The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
‘A season of grief’:
Profiles of the
LGBTQ+ holiday
experience
BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
Wednesday, December 2, 2020 — 11
H
ey my girl. Is there anyone you
would like to bring home for
Thanksgiving? Someone who
isn’t travelling home or needs allies to have
Thanksgiving with?”
In something like extending a hand or
offering a warm hug, my mom sent me that
text message on a frigid Ann Arbor after-
noon.
When I read it, a few people came to
mind: The friend who routinely removes
his pride flag from his living room every
time his parents visit. The classmate who
mentally prepares herself to talk about
her girlfriend like she is just a girl (space)
friend during her family’s Thanksgiving
dinner. The coworker who enthusiastically
works extra shifts to dodge time at home
and avoid being invalidated by her father,
who, for years now, has refused to correctly
use her pronouns.
My parents have been self-proclaimed
“allies” for as long as I can remember. Even
before I started talking to them about my
queer identity, they had a big, bright pride
flag hanging over our garage for years — a
bold act in an Indiana suburb.
Like two blue sheep among a swarm of
red ones, my parents have long been the
sole liberal parents in my social circles.
It was my mother who gifted me my first
“I’m with her” T-shirt during the 2016
election. And my father, who works as a
middle school math teacher, who once sat
me down to inquire how to ask for his stu-
dents’ pronouns.
As I’ve grown up, my parents have im-
plemented this spirit of inclusion into ev-
erything they teach us, in every corner of
our household. But seeing that text from
my mother reminded me that too many
people in my life — and too many other stu-
dents on campus — are not quite as lucky.
After a handful of lovely and deeply
compelling conversations with other stu-
dents within the LGBTQ+ community, I
found the diversity of their backgrounds
and identities to be reflected in the range
of sentiment they expressed in response to
one simple idea: “home for the holidays.”
For some, being home meant being
grounded, a “breath of fresh air” from the
otherwise chaotic semester we’ve all en-
dured. And for others, being home meant
something quite different: It meant stress,
anxiety and having to act as a “representa-
tive” on behalf of their entire community
when relatives became overly inquisitive. It
meant awkward conversations in response
to the dreaded ‘So, are you seeing anyone?’
question grandparents seem to pose every
year. It meant an “experience of grief.”
T
heodore Poling, LSA Junior
“I do still use (she/her pro-
nouns) but for (my Dad), I don’t
want him to because it’s this ... lingering
connection to the concept of a person who
has never existed. Like, I was never his
daughter.”
When I realized that our interview
had run over an hour long after talking all
things coming out, the supposedly “con-
tradictory” nature of androgynous gender
presentation and their father’s traditional-
ist interpretations of gender and family, I
knew that LSA junior Theodore Poling was
a special person with a lot to say regarding
the intricacies of the LGBTQ+ experience.
After transferring from the University of
Southern California this semester, Poling
has hit the ground running, grasping every
opportunity they have to be involved on
campus even while studying remotely from
their parents’ home in Ann Arbor. Founder
and president of the Trans and Gender-
Non-Conforming Arts Review, and mem-
ber of both BiLateral and the Ace Space
within the Spectrum Center, they offered
me a proud smile when they said, “I’m
pretty well-connected in the whole queer
world on campus.”
Though, with the holiday season ap-
proaching, Poling acknowledged that home
is often where they encounter more points
of conflict, one being the way their parents
have approached their enduring health
problems. Throughout this year, Poling has
struggled with chronic pain in their lower
abdominal and pelvic region, which has
aggravated the already less-than-healthy
relationship their dad has with their trans-
gender identity.
“My dad is so intentionally ignorant
about gender stuff,” they said. “He can
grasp … trans man and trans woman, but
anything beyond that he thinks is kind of
fake. And so, if I bring up anything that has
to do with like, (the fact that) I have, you
know, a uterus, then he kind of sees it as
like, ‘haha, checkmate ... you are not trans.’
So having to deal with this medical issue
that is ... very biological in nature has been
stressful.”
In the beginning stages of their journey
toward embracing their nonbinary identi-
ty, Poling wanted to avoid having to “come
out” over and over again while seeing rela-
tives over the holidays. So, they did what
any Gen Z-er within the LGBTQ+ commu-
nity would do: They turned to Facebook. In
the weeks leading up to the holidays, they
made a Facebook post stating their name
‘Theo’ and their pronouns. And with that,
they had set the “framework” for coming
out before grandma and grandpa came into
town.
In terms of coming into their gender
identity, Poling said they have an “opposite
story” in that, when they first came out,
they thought, “This is going to be easier on
people if I just say like, ‘I’m a guy now. I’m
a trans man,’ (so as to) not have (my family)
have to deal with ‘nonbinary’ and all that.”
Poling remembered one holiday where
they clung on to a particularly masculine
gender presentation.
“I let my facial hair grow out a little bit
and I cut my hair shorter,” they said. “And
I wore a sweater and slacks that I found in
the men’s section of a store and (I) tried to
like, I don’t know, downshift my voice a lit-
tle bit. I just didn’t want (relatives) to, like
my Dad, ask questions that have such big
answers, you know?”
Now, after having come into their non-
binary identity, Poling has been able to re-
flect on what’s at stake when a cisgender
person fails to fully embrace a transgender
person’s identity.
“... If someone hasn’t come out as trans,
and you say something transphobic, they’re
gonna stay in the closet around you ... and
(what if ) you found out 30 years later that
you never got to meet that part of their life
... wouldn’t you feel some sort of grief?”
N
ikolas Zazula, LSA Senior
“I feel like most queer peo-
ple kind of experience the same
thing, (where you’re) spending so much time
overthinking the way you present mostly be-
cause you’re ... worried about ... the way oth-
er people are going to interpret that. That
anxiety ... for queer people is always there.”
Through our brief phone conversation,
I quickly gathered that LSA senior Nikolas
Zazula carries a cool and confident perso-
na. In between spurts of Zazula’s laughter,
we spent the interview talking about the
“weirdness” of sexuality, the struggles of
being a Gemini and the joys of having an
open, supportive family.
Zazula said he’s fortunate to never have
had to come out to his family. “They all
kind of just let me do my thing,” he told me.
And because his family has always been
very accepting of his identity, he knows
how he chooses to present himself in front
of them is “not a big deal.” He further elab-
orated, explaining, “... It’s less that I’m un-
comfortable and more that I don’t care too
much, and I kind of just make them deal
with it.”
As a drag performer in the Ann Arbor
and Metro Detroit areas, Zazula has had
lots of practice “doing his thing,” and be-
ing his true self regardless of other peo-
ple’s perceptions of him. When asked how
his presentation might shift while with
extended family during the holidays, Za-
zula breezily responded, “I wouldn’t really
be too concerned about navigating other
people’s conceptions of what I should look
like.”
P
arker Kehrig, LSA Junior
“I really wish that the culture
of my family, my various families,
wasn’t the way that it is because ... there’s
so many of us ... there’s no way I’m the only
(queer person). There’s absolutely no way ...
just based on how statistics works.”
Even while expressing the heavy and
sometimes exhausting reality he’s lived be-
ing the sole openly genderqueer and gay
person in his entire extended family, LSA
junior Parker Kehrig spent our interview
flexing his warm conversation skills and
flare for comedic timing.
When asked if he could be quoted using
his name, Kehrig burst with enthusiasm.
“You can absolutely put me using my
name. There’s already enough on the inter-
net about what a raging queer I am.”
When asked about his coming out ex-
perience, Kehrig says he came out as a gay
person when he was 16, then as gender-
queer when he was 18. And, ever-playful in
the ways he candidly talks about his queer
experience, he considers his queer presen-
tation now to be “kind of an open secret”
to his family.
Though, Kehrig remembers when he
first presented as genderqueer in front of
his family for the holidays and exclaimed
to me, “It was terrifying. It was so scary.”
He laughed again and continued, “I was
really trying to dress in a way that made
me feel more comfortable. And I started
layering sweaters over button-downs, and
(thought), ‘I’m just a little bit preppy,’ but
it was never preppy — it was very queer-
looking.”
Kehrig comes from a large family; his
parents are divorced, and his step-dad’s
parents are divorced as well, so he can visit
up to five houses on one holiday. And with
seeing all of these family members, Keh-
rig has had many conversations about is-
sues surrounding the LGBTQ+ community.
But, in his experience, they never resem-
ble topics like one of his family members
“not knowing how to explain lesbianism”
to their kid. To that, Kehrig said he would
love to engage in those sorts of community
education-oriented conversations.
Instead, he said conversations with rela-
tives often run along the lines of being told,
“‘Defend your own humanity — go!” or
“Defend your existence — go!’”
Kehrig reflects on the amount of “igno-
rant shit” he’s had to hear during political
conversations over the holidays. Specifi-
cally, Kehrig offered the example of at-
tempting to explain systemic racism to a
group of particularly hard-headed fam-
ily members. And with this, Kehrig said to
have struggled most with teaching his rela-
tives that “just because (something) is out
of your realm of the way you perceive the
world, doesn’t mean it is nonexistent.”
“And a world outside of you exists. And
it is beautiful. And if anyone is ever try-
ing to take your hand and pull you into it
and show you what it is, you better fuck-
ing thank them. Because that is labor. Like,
that is so much emotional labor.”
A
nna Pasek, Engineering Senior
“... it’s just kind of a situation
where I’m still dependent on my
family, you know, like, financially and a lot
of other forms of support. And so ... I have to,
like, kind of think twice before I express my
queerness in a certain way. Because, other-
wise my livelihood could be compromised.”
Careful in the ways she disclosed in-
formation about the unsteady nature of
her home, Engineering senior Anna Pasek
showed a brave vulnerability when talking
about her experiences as a queer woman.
With her Zoom profile dimly lit by the win-
dows of her partner’s home, she opened up
about her coming out experience, present-
ing queer in her childhood home, and navi-
gating holidays with family versus with
friends, among other things.
Pasek started our conversation by say-
ing that, pre-pandemic, she chose to spend
breaks with people you could call her “cho-
sen family.”
During this time, she would run Thanks-
giving 5K marathons and spend time with
friends she has known for years — she even
made a habit out of eating Thanksgiving
breakfast at her friend’s house. But, she
still feels unsure about making these kinds
of traditions.
“I just feel weird about (how) that’s oth-
er people’s space to be with their families,”
Pasek said. “And, like, I don’t want to di-
minish that or take from that even though I
know I’ve been offered a place at the table.”
In regards to her coming out experience,
Pasek said she “got kind of pushed out of
the closet by (her) parents” her senior year
of high school, after they stole her phone
and found she had a partner at the time.
Since then, she believes her parents are
slowly “getting better” about accepting her
queer identity; however, she knows main
events during the holidays remain manda-
tory for her family.
“It’s just a case of bringing up livelihood
and financial security. If I were to not show
up at home for Thanksgiving (dinner), that
would make really big problems for me.”
Pasek said that if she had one word to
describe the queer holiday experience, it
would be grief.
“(Queer people) don’t have uncondi-
tional love to take for granted, really,” Pas-
ek said. “And our families are often in love
with an idea of who we could be and not
who we are. And that is something that is
painful, and (something) that you have to
confront every time you go home.”