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Hello. How are you today? I'm good. Thanks. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm Seth. Hello. Hello? Hello? Hello. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Um, I'm a graphic designer. Born and raised in Palmerston North. Uh, what else do you want to know? Anything about your personality? Um, I don't know. I like stuff and things. Movies, graphic design, rainbows, [00:00:30] unicorns. Yeah. And you're a facilitator? Yes. I run Uniq, the group for Queer University students here in Palmerston North. And that's where I met you. Yes, it is. Yes. Yes. And and likes and hobbies. Hm. Design movie posters, seeing movies, hunting down obscure movies. [00:01:00] Yeah, Yeah. Reading the internet, but not books. Yeah. Yeah. A graphic design student actually did my logo. So are you happy with your logo? I am happy with my logo. Do you? Do you like the logo? Um, I think so. I haven't got it in front of me, but I didn't hate it. That's good. Or you wouldn't be doing this interview. I hate I hate the logo so much. I'm not doing it. So, um, what were [00:01:30] you at the a last week? No, No, that was closet space, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah, OK. Never mind. Um, So what is your sex male? You know, frequent. Do you know what um, gender identity is? Uh yes. OK, what gender do you identify with, um, Male? OK, And what is your sexuality? Gay? 100%. 100% gay. And what culture do you identify with? [00:02:00] Uh, mostly New Zealand Pakeha little bit Maori. Are we talking just race? Because what culture do you culture is a fairly expansive question. That's why that's how I ask it. Um, I don't know. I think like, 50 years ago, culture would have been primarily sort of a question that relates to where you have grown up and your sort of racial and ethnic makeup. But these days, [00:02:30] that's where you're who you're around with. Yeah, it's like everything. It's your interests and who you talk with on the Internet, Whether they're your neighbour or on the other side of the world. I really do. I should just make clear that that's my sock rubbing on the chair down there. Yeah, and, um, because, like, groups that you belong to can be, you know, they can be spatial or geographical, or they can be [00:03:00] sort of all over the world defined by other things. So yeah. Yeah. So, um, what is your expression like, How do you express yourself how I express, like, my gender identity or everything? Like masculine feminine camp twink? I don't know. I guess I'm Some people say I'm straight acting. Some people say that they kind of know I'm gay as soon as I talk to them. [00:03:30] Yeah, I know. I'm not quite as camp as some people like, you know, Leave a pile of every step you take. No, not every step. I do like rainbows, and I do like the colour pink, but I tend to sort of not dress in it so much. And my musical tastes are like, not Kylie and Madonna. I tend to like nine inch nails and radio, head and stuff. So you're like a rock. A rock gay, I guess. Yeah, some people [00:04:00] who I know who are gay, but they tend to like like, really heavy metal music. They sort of are hesitant to describe themselves as gay because they feel like when they go to a gay bar, they don't see anybody that they identify with because everyone's listening to Kylie. Whereas I don't think you have to be this one narrow definition of gay in order to be gay. I'm perfectly happy calling myself gay. Even though I might not share sort of everything with other gay people. Mainly, most clubs play stereotypical [00:04:30] music, so yeah, and there are a lot of people who, like, you know, just Kylie and Lady Gaga, which is fine. But, um, I wouldn't stop calling myself gay just because, you know, some of my interests are cup of tea. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, when did you realise that you were attracted to males? Um, I think when I was about 14 or 15, it kind of clicked one day because I grew up in I said, born and raised earlier. But I did spend some of my childhood up [00:05:00] the coast, which is quite rural and sort of sparsely populated. Um, so there certainly wasn't any sort of visible gay role models or anything. Um, I think one day when I was 14, it just kind of clicked. Even though the realisation had been building probably a long time before that final point, it collected But, um I think everyone's just raised to sort of not entertain those thoughts. Everybody's raised to sort of suppress [00:05:30] anything, whether it be homosexual or just, you know, somebody's love of theatre or whatever. So I wasn't aware of it until it clicked. But when it clicked, I felt like it had sort of it retroactively brought clarity to an awareness that had been building for quite some time. Um, yeah. Was there a situation where that click that made you ultimately realise like you were sitting in class and you saw a boy across the room and you we're attracted [00:06:00] to that boy and you're like, Oh, I'm actually gay, I think, or something like that. I think it clicked one day. It just clicked that all of my fantasies were about other men. Um, but that happened before I actually started for the first time, checking out another young man in my class. That kind of happened, I guess, months later, Um, so I guess they were two distinct events, but, um, yeah, they [00:06:30] weren't too far from each other. And it was just checking out a boy in my class and sort of giving myself permission to be like, Oh, OK, yes, I do. You know, find him handsome and I can sort of be OK with that. So you never really went through a denial period, didn't you? Uh, once I was aware of it, I didn't deny it. But before you did, before I became aware of it, you could say that, Sort of. There's sort of a big blanket culture of denial [00:07:00] of anything gay, that sort of. I guess everyone was sort of raised in. So if we lived in a more accept culture with more visible gay role models, I might have sort of come to the realisation a lot sooner. It's like I'm gay. OK, yeah, they have, like preschools now that you read about not many of them, obviously. But around the world, there's the occasional preschool where they're like, you know, let the kids dress however they want. And if some kids want to dress [00:07:30] outside of the anatomical gender they were born into, the the sort of, you know, they don't get punished for it. So you find that kids younger and younger are identifying as trans and stuff, which I think is really healthy. I also think that there there was this car, not book this, uh, picture book for pre school. About how a kid talking about how he has two dads car thing, a picture book for preschool Children or five year olds? [00:08:00] Yeah, something like that. I don't know. So anyway, um, when did you come out? Are you out? I am out. Yes. When did I come out? Um, I wasn't out when I was at college, where I was till I was 18. And then I think I kind of when people come out generally, it's a process of coming out to all their friends that they haven't been out to up to that point. But what I did is kind of ditch all my old friends [00:08:30] and just make new friends as an out gay person. Um, I came out to my mum when I was 21 and she raised me. So that was kind of my big parental coming out, and that went fine. Um, but I felt like growing up when you can't really be yourself or you feel that you can't, then the friendships you do form throughout your childhood adolescence. Teenage years are kind of restricted [00:09:00] because you can never be totally honest with the people you're forming friendships with. So it kind of restricts the the weight of the friendship that you have with them. So I guess it was kind of easier for me to just sort of leave that behind me. And, um, just make new friends. Um, yeah, and that was weird. Began new stage of your life. Where you [00:09:30] Well, you didn't really get a coming out story. You just say hi, I'm hi. I'm this or this and it was kind of just a reboot Start over. It wasn't it wasn't this one big event where you just had to tell everybody? How about your parents, though? My mom was cool with it. She might have had, you know, a week of, like, not being sure how to handle it. But she I guess she kind of suspected it was like it's, like, genuine the window period of how they went through a shock. And then they were like, Oh, well, OK, then I'm OK with it. Yeah, [00:10:00] the thing is like the way the culture is, parents aren't Everyone's raised with this kind of heteronormative assumption that you know their kids are gonna be straight. And if they have a son, that's gonna, you know, be an all black. And if they have a girl, she's gonna, you know, grow up to do traditionally feminine things and get a husband Ra Ra ra. And so, yeah, parents haven't been raised with any sort of building blocks as to Oh, you know, maybe you should adjust your expectations, maybe the expectations you've been raised with that all people [00:10:30] are going to be straight are sort of unfair and unrealistic expectations. Yeah. So, um, you had a bit of a support. Did you have a support system about, um, about people affecting your sexuality? People watching my sexuality, accepting your sexuality? Yeah, I got in touch with uniq back in the day. Like before I run it. Um, and it was cool. It was very valuable to have a support network. Um, where you could just [00:11:00] be yourself. Because when you're raised in a small town, um, and where is, like, the the biggest city, even though it's still Yeah, well, doing some years in the car coast, when you're kind of raised with these small town values, it's like even when I came back to palmy and sort of could have been, you know, out as soon as I got here, you're sort of raised with a sort of looking over your shoulder mentality. So it took me a while to sort of get over that. And having [00:11:30] a group like uniq was immensely valuable and sort of that process. Yeah. So have you been in relationships before? Yes. How many? One super serious one and the rest of flings a few flings a few dates? Yeah, it's only one serious one. It's been off and on for years. Um, but it's definitely the most serious relationship of my life. [00:12:00] It's currently sort of ambiguous because the person I was in love with doesn't currently want to be in a relationship. He's, um he's sort of just going through some personal growth of his own, and he wants to just not be in a relationship right now, which I can accept. Um, but I don't really want to be with anyone else. So having a break or something like that? Sort of. Yeah, we've broken up at times during [00:12:30] in the past, and I've tried to sort of move on and get over him and date other people. But what I've found is that I don't want other people. Like, I guess it's love kind of because even dating other people, it's like I can go through the motions. But there's just something missing. It's like it's not the same dance steps. Yeah, and I could be out there dating or screwing around or something now, But whatever I would get from that, [00:13:00] yeah, I think it would just take me further and further away from what I'm really looking for, which is him. So even though he wants to be single right now, I'm you know, I'm OK with that. And, um, we'll just see where it goes. And if it's still that way in, like, a year or something, or yeah, I think love is worth waiting for. So, um, how do you meet other people in the LGBTI Q community? How do I meet them? Hm? Mainly through closet space. [00:13:30] Close? Yeah, mainly through uni and the bar. Uh, yeah, I don't go out to the bar much, but, um, you do occasionally. You do. Occasionally. I wish the crowd was more motivated to be part of groups and sort of do things because in Wellington, like, things are super political and there's lots of bars and everybody wants to do stuff. And their uni cube is like super full of super motivated kids with these political aspirations who want [00:14:00] to be part of something and, you know, paint banners and go to protests and stuff. And it's great and all kind of just like either very active or very drama like, Yeah, I find palmy. It must have tonnes of gay young people. But I guess it was very nervous, in a way. Yeah, I think some of them are nervous. And a lot of kids these days just seem to be quite content only socialising with a small group of their friends or just over the Internet and stuff like that. Yeah, so I feel like [00:14:30] as a whole, the queer community could accomplish a lot more if people were more interested in grouping and sort of helping groups like Uniq reach critical mass and helping put on events and stuff. But, um, sponsored by yeah, we used to have a pride week. Um, every year up at Massey, where we, you know, do stunts and what not? But, um, we haven't had it for a few years because we just don't tend to have the numbers. Eventually, it'll come back. Yeah, I think it will. I think it goes in sort of rhythms. [00:15:00] But, um, you do notice in, people are like, Oh, I'll just stay home and play PlayStation. They got nothing better to do. So, um, what is your definition of virginity? Hm? Interesting question. Virginity. I feel like that word descends from a time when, like, a very sexist time when women were just like property to be given away. And so virginity was just like their warrant of fitness or something, just a little extra tick to sort of give [00:15:30] them value. Um, I think the further we move away from that kind of old world sexist sort of ideas about sex and gender and stuff the better. And I feel like the more sex education we have in this culture and the more people are encouraged to talk openly about sex and educate themselves and, like, have access to [00:16:00] contraception and stuff, Um, the better it will be. So I think virginity isn't really it's not really the most important concept anymore. Um, a lot of people do believe that they accept, um, Vidin for emotional thing as well. Even in the gay community, they they claim their virginity. Even if they had lots of sex. Even if they have lots of sex, they feel like they still are virgins because they haven't lost [00:16:30] it through their love or the first time they are in love. They say that's that's their virginity gone because they yeah, that's interesting. A lot of other people say it's got something to do with purity as well. Not like this. Like after having sex, they're not pure or anything but something along those lines. Um, interesting. I feel like what was coming out of, like hundreds and hundreds of years of, like where religion [00:17:00] sort of ruled their communities. And there was this big, like sex negative culture where, like anyone who was born out of wedlock would be called, you know, a bastard. And there would be a sort of ostracised from their communities. Um, the culture, like all these church people, one of their motivations would have been to stop young women from getting pregnant. So they taught everyone to be afraid of sex and to, you know, believe that they'd go to hell if they had sex. And that may have worked [00:17:30] for a while. And they may have had good intentions, um, raising everyone to believe these things. But that was years ago. That was the yeah, and I feel like that may have worked back when everyone was uneducated and desperate. But there comes a point where you can no longer justify lying to people just because you feel it's in their best interests. Like today. In this day and age, the best thing you can do for young people is to sort of give them education, because [00:18:00] all these years of kind of suppressing sexuality have in a way, made rampant sex seem kind of cool. Like you've got Christina Aguilera dressing up like a stripper and all these young people, if they feel that they've been oppressed through being raised in, like, really religious sex phobic environments, then they often do go out and sort of become promiscuous before they fully understand the risks. And so sex cells. Yeah, I feel [00:18:30] like all this, like hundreds of years of sex phobia, have sort of come out produce this rebellion. It's come out all at once in the two thousands and which is now called the Noughties. And all these kids are going out and having way too much sex. And I feel like they're rebelling against the sort of sex phobia and also the homophobia. Because when all these church people are trying to trying to crush you and crush your heart and crush your identity as a queer person [00:19:00] and it is all tied to sex, So when you're trying to bust out of that, a lot of people do sort of think, Alright, I'm gonna go out and sort of assert myself by having the sex that they don't want me to have, whereas maybe in another, like 2030 years, if gay people get sort of more equality, I think the ideal scenario would be that young, queer people start sort of becoming not prudes exactly. But it would be very [00:19:30] ironic if they started to be kind of the standard bearers of a new sense of like sexual responsibility, because if they could do that and they could, you know, be sort of on magazine covers. Oh, you know, young, queer people aren't sort of running out and being promiscuous anymore. It would kind of steal a lot of the thunder from a lot of the religious bigots who say that gay people are promiscuous and everything. So, yeah, I eagerly await that day. Eventually, 10, [00:20:00] 2030 years. Yeah. As soon as people feel ok about sex and themselves, they'll stop like you won't get people trying to destroy themselves as much with alcohol and drugs and rampant blackout sex and stuff. Yeah, it's like the retake of the sixties or seventies or whatever era it was. Yeah. So, um, have you ever experienced or received any abuse or abusive behaviour because of your sex, sexuality or gender identity? Uh, have [00:20:30] I? Yes, I've never been, like, bashed in the street, but I think any queer person does get, you know, things yelled at them from car windows. I certainly have. I've had, like, you know, somebody threw a water bottle water bottle at me at one point. Um, people do yell homophobic abuse. Um, and also, I don't tend to drink at many straight bars these days. And by straight bars, I, I pretty much [00:21:00] mean all bars. Um because young, straight people they call each other homo and faggot and say, Oh, that's gay, that's so gay Ra Ra ra and I don't like it and it offends me and it offends me that they think it's not a big deal because I've called a few of them up on it. And some of them are like, 00, I didn't mean it like that. You know, I don't mean it in an offensive way, and they feel like that should be enough to make me not offended. But [00:21:30] what I wish they understood is that a lot of young, straight men do mean it that way. And they're the ones that started it and everything's spread from them. And when you're out at a bar, if they use it that way, then there's other people that follow suit and use it that way. They say, Oh, that's gay, you know? Oh, that's pretty gay. It's like the the homophobic Straight boys are getting a little pat on the back every time everyone else accepts their language because they, um [00:22:00] they are succeeding. Yeah, people might think, Oh, I don't mean it that way. But the fact that you are so comfortable using that language in that way and that you don't think it's offensive. That's kind of offensive. I saw a documentary about a American woman who's quite old now, but, um, during the black black civil rights movement, she saw a lot of racism going on. And so she started this. She was a teacher and she started [00:22:30] these exercises, um, splitting the kids in the class up into, like whatever their eye colour was. And then one day, Um, like all the people with green eyes are the sort of labelled the superior people, and they get to make fun of the other people. And then the following day, they swap it around and all the people with green eyes get to be the superior race. And they're told to, you know, take the bigger portions at at the lunch tray and sit on the good chairs and, [00:23:00] um, it sort of it became a little revolutionary, very controversial thing. But it's now practised in a lot of schools around the world because it teaches kids to understand prejudice in a way they might not have known. Yeah, to begin with, um, and this woman I forget her name. But, um, one of the things she said in this documentary about her was, um as a white woman growing up in America or as any white person growing up in America, they [00:23:30] have three three rights. That they have. One of them is to be racist. The next one is to pretend that racism doesn't even exist. And if anybody calls them on it to say, Oh, you know, racism doesn't exist and the third thing is the right to say, If you call me on it, you're just being you're just overreacting. You're imagining it. And, um, that's always stuck with me because when I'm just doing what I'm doing, [00:24:00] you know, on the bus or just any situation trying to walk through, you know, a room or somewhere. You have to be some public place, and people are talking like that and you can hear them and it bothers you. It almost feels like you're disturbing the status quo by calling them up on it because they certainly don't like to be called up on it. And it's just weird, you know, if you're sitting next to a random stranger to go up to them and be like, Hey, could you, you know, not use that language because it's sort [00:24:30] of offending me. It feels like society is shaped so that prejudice can survive because we're raised to think it's not right to speak up about it and that if we do speak up about it, we are the ones who are overreacting and being hyper sensitive. Yeah, well, thank you for the interview. Cool. Thank you. Best of luck.
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