEAKER_05 1:05

That's always good stuff. I I don't blame the cat. It almost is like blaming a lion for eating something else. You know, the the cats are gonna cat. That's what I said. Captain just doesn't get that.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

No, he doesn't seem like an understanding sort.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

Definitely not. So I'll start with the first question, which is would you please share your identity and how you arrived at the identity that you currently have today?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Um, so I'm I'm a trans woman, I think. Okay. Ver very very uh very definitive. Um let's see. Um so I realized I was trans in one way or another uh when I right before my 44th birthday. Um in well a few months before. But um and so I came out at my verse birthday party to all my f friends. Fortunately, most of my friends were queer because my spouse uh is queer and trans, and they had been out for four years at that point, and but like I think I've been struggling with my identity from a long time ago.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

But 44 years is a long time to not yeah, to to not embody this like this new phase of your life and into Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Um I grew up without being trans being an option and I wouldn't in being thinking that I was straight, um you know I g I guess I like girls growing up.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Question mark? Um I grew up upper middle class in New England in a small uh commuter town. And I didn't know anyone who was gay. Uh there's a few kids that came out who, you know, banned kids who you know the signs were there, but no one came out in as gay maybe one kid did in high school. And it just wasn't presented as an option back then.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Um but so I just struggled through.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Looking back at it, I was masking pretty hard because I never felt comfortable expressing myself anywhere. Like I always my self-expression or clothes the objective was to blend in with the crowd or not call attention to myself. My walls were the walls of my room weren't decorated in any way, or they had just some animal posters. I didn't really latch on to bands or books. All I had was really games and that was like my one real passion, but it was just such like I wonder how much of that was actual passion and just like a good excuse to hide away. I had friends, but I only had like one good friend at a time, and then like the circle of friends can't kind of came around through that. But um yeah. We we also lived at the uh top of a quarter mile long driveway, so um there wasn't really neighborhood either.

SPEAKER_04 5:49

I get that hard to socialize when there's not a lot of folks to socialize with.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yeah. And so like I went through life like like you do when you're a child of the eighties, thinking you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Um, and I'm like, oh, I'll become like, you know, I discovered furries when I was like real young, like in middle school. And so that was where I was I'd channel all the things that don't fit. Uh-huh. Um I found the transformation story archive. And so I was just really into this concept of turning into something you weren't.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Um. I was still perfectly straight, though. Perfectly fine.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:42

Clearly.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

No question. No question.

SPEAKER_05 6:44

I'm like looking at it and you're like, well, uh, it wasn't an option. It's because the DLC hadn't dropped yet. You know?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Um, it's like so like the signs were there, but I was very secretive about those signs.

SPEAKER_04 7:02

Like what signs, if I can ask?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Well, it's just like, okay, I'm really interested in furry art, and furry art at that point is expressing what they called at those times were hermaphrodite, where it was they they they weren't tran trans, they were ladies with dicks, but they weren't trans, they were aliens or something or else. Right. It's like you can explore this in front of us. I wasn't like I wasn't into them. No, I'm just into the w the ladies, the furry ladies. But like, um, but that was like clearly my exposure, and the transformation community definitely had some repressed trans lines, and in that community, as I went through it, as I age, just more and more people within it that I knew came out as trans.

SPEAKER_04 8:00

And and what is the transformation community?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

So, transformation community is well, it's just people who like art who of people turning into things. It can be a woman, it can be animals, that's where my my interest generally was.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

And um, or anything else, anything you can imagine. Um, and so that was pooled together in a email list called the Transformation Story Art list, tied to a webpage called the Transformation Story Archive. And so that was like my outlet for and I wasn't like producing anything at that point. At that point, I was just reading. I was just lurking. But I spent a lot of time doing that lurking. That email list would generate over a hundred messages a day. A day sometimes. And some of those were like novel-length stories. Um and of course I was a bookworm, so I read everything el else. Um so I went through life, like saying, well, you know, I'll be a genetic engineer and make it a reality or something like that. And I r that worked up through um up through college, and then I ran smack into grad school and the reality of scientific research. Um, and it doesn't work like that. You can't imagine things into existence. You can't just because you feel that you're creative, you can't make that happen. And um, I I met my my spouse, my my wife at at that time coming out of university.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Um but we we thought we were both straight.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Like there there were signs, but you know, I'll I'll let them talk about their own signs. Right. But um, I burned out hard on grad school. I my first uh you get assigned to you pick a lab to join after you do some rotations, and I pick poorly. I thought I was still thought, oh, this guy's a har this guy's uh was a child prodigy and has a kind of rep, but you know what? I'm the great exception. You still, you know, that's still that white middle class upbringing where you're like, I'm special. Um like I will I'll be fine. I was not fine. I got myself an ulcer at the ripe old age of 23. I h got hospitalized.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

The sheer amount of stress from the sheer amount of stress and the anxiety which I am just starting to unpack, which probably goes directly, yeah. I can probably trace a line of my anxiety to him. Um so I learned from that that not only could I not make science my creative outlet, and I'd always been a kid that will s would sit and imagine things that play in my head and that sort of stuff. Whether that's through books, worlds in books or things of my own own imagination. I remember I remember being called out for my aunt by my uncle because I had stayed in the shower so long and making spaceship sounds for like two hours.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Yep, yep. I think I was I might have been in high school even when that happened. Just in my head.

SPEAKER_04 12:18

You know what? I played pretend up until like middle school, early high school. Like I was Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:26

I'm still playing pretend.

SPEAKER_04 12:27

I'm learning how to do it again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:30

Um, I mean, I I really enjoy thank you for sharing your story. Um, and we still have so much to to unpack there. Um, you started off from the beginning saying uh I'm a trans woman. And the inflection at the end of not sure, you know, I I it sounds like there's a lot of self-discovery. Uh you would you just say that this is still a process for you? Oh, definitely, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Um, it's all a process. Um like I I don't e I couldn't tell you what my sexuality is at this point. I just couldn't tell you. Um, because I am realizing I've suppressed so much growing up in through life. I don't know what's under there.

SPEAKER_04 13:25

Do you think a lot of that suppression comes from like the culture, more specifically, the culture back east, uh, versus like maybe growing up in a place where there might have been more examples of like queer folks?

SPEAKER_00 13:39

My parents are fairly liberal. They're but like whenever you talk to them, you talk to them uh about queer folks, uh, and mostly it was gays and and lesbians when growing up. My mother always told me, Oh, you don't want to do that. That's hard. Not unless you don't want to do that unless you have no other choice.

SPEAKER_04 14:02

That's so sad.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

And I really internalized that.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

And so, like, and like I was not like I'm not a person who's super dysphoric.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Um I've never been like super depressed or or that sort of stuff. And so I always functioned, right? I was always functional. And so like oh, I'm not dying from like these thoughts. So I I must not want it bad enough. So it's I I liken my uh my gender stuff was gum on the bottom of my shoe as I was traveling through life. It's just kind of getting stickier as we go along. So um after after that uh experience, I decided I needed a creative s uh pursuit because science wasn't gonna cut it, and I tried to make webcomics because I had it was the era of the webcomics back then like you know, two guys on the couch have wacky adventures. It was a little past the start of that era, but during college that's what what happened, the proliferation of web comics. And so after moving to the Netherlands, um and getting a little income in my postdoc job, I hired an artist from Indonesia, and I made a uh a supernatural story about uh an old guy who sells his j gender to a demon.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Whoa, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

And it's a trans story, and he's slowly turning into a female demon throughout the as he's traveling through a reverse Dante's inferno. That's cool. And um probably at that point I should have known something. The signs were there, the signs were there, but uh I kept doing like creative stuff, and like some things were more obvious and some things weren't. Um I it was very obvious in my erotic writing on the side, but I also did like more mainstream s stories, urban fantasies. Um and so um we I burned out on research pretty hardcore uh pre-COVID, and my spouse had uh a remote job, so like let's relocate and kind of start over. And I was gonna focus on writing, and they were gonna provide enough to you know house and f enclot us, and so we we came to Salem right before the pandemic.

SPEAKER_04 17:15

Oh, lovely.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

We moved in months before the pandemic started. The best version of Salem. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:23

Um a lot of time to think to yourself, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, that's not what did it. No, no, um, there were some doubts that like crystallized during that period, but it wasn't until I started hanging out because Arlo is non-b my my spouse is non-binary, and they started hang reaching out and hanging out with a queer community where I actually met some trans women face to face. And once I was confronted with uh a trans woman, particularly one who is about my age and um about and has a similar build, I started, oh, I could do that, and then it was downhill from there, yeah. But it took seeing it and seeing her in her day-to-day and that sort of thing, for me to realize this is something I could do, this is something I could make work.

SPEAKER_05 18:32

Sorry, yeah, go ahead. No, that trans woman is in the background just being like, ka chao, got another one. No, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

No, that's that's incredibly powerful when you get to see parts of yourself that you never imagined could be on the outside world in front of you, and you're like, oh my god, it exists. Like, I could do this, they did this, and they're like, Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Right, right. And it's just like this is hard, but you take like these small steps and you realize, like, I like this, I I really like this, and then you take a few other steps, and you're like, okay, where is the wall that's gonna slam down and say, like, I'm uh oh no, this is not this is too far. This is I haven't found that wall yet.

SPEAKER_04 19:25

That's exciting. So, what was that very first like moment that you were like, I'm gonna try this? Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna start.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

I started painting my nails. I started painting my nails, and I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed looking down at my nails and seeing color and looking at it feminized, and I'm like, and I was doing like fun stuff like tiger stripes and that sort of stuff. It was just fun, and I'm really miss it. Uh I I work in I do the bakery now, and the government frowns on working with baked goods with painted nails because paint can chip off and fall in the baked goods. And I haven't had the energy to figure out a substitute yet yet. But um, yeah, that was like, oh, and then I'm like, okay, we're we're doing this, and I'm I'm just gonna go hard. And so for that that birthday party, I spent four months practicing makeup. I still don't think I did that well, so I was like a tiger lady for this for this birthday, and Arlo helped me so much, and I think I shocked everybody.

SPEAKER_04 20:51

That's so cool though.

SPEAKER_05 20:52

It's a culmination of that that story of like uh transformations and right there, and then finally getting to this point where like this is who I really am, right? And just kind of like laid it on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:04

I mean, I I'm curious before I start asking more questions about this. I am at the point where I want to ask you, where are you today? Where do you how do you see yourself today? Where where are you in this like loading bar?

SPEAKER_04 21:21

The loading bar, the never ending lower.

SPEAKER_05 21:23

The never ending lower. I mean, there is a moment where a person who's trans just gets to the point, like, I'm done. I'm done transitioning. That was a past tense. Yeah. Um, and I'm wondering if that is something that you believe is possible, where are you on that bar?

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Oh, I feel like I'm pretty far at the beginning of the the whole thing. Yeah. Like, it takes like seven years for breasts to fully grow. And it's like, you know, I finally said, Well, let's sign up for all the surgeries and see what happens. Um But my stories that I write or have written the the woman at the end of it is powerful um center of the room glamorous and beautiful. And I think I got a real far long way to go till then. So but I try and wear my stripes to remind me where I want to go.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:40

You know, I think the story is so so powerful because you know I I do a lot of writing with my friends as well, and I see so much of myself getting to explore what I want to become. And I've seen some of that come to fruition, and that is so satisfying. Um and it's so freeing too to be able to to test things out and to play around and to really like really uh I kind of idealize this like this part of yourself that never really got center stage. Uh and that's kind of the first place that you might see it exist.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah, the the uh I mean it's always existed in terms of play because my when it's when it was when I felt it was safe, when I felt like I wouldn't be judged um, say in RPG games or computer games, I always picked a w a female character in a bold female character at that.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

While I was a fairly mousey individual, I'd say.

SPEAKER_05 23:54

I feel like you know, I'm looking at this from you know, it's hard not to hear this story from a d from our own lenses, you know? And what you're sharing right now of this individual who is like isolated and told the the the this same thing of like why would why would you? Why would you transition? What would be the point in that? And you know, that really kind of highlights this, you know, when somebody asks you why would you do that? Kind of almost at this question of like, why would you give it up if you have it all, sort of thing? And also like not necessarily pathologizing, but maybe even like indirectly shaming you of like if you did make that decision, then you deserve what follows after, sort of thing. This like subconscious like narrative, because you know, you you you highlighted uh the story of another trans woman who had a similar life experience as you do, and she's out, and you're able to see that that person was able to do it and survive. And so you get to this point where like, wait, maybe I can I can survive from that as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Well, yeah, and then you get uh even the guilt of it as like wow, they've had a rougher life than me all throughout, but they still did it, and they did it without any encouragement, without any at least to my maybe the to my brain, you know. Like, wow, you're so much braver than I am, but you know But that's the fun part.

SPEAKER_05 25:32

That's the n the ironic part is that in that same vein, you know, we we have this internalized narrative that uh uh uh there's a certain group of people who are like at the top of the food chain, right? Cis hetero, like white, whatever it might be, and then uh they have it made, but in reality, that that narrative hurts them too. It it binds a person from giving up and being themselves. Why would you give up everything, right? Right, if you have everything, why would you give it up? And so it it's an yeah, I guess in a way it could benefit that person, but in a way it it sort of like chains you to be a certain person.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Well, yeah, one of the things I've come to realize is I've never had community in my entire life.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

I've had my spouse and and and I had friends, you know, I had but you know, I don't once I moved, those all those friendships kinda would fade away and they were just friends of convenience. Um but I never had a community, even growing up. So my parents were active in a in a liberal church and that sort of thing. But I never fit in there and my parents went through various stages of being involved or not w there there, but I never that was never my community. And so it's just like I had communities online, you know, the transformation community, the furry community, whatever. But those aren't and I have learned those are not a real substitute for community. Those just aren't. And so like until I came out, until I started like uh interacting with the people my spouse found and that sort of stuff, there was no sense besides my spouse, myself, my work, and then this nebulous uh online thing. And that was just all there was. You you you didn't plug into a place, you didn't plug into people beyond yourself, you're in in your you know, I now you know we share something with so many people.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:34

So when did you really first start noticing that shift in like, oh, this is what it feels like to have community and like especially going from that place of being like a uh straight white, you know, male to like, oh, like I'm more entering what it feels like to be uh a woman and presenting more femme and how that might change how people like treated you or how you showed up in community.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

It's so hard for me to even like discuss when I feel like a woman right now. That's like I I still feel like I'm not there. I haven't earned that yet. You know what I mean? But it's uh in terms of your question, like um I think I started like I started volunteering for the maker space space that that uh Nyx was running. Um but it it's there's no one moment. It's just like when you realize you're part of something a little bigger than yourself, I don't think you there's really like there's no initiation ceremony to being queer.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

There's no like uh yeah, there's there's there's no uh moment when you know you've stepped over the rainbow bridge.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

But you can look back and say, oh here I am, here are all my people.

SPEAKER_04 30:21

Oh yes, oh yes.

SPEAKER_05 30:23

And I I kind of following up with that same direction too. I'm curious if you might be able to like even give us an answer or response for this one, but what do you think was stopping you from having community? You identified your family having access to that, so it wasn't not available to you. But if this was your first experience in community, what what do you think prevented you from having it or experiencing earlier in life?

SPEAKER_00 30:56

I wasn't able to share myself with people. That was the barrier. Or when I did, that was rejected. That's huge. That is huge. Like I tried, you know, my parents tried to force me into every like activity known to middle upper class America. They tried sports. I I didn't like those. Um uh taekwondo is stuck stuck, but that was just like you go to class, you come home.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

Um there were you know, I did boy tried Boy Scouts, tried, but like whenever I ran up against white uh white white guys my own age, I bounced off. But still, like there wasn't enough identity for me to even give moo give myself the space to try more fem activities that felt more feminine. And while my my parents were liberal and that sort of stuff, I had inter I've I've I still have probably. I've internalized that to such a degree I couldn't give myself permission, even if they might give me permission, I couldn't do that to them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

Yeah, the greatest battle is inside of us.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 32:33

And it's not it's not really an option if it's just not even Well it yeah, it didn't even occur, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Like even in those online spaces, it's like, okay, yeah, that's you. I'm just straight with a a thing.

SPEAKER_04 32:49

Yeah, well, it sounds like you got to explore a little bit of that through like the online community and a little bit of the writing, but there wasn't any of that manifesting.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Right, it was always like characters, yeah. I could do it with characters, and so I had had these dolls that I could in those dolls probably kept me sane.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Yeah, this is like, you know, I've I don't really get to hear this kind of narrative, right?

SPEAKER_05 33:20

It it's like I can feel so much isolation, but not at not even at the physical capacity, but at the social level and at the psychological level of it. I mean, we're not even like looking, but I'm just looking at this like perspective of, you know, when we look at what the the damage that cis heteronormativity has on our society, it's like we said, it's not just highlight, it's not affecting just the people who are not cis hetero, right? But it's also affecting the people who are cis hetero. And even to the point where like like where you're saying, it's not even an option. It's just not an option. Right. It's a non-starter.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Right. And I think had I been born ten years later or something or other, there would have been just more infiltration of that into my young of queer life into my young life. But I didn't really know what gay was until the AIDS crisis blew up.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Wow, really.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

I I really hadn't even heard of it, you know, until like they started doing like special uh editions on TV episodes and stuff stuff.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

It's um with the AIDS crisis.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

And so like my first real inter like meeting of queer life is a disease.

SPEAKER_04 35:01

Right, that would definitely like color your perspective.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

A little older than you might have like run into RuPaul's drag race as your first like exposure, but it was no, it was the AIDS crisis was my first knowledge of queer people existing. They literally didn't exist until I was at least like 15.

SPEAKER_05 35:30

Yeah. You know, I I'm hearing all this, and I you know, it's it's great to hear kind of where you come from and the things that kind of were working against you. Because it's nice to like it's that narrative is needed. People need to hear this. And at the same at the same time, my next question to you, um, not quite the second question that we normally ask here, but uh it it's you know, where do you envision yourself going? What what does what does uh this Tyra individual look like when she has fully become herself? Have you have you asked yourself that? Have you thought of that?

SPEAKER_00 36:11

I'm not I'm afraid to give myself a target to shoot for because I don't want to miss it. I don't want to never reach it. That speaks volumes. Right? Um like because I don't know, I'm 45, like trying to get where my characters were in my stories seems like like I'm not that young anymore. And if transition is a 10-year process, that leaves scars and you know, transition, doing this stuff in real life without magic it's hard. If all it hurts yeah, physically, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Yeah, yeah, and it's like anything any goal I set, I feel like I'm gonna have to compromise.

SPEAKER_05 37:16

And I'm wondering if if that comes also from that same narrative that you're coming from of this mentality of if you can't reach it, then why why aim for it?

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Yes. Yes. Like if I'm just gonna disappoint myself.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

I mean that I was very much raised in like I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. So uh that's how my parents dealt dealt with with that.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Um but it's like uh like I've had so many like some disappointments already.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Like none of my books I've I've written over 15 novels, like none of them, like I've gotten high on the Amazon chart sometimes, but nothing has like turned into something that would have was a runaway success. Something that you needed to really become an author, like that becomes a household name. It is very hard, you know, I've seen just how hard that can be and how uh grinding that can be be. I've seen the pros and the cons of that because you know I've been part of various writing communities, again online, but and um but I've never had that level of success.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

And so it's always like, okay. We're moving on and we're trying other things that I mean.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:09

You you highlighted community earlier too, and you highlighted how community made this a possibility for you in the first place to be able to ask these questions, to feel safe enough to be in a place that you feel comfortable enough to share this. You know, and we we in asking those questions, we start asking questions of how else can community serve or help others, you know, because it this story that you have, not only does it need to be said, but I wonder how many other trans women or soon-to-be trans women are listening to this and being like, yeah, that's what it feels like. That's my story, sort of thing. Um, and so I just I I I guess in a in a shameless and also direct transition into the second question is asking the the the that question of like what resources do you having gone through all those things, you know, what would you recommend? What would you tell others about? What would you like to share?

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Okay, so if you're starting your journal, your your journey, if you're like thinking something is always there, go read the dysphoria Bible. Look it up online, and it lists it is a it's like 30 to 50 pages, just sort of cataloging different dysphoria dysphoria um manifestations.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Behaviors. And that's what probably finally really cracked my egg as I had one of those online friends like, hey, you should if you're struggling with this, you know, because um I I was saying, well, I this was at the stage I was painting my nails. I definitely have euphoria, but I'm not sure I have dysphoria. And I I read through that and I'm like the playing female characters and all these checking the boxes.

SPEAKER_04 41:24

I'm like Did they have did they have those things in the the dysphoria Bible?

SPEAKER_05 41:32

I want to read this because like uh euphoria is dysphoria.

SPEAKER_04 41:40

Yeah, well I just hear that from especially a lot of non-binary people who were like, it wasn't like I wanted to be a a man or a woman, or it was more ambiguous and it was more about the euphoria, but the behaviors is really interesting. I would love to read that.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Yeah, yeah. I I recommend it. And that wasn't what I was I was planning to list at the beginning of this episode, but if we want to talk about the most impactful thing, as in saying, oh, I'm trans, that's it.

SPEAKER_05 42:12

Yeah, definitely 100% recommend. That is a great read. Short made by the community, and it really kind of you know, it really kind of expands on this idea of dysphoria. Uh, any other resources that you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Well, um I have a business. It's called Mochi Mayhem.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Woo!

SPEAKER_00 42:31

We it is uh trans-oned. Uh we and I make delicious Hawaiian butter mochi. And that it is both both gluten and dairy free and soy free. Um and so and I am trying, we're we're just a market stall at the Salem Saturday Market or the Portland Saturday Market, and uh also at the Outer Realms. Um, but I really hope to grow it into something that can really uh make a difference and support the community. Um we need more visible queer business uh owners and leaders and employers of that experience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Um uh you and I I want to plug the the the Spark, the Salem uh shoot.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Pride and Resource Science? Yes, yes I gotcha. Um that I am very proud to be on the steering committee for uh in helping to make that a reality. Um I'll just mention Rainbow Youth. If you're a queer queer questioning youth and you want to hang out with other youths with the same questions and as you, that's a great place.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:24

That's good. I mean those are all really good resources that we have. Mochi is always amazing and it's always welcome. Not a lot of restaurants in Salem offer mo d dairy-free, gluten-free, and what was the other one that you said? And soy free. And soy free.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

But you don't miss it. You don't need an allergy to enjoy this.

SPEAKER_05 44:42

No, you don't need an allergy to enjoy it. Yeah, exactly. Um, so uh the the next question that we normally ask as well is you know, in inverse of what resources would you like to share, what resources do you think our community needs?

SPEAKER_01 44:56

So I'm very uh glad to uh in honor to start interacting with uh the um a Portland uh queer chamber of c commerce.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

Uh I don't have it in front of me. So we'll put a link to that in the in the notes. Um but I would love to wan once we have the Spark Center open to also start an association of of queer businesses and business leaders in Salem. Um because like you st you can help kids, it's it very important to help kids uh uh survive till adulthood, but you still need uh places for those adults to go. Absolutely, yeah. And if we can get uh a strong queer business community here and create opportunities for everyone, I think that would be an amazing and we it would really secure and anchor the queer community here in Salem.

SPEAKER_05 46:16

It's been said that Salem is really gay, but what I've noticed is that uh the the the gayness is in the bottom of that like structure, whereas you know the people who are in power are not and are and are also I mean when I when I'm saying gay, I'm not just talking about sexuality or gender. It's also the the like the aspect of challenging gender and facing this oppression that we face and learning from that. And I I think if you talk to a trans person, especially as they kind of transition in their life, these are people who are becoming very intimate with themselves. Like they are like asking the questions that most people are trying to run away from and leaning into them. And by the time you get to a person who's like a veteran queer, uh you get to a person who's like very self-aware. And I think sometimes having that in our leadership, in our entrepreneurs, in our politicians, those are all qualities that while we don't need you to be gay, that level of self-awareness and understanding of the importance of community is something that is that makes queer culture so powerful, especially in the United States. So I think, yeah, I I 100% support that idea. Love to have a chapter here. That'd be really cool.

SPEAKER_04 47:30

I love what you were saying about we need spaces for, yes, we want to have kiddos survive, but we need those spaces for them to thrive. Um, because absolutely it's that sense of belonging and community. It's like, yeah, if you don't have a space, where are you gonna go? You know? Just kind of kind of float and and find somewhere else, and all of that is gonna go somewhere else and and Salem's gonna kind of hollow out. So we do need to create those things.

SPEAKER_05 48:00

Oh, there's a bosun. Tyra, time here is up.

SPEAKER_04 48:04

Thank you, Tyra. It was so good to talk to you. Uh please tell us where in the sea we can find you.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

You can follow me on Instagram at Mochi Mayhem Yum. Or just you can uh join my mailing list at mochimayhem.com.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

All right.

SPEAKER_05 48:20

Great for all you listeners. Uh if you like our podcast, please subscribe and maybe leave a review. Um and you can support us on Patreon at Crafty Coyotes. No space in between words.

SPEAKER_04 48:32

Can you put in a good word with the captain for us?

SPEAKER_00 48:35

I'll try, but I have a feeling I'll be back down here before too long.

SPEAKER_04 48:41

Might want to check up on your cat.

SPEAKER_05 48:43

Well, and remember, Salem, even when the seas are choppy, hoist your colors.