Interview with Trailblazing Community Organizer BK

In this episode of Screen Door Queers, we sit down with BK, a longtime activist and community organizer whose decades of advocacy have helped shape Western North Carolina's LGBTQ+ landscape. From arriving in Asheville at the turn of the millennium to organizing mutual aid after Hurricane Helene, BK reflects on the challenges of finding queer community, the power of protest, and the importance of bringing generations together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey folks, welcome to today's episode of Scream Door Queers. This podcast is a production of the Media and Communications Queer Migrations course at Warren Wilson College, nestled in the mountains of Solonanoa in Western North Carolina. This anthology series explores the stories of queer people living in Appalachia by queer people in Appalachia.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

It's an unusually warm February day in Asheville, North Carolina, where we greet BK for a chat in a local library. As a former librarian at Warren Wilson College in Swantanoa for 19 years, it's a fitting place to spend an afternoon. BK is a lifelong activist and a familiar face for many among mutual aid and LGBTQ organizations in the area. They're often found working alongside groups such as Youth Outright, Campaign for Southern Equality, Fierce Flicks, Transmission, and a social gathering of their own creation, Intergen Friends. Today BK has agreed to join us and share their experience of looking for, finding, and building upon queer communities after arriving in Western North Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Hello. Hi. My name is BK and borderline old now. About turned 65, which is kind of freaky. It was a little rough when I first got here. And it was really hard at that point to find the queer community. Got here in 2000 when I first moved here. Didn't have a job. I came without a job because I had to come for family reasons. And so initially it was like I was afraid that it was the South. And I definitely had a pretty strong fear of the racism and homophobia that I assumed was going to be like ingrained in the South. I kept meeting these butch women that I just assumed were all lesbians and they were not gay at all. They were just like rural, strong women who would be like, you know, looked like in my brain a stereotypical 80s and 90s dike. And I was confused and stunned and ignorant in a lot of ways. I knew nothing about Southern culture. People would meet me and they would say, What does your husband do? I had never in my life ever had anyone assume that I was anything other than queer. So then I came to Warren Wilson the second year. I saw a job opening. I had no idea what Warren Wilson was like. And I came here and I was like, okay, I can turn this library queer. And found a lot more queer people over the years. But one of the I was a little afraid for my kid when I moved here, which I had never felt afraid for my child in Portland. They were not the only donor baby at their daycare, and they were not the only kid with a queer parent. That was a huge wake-up call for me. And then feeling like I need to be sure that other people know that my kid has a queer parent, that they can express themselves and be able to wear what they want to wear and to present the way they want to present. You know, I literally grew up in an era where we were not allowed to wear pants to school in third grade. So I started wearing pants under my skirts and dresses every single day. And then a couple of other girls in my class started doing it, and then we all started doing it. And about two months later, they said we could wear pants on Fridays for activity day. And then three months later, we just won. And we broke the dress code. That was like my first taste of protest and activism. And I know a lot of young people now who are like, protest doesn't help. It does. I marched for women's rights and I marched for gay rights. In those days, we called it the Gay Freedom Day Parade. It was not pride. Early trans stuff, there were very few, but it felt safe. Um, I had 2004, I think, was the year I had the first student that I knew come to me and come out as trans. Um, and that became kind of a thing. My office was like, let's go tell BK. And so I did a lot, I took students to a lot of places. We would work at Pride events and we would work with animal rights organizations and all these different things, but that was a good connection. And I started a group this fall called Intergen Friends. Um, and that's basically an intergenerational community group just purely for social stuff. It seems like the the thing that I've found the most frustrating in Asheville is the lack of easy connections for people. There are a lot of queer people here, but it's like there's bubbles. Warren Wilson is a bubble with all of the students. Um, and then the kids have, you know, certain groups. There's a lot of elders that are real isolated, and the elders are saying to me, Oh, the kids don't care about us, and the kids are saying, Oh, the old people don't care about us. And everyone thinks that no one else is isolated. Um, and I think it's really important that we have a lot of intergenerational time to share and teach each other things. I can't tell you how many times I've met someone who's like 18 or 20 or even 23. Um, and they've said to me, I've never met a trans person over the age of 24. But the stuff that we went through, you know, I was a kid in the 60s, but I remember stuff that was going on. I didn't come out until the mid-70s, but the stuff that we did in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s paved so many roads. Like when I was, when I first came out, if I heard the word queer, it was just a panic. And when the younger generation started, you know, using queer as this lovely umbrella that covers all of us, um, it was scary. It was hard, you know, and that's another reason why I think it's so important for the generations to come together. You know, like with Youth Outright, you know, or like with Campaign for Southern Equality, we do a monthly resource center and it's just a drop-in event and hanging out with other people, eating a lovely lunch. We have folks come in who offer all kinds of different things, like we do gender-affirming haircuts, everything is free. And again, I think a lot of people are starting to see how important the intergenerational community really is. Yeah, I'm gonna spread the word. I'm pushing it. I really am like an intergen pusher now. I want people to come together. Um, it's amazing, like little connections. I have a friend who's a retired musician who at one of our events recently met a like 20, maybe 21-year-old trans kid who wants to wanted to learn how to play guitar. And now they're hanging out once a week. And so the young person is getting free guitar lessons, and the older person has company. A couple months back um at Youth Outright, uh, there were maybe 18 or 20 kids that were between 11 and I think about 16. Um, and we were talking about politics and activism, and they were like, We're scared. Myself and another person were like, here's the scoop. You know, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can help make posters or flyers for people. You don't have to go out if you're afraid, or go with a group of people that feel really safe. It was very interesting after Helene. My neighbors across the street. I mean, Dude Bro is a retired statey. You know, he uh most of my friends have like A cab tattoos all over their bodies and whatever. And and Scott like wears camo head to toe, and he has like a four-wheeler that he rides around on, and he's got 11 grandkids, and and he's he's Scott, and he's like, hey, BK. You know, but we he knew that I was working mutual aid, he knew I was doing disaster relief stuff, and like early on when we first started loading pickup trucks with those giant tanks of water, this truck came around the corner by our house and like literally tipped over sideways. And like I thought I heard a noise, and before I could even blink, there's Scott in my driveway on his camouflage four-wheeler, and he's like, BK, come on, we gotta check this guy, you know. And I'm out there and we like it turns out it's okay, but I look down and I realize I'm wearing a t-shirt that says the library made me gay, and I'm hanging out with Mr. Camo Man, and we cared about the same thing. We cared about helping people in our community. I had there were some young trans kids that I know who went out to to help sort food out in Barnardsville, and they came home and they're like, BK, it was really scary. Like, all these dudes were open carry. And I was like, Did anybody say anything to you? They're like, no. I'm like, great, y'all were working side by side because you all want to feed people. And certainly after the hurricane, you know, they did disaster relief for nearly every day for seven months and then five days a week and slowly getting back down. But as soon as, as soon as that got to a point where we were really running out of of funding and and support for doing as much mutual aid, I went back to to the queer community immediately. I really thought when I was coming here, I thought I was gonna be here for three or four years. Um, I came to help out a parent that was struggling with health, and I really thought it sounds awful, but I really thought they weren't gonna live more than three or four years, and they lived for 19 years. And I took care of them that entire time. And by the time they died, I was so established here. My kid had grown up here, they went to college here. Um, you know, it would be a big shift. So instead of leaving, I feel like I just try to throw my heart into being as much an agent of change in little ways as I can, and just trying to spread spread queer kindness. But I'm never gonna stop fucking marching. I don't care. You know, I know it's not the be all and end all. I do a lot of other things. Um, I think education is critical, I think fundraising is critical. And, you know, when I worked on campus, I used to help kids get registered all the time. There were so many students who had not been registered to vote. I would drive people to the polls. Um, I've worked the elections. I've I I just feel like doing a little bit of everything that I possibly can is better than sitting back and being like, whoa is me. Everything sucks. You know, it can be depressing. I can go home and be like exhausted and think, wow, I've been fighting for 50 years. Um, and that can be really hard. But then I can, you know, I'll go out and I'll see two 15-year-olds walking downtown and they're holding hands and they're so obviously blatantly queer and happy and delightful, and my heart is just wide open.