Oral History with Zeke Christopolous

Rachel Muir:

Good afternoon. It is the 8th of May. This is Rachel Muir. I'm interviewing Zeke Christopoulos this afternoon here at the Asheville Library, the University of North Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina. Zeke, would you like to introduce yourself?

Zeke C.:

Hello.

Rachel Muir:

Thank you, Zeke.

Zeke C.:

Yeah. You're welcome. Pleasure to be here, thank you.

Rachel Muir:

As you know, this is a project that we have developed with UNC Asheville as a partner, and we have developed a series of questions that we'd like to ask today. But this is principally your story and you can take our discussion in any direction that suits you. You also have first rights of refusals in regards to what I will derive from the transcripts here, and final approval over what 00:01:00actually goes into the archives. So, I wanted to make sure that was clear as we started the interview today.

Zeke C.:

Okay.

Rachel Muir:

So, how long have you lived in western North Carolina and what brought you here?

Zeke C.:

Sure. I moved to Asheville in the summer of 2000, in June, very end of June. And I moved here site unseen. I had head about Asheville from friends. I moved from Gainesville, Florida, another university town. And I moved here because I had a few friends who had moved to Asheville, and also I had met some people at a lesbian writers' conference who had moved to Asheville. And I really wanted to get out of Gainesville because I'd lived in Florida my whole life.

Zeke C.:

At the time I was 28 and I was ready for a few different kinds of changes, and one of them was I wanted to leave Florida. I'd stayed there longer than I intended to as an adult. I wanted to get somewhere that had a moderate climate and a moderate topography, something that wasn't flat and didn't have two seasons, wet and dry, and Asheville seemed to fill the bill. It didn't get too cold in the winter, the mountains were beautiful.

Zeke C.:

And then my friends who had moved to Asheville were a mix of people that all of them had a common thread and that they were creative types. And my friend Pete in particular, he and his friend Sharon moved here prior to me moving and he said, "You've got to come up here. It's just a beautiful community. They've got old buildings there still, the mountains are gorgeous, and I think it's a place where your art career could take off and thrive if you wanted to do that."

Zeke C.:

So, couple that with a brief love interest that was somewhat flickering up here I thought, "Oh well, it's a good enough time to move." I packed myself, my dog, and my two motorcycles up and moved to Asheville, just kind of site unseen, just trusting the literal half-dozen friends, the half-dozen friends who gave it glowing reviews. That's when I got here and that's how I got here initially.

Zeke C.:

The other piece of that that's pretty big in the reasons why I moved was that I knew that there was at least one, if not two, transgender guys who lived up here. And it had become apparent to me that that's what I ... I was exploring that path and I needed to be able to see people and meet people in person. There 00:04:00was not the incredible font of information of an Internet happening then, and communities were smaller and we really had to seek each other out. And I've always been somebody who needs to make a physical connection. So, just on hearing that that was possible in Asheville I thought, "Okay, that's where I'm going."

Rachel Muir:

What has changed in a positive way since you arrived here some 18 years ago?

Zeke C.:

What has changed in a positive way?

Rachel Muir:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). For you.

Zeke C.:

For me?

Rachel Muir:

In your life.

Zeke C.:

For me in my life? I'm trying to think about whether this is restricted to Asheville or whether it's society at large. I think there's a larger degree of knowledge out in the world around transgender people and transgender issues, and 00:05:00sometimes that's beneficial and sometimes it's downright harmful. I think that in North Carolina in particular the passage of HB2 has been incredibly harmful to our LGBTQ, HIJKLMNOP, you can probably redact that, community, and we'll just keep it to the LGBTQ plus community. So, I think there's been some steps forward and some steps back.

Zeke C.:

I think that Asheville has an interesting thing that happens in that everybody feels that, because we are such an accepting place and community, that queer people can go anywhere and do anything and there's less bias because of that, in the popular view, in opinion, that we then don't get protection enacted. Because people think, "Oh, it's an accepting place, there's not really a problem. We 00:06:00don't need to press for this," which isn't actually accurate in my opinion.

Zeke C.:

And I also think that that also makes it so that there's fewer gathering points or places of connection for the queer community. And I'm speaking I guess just specifically to that experience. One of the neat things that I think exists in western North Carolina is there are some really cool things about Southern culture that exist here, because we're in the South. I've lived in the South my whole life. But in this area, as in many areas that border on the rural, you're oftentimes dependent upon your neighbor for things so you have to have a certain level of acceptance, because we are all interconnected. And I think that's something that informs how our community exists and coexists with other communities.

Zeke C.:

And that because in the South we do have such a paucity of resources, I think overall and then most specifically for the LGBTQ population or community, that we really have to be good stewards of what we do have, what resources we have, whether those are financial or whether those are physical resources or resources of connection and networks in communities, so that we can survive and thrive.

Rachel Muir:

You mentioned gathering places earlier. Are those categories you've just talked to physical gathering places, communities? Could you expand on that a little bit?

Zeke C.:

Sure. Thinking about the LGBTQ community in particular, I think looking at the recent historical arc, the place, certainly when I was growing up and definitely 00:08:00prior to that, the place that you found community was in bars, right?

Zeke C.:

So, not really the most healthy place if you want to pursue a career or a life or a family sometimes. And I think that's one of the reasons why alcoholism is something that has had an interesting role in the LGBTQ community, alcohol consumption and how companies target the LGBTQ community. But that was the place where you could meet other people and find other people.

Zeke C.:

I think for a while there was a boom with bookstores that has waned definitely in recent years. And certainly Malaprops was I think the business that anchored downtown Asheville and began the resurgence, the renaissance, the gentrification. And it started as a lesbian bookstore, owned and operated. My 00:09:00awareness of bookstores I guess was in the 80s and 90s and there were, I don't know, close to a hundred across the county and Malaprops was one of them. And now there's maybe 10. So, I think that's a place that we no longer see people gathering. And the bookstores that have survived are the ones that have diversified and have brought in other communities and don't cater exclusively to the LGBTQ community.

Zeke C.:

I think in some larger urban areas we see LGBTQ centers, but in areas that are limited in geographic, as we are bounded by the mountains and maybe don't have access to as many resources as communities with larger economic bases do, it's 00:10:00hard to launch an LGBTQ center of some sort. So, not having that is challenging.

Zeke C.:

I think interesting things have sprung up from the Internet, and I think that meeting spaces for newer generations are more meeting places of the mind and of interaction that can happen online. And you can communicate with people and form close bonds and never have been in the same room as them. And it's not bounded by geographic either, which I think is fascinating, because I am somebody who does like to be in the same space with somebody.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

So, it's a shift, it's an evolution. But I continue to believe in the fact that it's vital for us to be able to see each other, and be with each other, and give each other support, and have physical interactions where we can exchange molecules with a handshake or a hug or a greeting. Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

Having described that change, what do you see as maybe promising future directions in Asheville that you'd like to see that would help the LGBTQ community?

Zeke C.:

I mean, that's a great question. That's something that I ponder frequently as I try to help create that, or curate that if I can. And I think finding events that appeal to a wide swath of who we are, that's the key. And that can be challenging, we have people from all different backgrounds who make up our contingency and to find something that's going to appeal to everybody is challenging. And then when we get to the level of what's going to be a safe space, or a safer space for most people, where people are going to feel that they can come and express themselves and be who they are and not receive any 00:12:00sort of censure, is very important. And I think that we see a lot of conflicts within our own community. So, those are the challenges.

Zeke C.:

So, what would that be? What would that look like? Could there be an event of some sort that was of a short duration that would attract everybody at the same time? Or could there be a launch of a center? I don't know. Those are some ideas.

Rachel Muir:

Okay. Well, we talked about, we quickly got into community. I'd like to get back to Zeke.

Zeke C.:

Yeah sure.

Rachel Muir:

A little bit about your upbringing and your young life. What stands out in your young life looking back now?

Zeke C.:

My young life?

Rachel Muir:

Where did you grow up? You said Gainesville?

Zeke C.:

I grew up in Miami, Florida. That was the first 14 years of my life and then my family moved to the middle of the state and then I wandered further 00:13:00progressively north. Spent a little bit time in Tampa, St Pete area, and then was in Gainesville for about eight years before coming up here.

Zeke C.:

My young life was interesting in that I feel like I have a really strong social justice bent to most of what I do a little bit because of my background, and a little bit because of having multiple classes of other contained in my identity. I grew up as a person who was in ... My mother's Jewish, my father's Greek Orthodox. So, neither of those are very prevalent religions, so being a faith minority where there is active antisemitism in my neighborhood and in the city 00:14:00and being carefully schooled in who you tell what and when, with an eye towards safety and not being discriminated against.

Zeke C.:

In the temples and synagogues that I went to there were lots and lots of people who had numbers tattoos on their forearms by the Nazis-

Rachel Muir:

Wow.

Zeke C.:

... who had escaped and were alive. And I got to hear about that frequently. That's the faith that I was brought up in. And my father had the opinion that his kids, I'm the older of two children for this particular marriage of my mother and father who are still alive and still together, he'd had a prior marriage and religion had been one of the things that was a place of conflict 00:15:00for him and his ex-wife. So, he wanted to make sure that his children in this new marriage did have a faith belief and a strong moral compass and background.

Zeke C.:

And his opinion was and continues to be that it doesn't matter, he feels that we're all praying to the same God, we're just doing it in different ways, God or Gods. And he said to my mom, "If you want them to be Jewish that's fine, but you're going to have to make sure they get a religious upbringing. And if you don't want to do it I'll bring them up Greek and they will."

Zeke C.:

My mom chose to bring us up as Jews. Matriarchal descent is the way that it's done in that religion anyway, so that was convenient. But I didn't quite fit in there because I had a father who wasn't Jewish. Being from a part of Greece where we're very close to Turkey in a land that has gone back and forth 00:16:00historically between different countries and rulers, and being somebody who's dark-skinned, darker-skinned, was interesting in Miami at the time. Because there was a huge influx of Cubans and Latino Americans of all those sorts in those years, and there was a large segment of Miami old white folks who weren't very excited about hearing Spanish and about seeing people who didn't look like them. I looked just like all the rest of the Latin Americans and Spanish folks.

Zeke C.:

I didn't fit in with those people because I didn't really speak Spanish. I could speak a little bit of it. My culture wasn't aligned with that. But I wasn't accepted by the other people, so here's all these othernesses that I was dealing 00:17:00with. And I definitely knew that there was something different about me.

Zeke C.:

My family has audiotapes of me when I was two years old. My mother was sending audiotapes back to my grandmother who was stateside, because my family was over in Greece and [Illy 00:17:25], my dad, was a boat captain. And my dad was doing his thing over there working and they took me with them, so my mother was sending audiotapes back to my grandmother so she could participate that way in my development.

Zeke C.:

And we have a tape that's sitting in my desk at home right now, a little cassette tape, where she asks me what I want to be when I grow up and I very clearly say, "I want to be a boy." So, for clarification she asks me in Greek, "Do you want to be a boy?" and I say, "Yes." And then she asks me in Italian. Not, "Do you want to be a boy?" She said, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Because she thought I might be confused with all the languages. So, in three languages I told her I wanted be a boy when I grow up.

Rachel Muir:

At age two?

Zeke C.:

At age two. Yeah. That got suppressed for a little while, but it always came back up to the surface. Yeah. And then also being interested in girls when you are a girl and raised as a girl is challenging.

Rachel Muir:

Yes.

Zeke C.:

Was more challenging than perhaps ... I think it's always challenging for a kid to figure out their own identity and their own sexuality and just to go through that awkward stage. But when you're being limited by what society views as right or proper, circumspect or correct, makes it harder. And it definitely makes it hard to come out with an intact sense of self-worth and positivity about who you are.

Rachel Muir:

Wow.

Zeke C.:

So, that's a little bit about my background.

Rachel Muir:

If you could go back and speak to any of your ancestors, are there questions you'd like to ask them? If you could do an interview with either side of your family?

Zeke C.:

Well, all of them? I'd love to speak with all of them.

Rachel Muir:

I get that.

Zeke C.:

Yeah. I don't know. I never got to meet my grandfather so I'd love to just speak ... My maternal grandfather, I never met. I'd love to just speak with him, know who he is. I'd love to speak with my maternal and paternal ... no, my paternal grandmother and grandfather because they both passed before I was born as well. I only knew one grandparent. So, any of them just for that family connection and some sort of a sense of continuity and connection. I feel like I've inherited a lot of traits and a lot of physical resemblance to my father, so just to see more reflections of that would be interesting.

Zeke C.:

On my mother's side, there's particular folks. Some of my grandmother's cousins 00:20:00who I would like to speak with a little bit more. They've passed as well. But she had a couple of cousins who never got married and I suspect that there might have been some gayness or something like that.

Rachel Muir:

They might have been family in two senses of the word?

Zeke C.:

They might have been family in two senses of the word, exactly, so that might account for why they didn't get married, who knows. And I also would like to question my grandmother a little bit more as well, on my mother's side. They didn't get married until they were in their 30s and my mom always said that the war was part of that prevented that, but there were plenty of people who that didn't limit really. I guess my grandfather got drafted, he was not a teenager when he got drafted.

Rachel Muir:

Sure.

Zeke C.:

So, there had to be reasons that neither of them got married early.

Rachel Muir:

Interesting.

Zeke C.:

And I wonder what they were and I don't know and my mother doesn't know. Or the answers that I get are, "It was a different time, they were doing things." And I think quite buy it. My uncle, he doesn't have any insight on it either.

Rachel Muir:

Having access to your grandparents is important. My children did, but I didn't.

Zeke C.:

Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

They had all passed.

Zeke C.:

Wow, all of them?

Rachel Muir:

Yeah. No-

Zeke C.:

I feel lucky that I got one grandparent.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

I used to yearn for, "Wow, I wish I knew my grandparents," but now it's just so in the rear view that I don't think about it too much.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

But to not have any grandparents, that's really something.

Rachel Muir:

Well, then, this is your interview but I'll make a comment anyway. Now I am a grandparent myself and having no grandparents of my own growing up it does two 00:22:00things. It makes me feel like that role is very important because I yearned for it as a child.

Zeke C.:

Right.

Rachel Muir:

But also, I don't have any template from my own family

Zeke C.:

You're your own role model.

Rachel Muir:

Yes. On what that would look like, so yes, that's a bit of a challenge.

Zeke C.:

Here's a piece of unsolicited advice. My grandmother, the one that I did have, had this incredible way of just giving completely unconditional love. And that's something that you hear about grandparents, but she really did that. I've seen and heard from other people whose grandparents didn't and who were judging or wanting something out of the relationship. I've seen the sadness in their heart that can go along with that.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

And just having that one person who you knew no matter what you did, it was okay, or who you were, that's priceless.

Rachel Muir:

That is priceless.

Zeke C.:

Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

And rare.

Zeke C.:

It is rare. I feel really lucky.

Rachel Muir:

We have a series of questions that I'd like to get to on this first round. You have it in front of you. As I mentioned, we're going to be doing a needs assessment. There are other questions that are standard too, I'm going to come back to, but you're my first chance to put these questions out and see what kind of response we get when we incorporate them into our oral histories.

Rachel Muir:

And it is to look at communities and community institutions, and find out what's your history of interacting with them. Because many of these institutions like to come back to the LGBTQ community and say, "How can we help you?" Well, we would like to tell them, "This is how you can help us."

Zeke C.:

Sure.

Rachel Muir:

They don't always step forward. But you have that list in front of you, and if you'd like to step to it, what for example has been your experience with the 00:24:00faith communities here in Asheville? But also your own personal journey, faith communities and how your being part of this community has intersected with faith communities.

Zeke C.:

Yeah. I've had some really neat experiences and interactions with faith communities, and then some that were not so neat. But I think in particular the UCC churches and the Unitarian Universalists, really right after I moved to town ... I guess due to being able to access information about transitioning and having transitioned and being connected with the Phoenix Transgender Support 00:25:00Group, when these organizations were looking to get their certification to be open and affirming congregations there was a series of things that they had to do to interact with the communities.

Zeke C.:

And they reached out to local LGBTQ organizations and had people come in and speak on panels and speak to congregants and talk to families, talk with the youth groups. So, I got to do a good bit of that, and the groups that I remember them reaching out to are CLOSER, which is a general LGBTQ support group that I don't think exists anymore. And the Phoenix Transgender Support Group was another one.

Rachel Muir:

What does CLOSER stand for or-

Zeke C.:

I can't remember, I'll have to look it up.

Rachel Muir:

Okay.

Zeke C.:

We can figure that out though.

Rachel Muir:

Okay.

Zeke C.:

It does stand for something.

Rachel Muir:

Okay. Is it an acronym?

Zeke C.:

It is an acronym, I believe.

Rachel Muir:

Okay.

Zeke C.:

And I think that they wanted their group to say CLOSER so that there wasn't like a, "Gay," or whatever on, so that they could use it as a shorthand and advertise it and that people wouldn't necessarily be alerted to what it was. I could be wrong about that. There are definitely people kicking around who know more about it than I do.

Zeke C.:

Those groups were reached out to and I got involved in doing that, because I had been doing quite a bit of speaking nationally about trans stuff. And-

Rachel Muir:

When did that start, Zeke?

Zeke C.:

When did that start? I don't know, like 2001, '02, when a lot of that was going on. I would definitely say 2001 through 2004 was when a lot of that stuff was going on with those communities, those faith communities initially.

Zeke C.:

And then the [Skylan] UCC has continually, I would say in the last five years, done a lot of bringing folks into talk to congregants and to be a welcome and inclusive organization. And for me as somebody who's Jewish, it's always weird. It's awesome but it's weird. It's like I like what you're doing, I see the love, I see what you're doing, but that's not my faith experience. And it seems like a really welcoming community but it's not one that I'm a part of and that's fine.

Rachel Muir:

What is your faith experience?

Zeke C.:

So-

Rachel Muir:

In Asheville.

Zeke C.:

In Asheville. I've gone to the temple and the synagogue, the way they are called here by the Jews, which is funny. And I mean, they're fine. They're nice. I 00:28:00think that Jews have this opinion that, because Jews had traditionally been a marginalized class in the past, that, "Oh, we think we're open to everyone," and that everyone knows that they're welcome. And I think that that's true to a certain extent, but that doesn't always relate or transmit.

Zeke C.:

And in fact, it is also somewhat I'll say irritating to me when some of the local Jewish organizations brought in trainers from the northeast to train and speak to their congregations about how to be LGBTQ inclusive. And specifically in our mountain community in the South, when there are groups on the ground who 00:29:00are actively doing that work, it's irritating. But when we think about the ways that Southern communities work and differ from the ways that northeastern ones do, it felt a little bit short-sighted on their part.

Zeke C.:

I would say that we've done some really great work with reconciling Methodist groups, and you've been a part of that.

Rachel Muir:

Yes.

Zeke C.:

And that I would say was happening, what, in like '12 through '15 pretty strongly? And still continuing to do so. Some really great work was put together by a number of groups and a number of individuals with the Methodists. That's been pretty cool. And I know that you and I also had a brief foray with the Baptists as well. That sounds like it might evolve at some point.

Rachel Muir:

It does. I think we can come back to that.

Zeke C.:

I think so as well. I think that they're more and more open to that. And the 00:30:00really interesting thing is we make our introductions sometimes, and then it's not until somebody has a child or a relative of some sort who comes out as transgender or gender-queer or what have you, and then people get a deeper, more introspective look at what their faith is practicing and preaching and how that impacts and affects their family members and those close into them.

Rachel Muir:

I've seen that too.

Zeke C.:

Yeah. And I know that's one of the things that's happening over with that particular group of Baptists.

Rachel Muir:

That's true because someone had the strength and the interest to step forward and try to remain a part of that community.

Zeke C.:

Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

What do we have next on your list here? We have faith communities-

Zeke C.:

We have healthcare and health issues. In western North Carolina, I think that one of the table settings for this conversation, I think for me, is the fact 00:31:00that the Phoenix Transgender Support Group, that's the longest continuous running transgender support group, one of the longest continuous running support groups in the world. We're the longest continuous running one on the East Coast for sure. I think there's one on the West Coast that's got us beat, so we're I think top two.

Zeke C.:

Not that anybody's counting and not that I'm one that likes hierarchy particularly. But that has an impact on the community, right? And it attracts people. That's how I got to Asheville, was because I knew that there were people that were here that were transgender. So, we have probably more trans people per capita than your average small town, and probably larger than many major metropolitan areas. Although I think that with the attention that's coming from 00:32:00the media and generations that are more open-minded and more freethinking and more creative than ones that have preceded them are rising, that we're seeing more and more people identifying as transgender and under the transgender. And I believe that that's because there's a better spread of information where people know how to access what they need.

Zeke C.:

For healthcare, when I got to the area, there were some trans folks around. It was primarily trans women and I wanted to find some resources for trans guys. So, the couple of guys who were here didn't really have solid connections in this community and they were still using stuff outside of it, or somebody who I 00:33:00continually admire and who is quite a story of resilience and perseverance, would go to [May Hack 00:33:13] because he thought his position is that it's up to him to train the emerging doctors on how to care for trans people. And I was like, "That's awesome. I'm glad you can do that. That is not for me. I don't need to train people in that way." I feel like I need to train people in other ways now, but that's another story.

Zeke C.:

Basically calling around random offices. There was just huge gate keeping going on. There wasn't a good way to figure out whether somebody ever had interacted with a trans person. And it's all word of mouth, as it is in many communities for trans folks, just word of mouth who's treating us. And back then it was not whether they're treating us well, whether we're getting competent care, 00:34:00certainly not whether we were getting affirming healthcare but whether we could access hormones, whether we could find a surgeon, that sort of thing.

Zeke C.:

So, Transmission, which is an organization that I was involved in starting back in 2001, started to compile lists of people who were seeing the community. And we still maintain that list for western North Carolina to this day. It had been a vision of ours to do a wider, larger list, but there wasn't a whole lot of funding back in the early 2000s that would go to transgender-focused only organizations to do that sort of work. Today is a different day and age and there's more money available for that sort of thing and there's more organizations that have sprung up and taken some good starts at that, so that's a nice thing.

Zeke C.:

But my point in all of this is that we got to a place in, I want to say probably 00:35:00about 2006, where we had some folks who were beginning to access healthcare at the Western North Carolina Community Health Services, WNCCHS. That's the shorthand, WNCCHS, which is very funny because it sounds like wenches. But WNCCHS realized that, "Hey, this is an underserved population," and, "Hey, these folks need help accessing proper care." There were some issues there in the beginning, such as, "Okay, so you can come and access care, but we're not going to allow you to take your hormones with you. We're going to control that and we're going to make you come back here."

Zeke C.:

If you take a population that's already struggling to get any type of healthcare, and a population that's struggling to get a job and keep a job, to 00:36:00ask somebody to come back weekly or biweekly to receive their hormone administration and delivery, that's a lot. And that was just a lot of, in my opinion, gate keeping fear. And the doctors would not take the introductions that the community offered to them to other doctors who had worked with the trans community for years. I think that it's very different there now, and every organization has to grow and change.

Zeke C.:

The other thing that they were doing at the inception of their program was, if they had a doctor who called them and said, "Hey, I've got this patient who's trans and I'm wanting to treat them, can you provide some information for us?" they would say, "Oh, just send them over here to us." So, that I knew was a huge disservice and we again talked to the trans health services folks over there and 00:37:00said, "Look, you have no idea the Pandora's box you're opening. There are so many trans people here. If you start telling doctors to just send people in, you're going to get flooded. People aren't going to be able to have the kind of access they need to care."

Zeke C.:

So, it's months and months and months long of waiting lists just to even get your first appointment. If people missed an appointment, they'd have to start all over again.

Rachel Muir:

Wow.

Zeke C.:

All kinds of access issues sprung up because of that. Not to mention the fact that this was a free and low-cost clinic, and still is for people that can't afford it. So, you would have people, I wish there were more trans people who are very successful and had great jobs, had good insurance, had private doctors or people that regularly ... had private practices. Not trying to be pejorative here but we all have different accesses to healthcare. And I believe that the low-income ones should not be flooded by people who can afford care elsewhere, 00:38:00and that's precisely what happened.

Zeke C.:

So, it became known by all the doctors in the area, "Oh, if you've got a trans person just send them over to WNCCHS." Since then they've learned their lessons. But it is just a great example of healthcare professionals not listening to communities who know something about who they are, what their needs are, not willing to take the references within their own profession for guidance from those people within the community, and really listen to people with experience who have some knowledge.

Zeke C.:

Now we do have a number of different doctors in and around the area who do give competent and confirming healthcare. Transmission has been training doctors and medical students for a number of years to help provide that kind of care from 00:39:00... everything from how to create a welcoming office environment where people will know they're included, to what your staff does and says, and how you as a front staff person can be welcoming and inclusive, to how you can do charting, to physician introduction and care and resourcing and networking with other professionals.

Rachel Muir:

I bet that was easy.

Zeke C.:

Oh yeah, super easy to tell professionals that they need training.

Rachel Muir:

Tell physicians that-

Zeke C.:

Tell physicians, exactly.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

That they're not quite up to snuff.

Rachel Muir:

Interesting.

Zeke C.:

That's presented its challenges. So, those are some things about western North Carolina and healthcare and health issues. I think at this point that this is probably one of the number-one areas in the country that a trans person, and 00:40:00certainly an LGBTQ person, can access good competent healthcare.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah. My own experience is that you can find GPs here, general practitioners who are more acquainted more often, but institutionally there's still room to grow and among the specialties.

Zeke C.:

Definitely.

Rachel Muir:

So, if you have specialty care like endocrinology or if you are looking for gynecological assistance-

Zeke C.:

Yeah. And that's the thing that I love about our resource list is we have urologists, we have gynecologists, we have got those specialties on there. We have everybody now.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

We're going to keep plugging at it. But do we have any ENT? I don't think we do. Do we have a dermatologist? No, I don't think so. But those are things that we all need to access safely.

Rachel Muir:

What's your educational history, where did you ...

Zeke C.:

It's not very large. And a lot of that really has to do with my search for 00:41:00identity I think. I graduated high school, went off to university in Tampa, Florida. And the way I picked that university was because it had a lesbian gay student union, that's what it was called, and it was the only university or college within the state of Florida which was the boundaries my parents put on where I could go. Because I wanted to go to northeast and they were like, "We can't afford and you're a Florida in-state scholar because of your academic success. We are not going to send you out of state." I didn't realize then that I could have my own autonomy and find a scholarship and go to school elsewhere.

Rachel Muir:

What year was this, Zeke?

Zeke C.:

That was in the late 80s.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

So, there were certainly things like available out there but I didn't really have a strong sense of autonomy at that point in my life. I went there and my 00:42:00goal was to find more gay people. I did that and then needed to find myself within the community and play and explore and grow. And pretty quickly flunked out of college.

Zeke C.:

And then I went back home to my parents for, I don't know, six months or a year or something like that after two semesters there. Then did another semester at a junior college and then moved up to Gainesville. And then over the course of eight years got a two-year degree. And that's where I stopped because I thought, "I don't want to put any more money in this until I really know what I want to be when I grow up."

Zeke C.:

Because I've always had wide-ranging interests, and while education's always been important to me, being an autodidact has served me well. I've always been 00:43:00able to learn whatever I needed to learn. Hindsight's 20/20 and there's really a lot of great stuff that happens when you are in an institution that is focused around learning and knowledge, you can succeed more rapidly. And certainly having letters behind your name goes a long way.

Rachel Muir:

Well, you learned the word autodidact.

Zeke C.:

Yeah, yeah. But I also, because of the social justice work that I was doing, was very much wrapped up in workers' movements et cetera and the struggle between the white collar and blue collar worlds and I was like, "I can do whatever I want to without a college degree," was what I was thinking at that point. And I think to some extent one can in some fields, but not in every field.

Rachel Muir:

What organizations were you involved that had to do with workers' rights or civil rights?

Zeke C.:

Yeah, it was more civil rights type work. Like when I was in Gainesville working with the Civic Media Center. So, really just connecting all the groups, doing 00:44:00the lefty organizing, whether it was immigrant rights or farm rights. And definitely some rights, anti-racist work, LGBTQ stuff as well. That was probably where I plugged in down there. And then up in Asheville just getting involved with all of the great non-profits that we have here. Also domestic violence organizations, sexual violence prevention organizations. You name it, all of our struggles are united and I hope that more of us figure that out, can have some solidarity together.

Rachel Muir:

Do you have any-

Zeke C.:

Because together we have a strong power. I think that the infighting we see in 00:45:00our own community is a result not only of microaggressions, and also over our poor mental health because we've all been told we're no good for so long, and we don't trust anybody and we don't trust each other.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

That's definitely I think a result of seeing what the consolidation of power does to disenfranchised communities.

Rachel Muir:

Wow. Have you had any interaction with the educational institutions here in western North Carolina?

Zeke C.:

I've done trainings at all of them, yeah. Here at UNCA over the years and many different departments.

Rachel Muir:

Positive?

Zeke C.:

Yeah, they've been good, definitely. We've gotten interns for Transmission who work here, we've done some trainings for their health clinics for the students, which has been good. Done similar things at Warren Wilson and at Western 00:46:00Carolina University. A little bit over at Santa Fe Community ... No. What state am I in? Gosh. A-B Tech.

Rachel Muir:

A-B Tech.

Zeke C.:

Asheville-Buncombe Technical College. Wow, I've been talking about Gainesville and my brain went back to ... That's the community college in ... Well, I guess that they're all community colleges now. It was a junior college at one point. That's the one in Gainesville, Florida.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

That's where I got my laudable Associate of Arts.

Rachel Muir:

There you go.

Zeke C.:

Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

What else do we have on our list here? Social-

Zeke C.:

You know, for schools, we also have done a number of trainings in preschools, kindergartens. We regularly do panels and speak to the students at a number of schools, middle schools and high schools mostly in the area. And obviously Francine Delany for the younger kids, Evergreen for the middle school kids, 00:47:00Asheville High T.C. Roberson.

Zeke C.:

We worked with all of them. And we also were able to work with other community organizations to really get some good policy in place for Buncombe County schools, some beginnings of good policy for their treating gender identity and how facilities are accessed by transgender students in schools. Taking it from a everything's a one-off case to a, "No, here's a blanket how we work with trans students."

Rachel Muir:

That's great.

Zeke C.:

Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

Social services. Your own experience with social services or as a leader in the community, the interaction with social services. That could be county, city, state, national.

Zeke C.:

Yeah. Transmission's done trainings for Buncombe County Health and Human 00:48:00Services, Jackson County Health and Human Services. That includes everybody from their medical clinicians and the public health clinics to the health inspector, to foster care workers, to people who administer WIC or food stamps, to give basic trainings on trans folks. And some people are receptive to it and carry the banner and others really aren't.

Zeke C.:

So, I'm glad that we've been able to do that work. And I know when we go into do these trainings that everybody knows that either they've interacted with somebody who's somewhere in the gender identity spectrum or that they will. I think that awareness is out there because we are so thick on the ground here in Asheville proper and expanding out into western North Carolina as well.

Zeke C.:

And then I guess I mentioned some of the work that we do. We've done trainings for volunteers who do hotline work for the domestic violence and sexual violence lines. And some of the staff and some of the board of directors members for those organizations as well.

Zeke C.:

So, can people have good and bad experiences when they interface with social services? The answer is yes.

Rachel Muir:

Okay.

Zeke C.:

And we do what we can to help that. And that's one of the advocacy pieces that Transmission tries to do, that I try to do. When we hear that somebody has had a difficult experience, we try and get people those services that they need, whether it's through a different channel, but always circling back and offering trainings. But then certainly offering advocacy. I mentioned earlier in the 00:50:00interview that I'm a people-person, I like to-

Rachel Muir:

Mix it up?

Zeke C.:

Mix it up. I like to clasp hands and exchange skin cells, all of that good stuff. For me, oftentimes safety is, I feel safer when there are people that I know have my back, who are with me, who are going to advocate for me. And sometimes just the presence of that person is all it takes for an individual to feel more safe, more secure, if they're LGBTQ, for them to possess that confidence that then commands whoever they're interacting with to treat them with respect and as everybody should be treated. And then also sometimes if you get a bulldog of an advocate with you, if there is a care provider of any stripe who is declining to provide services, then to have somebody to advocate there, 00:51:00if a community member doesn't have that strength is important-

Rachel Muir:

Willing to push.

Zeke C.:

Willing to push, exactly. And let's face it, in the LGBTQ community we're still to this day seeing kids kicked out of their families, people not wanting to come out for those reasons, for not being treated well by the community at large and that's sad. It's shifting, it's changing, it'll get there.

Rachel Muir:

When we think of all these linkages that we have to communities, one of them that certainly has come to attention is that there are a lot of young people who come to Asheville from the larger region because they view Asheville as a more welcoming place.

Zeke C.:

Right.

Rachel Muir:

Particularly in the LGBTQ community. So, there's lots of young people in particular that are difficult to access through any of these services, because 00:52:00they have learned not to trust them.

Zeke C.:

Not to trust, exactly.

Rachel Muir:

Did you have any thoughts about how serious an issue that is here in Asheville and how it could be addressed?

Zeke C.:

Yeah. That's something when I was at a homeless forum, that actually was at the UCC church that I pointed out, and it set off some light bulbs with some people over at Blue Ridge Pride a few years back. And I think working with youth outright also ... The recent small survey samples that we've done, most LGBTQ kids don't try and access services because they're afraid of that. And they end up doing a lot of couch surfing. Some of them engage in survival-based sex work of varying kinds. And I don't think that we have an accurate estimation or tally 00:53:00of how many of those youth that we see, because it's difficult to count, it really is.

Rachel Muir:

Right.

Zeke C.:

People just fade into the fabric. And we do have kids who access direct services with all the different organizations that I listed. We've got kids who will come to our youth and families programs. We've got kids that will show up at our name change clinics. We've got ones who are disenfranchised from their families, ones who've been kicked out, ones who will show up at the youth homeless shelters or at the adult shelters looking for food.

Zeke C.:

And we'll hear stories from some of them about how they're forced to ... I don't know. Youth is difficult because you have the 18 and below and then you have the 00:54:0018 to 24 group that still gets categorized as youth but really have reached the legal age of majority. So, that 18 to 24 group is the group that we tend to interact with more. Definitely here I work with kids, the 18 and below group. So, for the ones that can access social services under their own agency as somebody who has reached the age of legal majority, we know stories of them being forced to be housed in the wrong gender, which we know there's ... we've seen instances of physical and sexual violence. And certainly it's psychologically damaging for those folks.

Rachel Muir:

Sure.

Zeke C.:

So, that's tough. I think I've gone way off on a tangent here from what you initially asked me, I apologize.

Rachel Muir:

No, that was fine.

Zeke C.:

Yeah. Ironically the only homeless shelter ... Oh God, I should have said that 00:55:00in ... Yeah, we are in social services. Homeless shelters in this area, some give the lip service saying that they will house trans people gender-appropriately, but none of them will in our experience. We've had people kicked out, we've had people forced to stay in unsafe ... And then people just receive to.

Zeke C.:

So, when we have the code purple weather where it drops below the freezing line, we always have people that we get hotel rooms for or find community house stays. We have an informal network of host homes where we'll put people up, and hope to get them more networked so they can resource some employment, and we can help with that because we have a few friendly employers that we can help direct them towards. We have some people who are kind enough to host for a while. We have a network so people can float from one place to the next to the next for long 00:56:00enough to hopefully get a job, access some social services that we can help with, access some funds, and then find roommates.

Zeke C.:

Ironically when we put together our online social support network for people in the western North Carolina, which we get over 700 people as a part of, we thought that it was going to be just for social networking and greater support. But the number-one thing that we find on that are people that are looking for housing.

Rachel Muir:

Right.

Zeke C.:

Housing, jobs, and then healthcare. Those are the top-three topics. People are always having discussions around what your concept of gender is, but the posts that get the most responses and the most communications going are the ones that are about those basic needs.

Rachel Muir:

"Have you found a place to live?"

Zeke C.:

Yeah, exactly. "Do you need a roommate? I have just got kicked out."

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

"My landlord tossed me out, and they can legally. I need to find somewhere to go." Or, "My family tossed me out," or, "I just came out and my wife doesn't want to live me anymore." Whatever the situation is.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah.

Zeke C.:

Yeah, there's my tangent. What I was saying was the only shelter that does house transgender folks appropriately is a youth shelter ironically.

Rachel Muir:

Okay.

Zeke C.:

Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

That's the youth shelter?

Zeke C.:

Trinity.

Rachel Muir:

Who?

Zeke C.:

Trinity Youth Shelter.

Rachel Muir:

Okay.

Zeke C.:

Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

Is that part of that Trinity Episcopal Church that provides the support for that?

Zeke C.:

I've always assumed so.

Rachel Muir:

Yeah, I think so.

Zeke C.:

I'm pretty sure that that's the fact and we've done trainings for them in the past also. But they're pretty on it. So, those are some of the things that we've made some impact and some inroads on, but we have more work to do.

Rachel Muir:

Okay.

Zeke C.:

Actively working on. And one of the main things that underpins that is ... I'm going way off topic here and I will stop now. But getting a physical count of who we are and what our needs are is important. The qualitative is incredibly important, but the quantitative, that's a key piece.

Rachel Muir:

It carries weight.

Zeke C.:

It does, yeah.

Rachel Muir:

I know we're running short on time.

Zeke C.:

Yeah.

Rachel Muir:

And we will-

Zeke C.:

What time is it?

Rachel Muir:

It is five-minutes off 6:00.

Zeke C.:

Hey.

Rachel Muir:

So, we can stop here because we've actually gotten through about half of the questions.

Zeke C.:

Yeah, let's have a second half.

Rachel Muir:

A rematch?

Zeke C.:

Yes, a rematch. I love it.

Rachel Muir:

And we'll be able to do that, but for now we'll sign off for now-

Zeke C.:

Perfect.

Rachel Muir:

... and you will get a transcript of this information. And we can review that and it'll help us guide our second conversation.

Zeke C.:

Yeah. And then we can go to legal rights, marriage and family, job and career, food, shelter, safety, and sense of community safety.

Rachel Muir:

There we go. We've got our work cut out for us.

Zeke C.:

Definitely.

Rachel Muir:

Thank you, Zeke.

Zeke C.:

Thank you, Rachel. This has been great.

Rachel Muir:

It has been great for me as well.

Zeke C.:

Awesome.