Oral History with Ann Marie Duncan

Lynn, Interviewer: All right. So today is July 22nd. Goodness.

Ann Marie Duncan: 26th.

Lynn, Interviewer: 26th. Oh my gosh. Off to a good start.

Ann Marie Duncan: It's only because I have it on my watch.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, very cool. So if you could please state your name and your pronouns and your date of birth.

Ann Marie Duncan: Ann Marie Duncan. My pronouns, I use she and her. And I was born June 21st, 1964.

Lynn, Interviewer: Alright. And so yeah, some of the starting questions that we've got here, how would you describe yourself in terms of gender, race, ability and socioeconomics?

Ann Marie Duncan :Gender, female. Race, white non-Hispanic. I remember socioeconomic and I don't remember the other one.

Lynn, Interviewer: Ability, so [crosstalk]

Ann Marie Duncan: Abilities. I'm both physically and emotionally abled. I'm an abled-body individual and socioeconomic, probably at this point in my life middle-class.

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay. And how long have you been in the Western North Carolina area?

Ann Marie Duncan :I have been in Western North Carolina for... we're in 2021, right?

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay. So 32 years Labor Day, this September.

Lynn, Interviewer: Alright. And moving back a little bit further, tell me a little bit about your childhood growing up. Where did you live before here?

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay. I moved up here from Mobile, Alabama. And I'm the youngest of four children. Lived in a pretty traditional neighborhood. Dad was chairman the biology department at the University there. My mom did medical research, again, on the campus. And let's see, I actually moved there when I was 10 and going into the fifth grade. Prior to that, I lived in Aiken, South 00:02:00Carolina. So my young years were in Aiken. The things that we kind of did, in a lot of ways that was in my mind, a little more traditional kind of thing because we had woods we played in the backyard. We went swimming. Aiken was such a small town. I mean, and so we just did typical kid things.

Ann Marie Duncan: And then we moved to Mobile. Mobile was "the big city". And we moved into a more traditional neighborhood with sidewalks and things like that. But, and I graduated from there, both high school and college.

Ann Marie Duncan: And I got an opportunity to move up here. I had been married and I was looking for something. It was the end of the marriage. We were getting divorced actually. And I was heavily involved high school and through young adults in youth ministry. And so I applied for a youth ministers position and got it.

Lynn, Interviewer: And so this was in, what church was this?

Ann Marie Duncan: Believe it or not, the Roman Catholic Church. So I am a cradle Roman Catholic. The interesting thing about that is because my parents are academics, we're all highly over-educated. And I was born in 1964, which the history of the church shows that that was the Second Vatican Council. And the Second Vatican Council was called, it was an enclave of all of the bishops and archbishops and basically everyone in the hierarchy of the church, from the bishops up to the Pope to basically rewrite, to review and rewrite doctrine because it had gotten very, very dogmatic in the sense of rule-bound and okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: And as the documents were being written in Rome and they came out of the Vatican, they were written in Latin. My parents were getting copies of those and reading them, comprehending them and changing the way they were raising myself and my siblings.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh my goodness. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay. So I have no memories of all of those horrible Roman Catholic stories that a lot of people, particularly in our community, grow up with because my parents were very liberal as far as the Roman Catholic church is concerned.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. That's very interesting.

Ann Marie Duncan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And right, right. Yeah. And so that influences on me and that's going to come back in when we talk, if we talk a little bit more about my own personal coming out story.

Lynn, Interviewer: [inaudible]

Ann Marie Duncan: And yeah. So I came up here and within a week lost the job. What I didn't know was that the church, it was a power struggle between an older, very conservative Irish priest and his congregation who wanted to be progressive and move forward. They were pushing having a youth minister. He did not want one.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh gosh, you were thrown right in the middle.

Ann Marie Duncan: And I... Unbeknownst to me. And I came up here and basically gave them an opportunity that... My boyfriend at the time drove me up here. And I made a comment about my boyfriend dropping me off. And-

Lynn, Interviewer: And that's a big no.

Ann Marie Duncan: That was a big no. And what the priest did was then just expound it and just made it into this horrible... It gave him an excuse to fire me. And so I'm 525 miles away from my nearest relative with no money because I spent all my money getting up here.

Lynn, Interviewer: That's terrifying.

Ann Marie Duncan: It was, but it was a move that needed to happen. And basically this was into Hendersonville and I've been up here ever since. And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay. Awesome. That's great that things worked out.

Ann Marie Duncan: They always do.

Lynn, Interviewer: Very good. So yeah, if I'm not sure where it fits into your story in particular, but if you want to go ahead and talk about your coming out 00:07:00experience, we can do that. I'm not sure again, where it is.

Ann Marie Duncan: That's fine. So kind of well, all right. All right. So in high school and shortly after, but when I was a young adult, early 20s, I always had female friends. And that didn't impact on me. I, having grown up in the church, even with progressive parents with the eight... A lot of what I'm going to say may not be said in a very politically correct way because it's evidence of what my thinking was at the time. All right. So I'm not intending to be offensive to anyone. Right okay.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. Using the language of the time.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. So I was taught my job as a woman was to grow up, get married and have babies. Okay. That's it. Now, because my parents were academics, the second piece of that was, but you better go to college and get a degree. In case something happens to the guy, you've got a job you can fall back on.

Lynn, Interviewer: It's such an interesting spin on what's a pretty common narrative. This is fascinating.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. So it literally never occurred to me to be interested in anything else but men. It was like being blind in that if you're colorblind 00:08:00and you see all these colors, but you don't see red, it never occurs to you that there's a color red.

Lynn, Interviewer: You don't know that you're missing it.

Ann Marie Duncan: Correct. Correct. And I'm going to be as blunt, all right.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, by all means.

Ann Marie Duncan: I was orgasmic with men. Things felt fine. Biology is biology. Okay. But I always thought eh, when it came to dealing... It was like I really wished I could understand. I can remember thinking, I really wish I could understand what the big deal was about a penis. It's like, but okay. I mean, I can reach a climax. I can fine. And if the price of that is pleasuring this other person, well, that's okay, too. And I had, in high school, I had a very special individual who was a part of my life who is still a part of my life, even though he lives back in Mobile and I'm up here.

Ann Marie Duncan: And, but so I only dated boys in high school and in college and really didn't date much. It was pretty serially monogamous. And, but I would have female friends. And there were one or two, I can remember one specifically, my mom said, "She has a crush on you." And I looked at my mother and I said, "What?" And she goes, "She has a crush on you." And I said, "No, she doesn't. What are you talking about?" She goes, "No, she's got a crush on you." And we had been friends and I got a letter from her and I wish I had the letter and I don't know whatever happened to the letter. I got a letter that said, and it was the most closeted letter I think I had, given the day and the time. I mean, I graduated in '82. So we talk about the late 70s.

Ann Marie Duncan: Basically, it said, "It is too painful for me to be around you and to be your friend and that I love you," but she could not... That was the gist of it. But she said it in a very kind of round about... I mean, I got the message of just being your friend. And so it was like, well, I guess mom was right, but okay. I mean, and I mourned the loss of that individual in my life. My mom's thought at the time, what I was told at the time as to why I shouldn't hang around that particular individual and individuals who were like that, was that don't you know all those homosexuals are child molesters? They're the ones that molest kids, which is really kind of very interesting because of my own personal history growing up that we shall say it was not my experience that was anyone who was other than heterosexual that ever assaulted. No, it wasn't even the Catholic Church. Okay. So it's like any kind of sexual abuse I've ever witnessed was not from a homosexual, but okay, mom. But I was whatever.

Ann Marie Duncan: So I grew up and I know what... Can you get my story however I say it, right? So some pretty significant things, Michael and I dated for several years. He's the very special individual, which is, he's really kind of interesting because, because his energy is very feminine. I mean-

Lynn, Interviewer: Makes sense.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. But again, it's crystal clear as I look all the way back.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh yeah. Hindsight's 20/20.

Ann Marie Duncan: But, and then we had several things happened in our relationship and really intensity wise, the next thing would have been to get married. And in that day and age, you didn't get married at 16. And so it was kind of like getting married or break up. Like I said, we had a series of really big tragedies that actually moved us together emotionally and built. And so that kind of, well, we wound up not being together our senior year in high school when I started dating the person who would eventually become my first husband. And he, again, Catholic Church and oh boy was the Catholic Church thrilled. Because by this point in time, I was doing youth ministry. I'd started doing youth ministry in high school. Kevin was involved in youth ministry. He went to the Catholic high school. And as far as the church was concerned, the members of the congregation, the local priests, the whole our parents, it's like, oh, there's hope for the next generation. These two really cute little kids in their 20s, just the perfect little Kewpie dolls kind of.

Ann Marie Duncan: And as soon as I took my last final for my last course in college, on a Wednesday and had rehearsal on Friday and married on Saturday. So I did exactly what I was told.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Wow. No break in between.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. No interest of a break in between. And I had the quintessential Southern wedding. I had, in fact, I still have pictures because the pictures are so Southern. Okay. My dress had the very long train in the back. My mother made the veil, hand beaded, 12 bridesmaids and 12 groomsmen.

Lynn, Interviewer: Goodness. The whole nine yards.

Ann Marie Duncan: Whole nine yards. They were in morning coats, the cutaway coats and things.

Lynn, Interviewer: Fancy.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yes. Very fancy. My mom made, I don't know how familiar you are with the Catholic Church, but there's generally an altar. And then there's kind of a pulpit area. And there's a thing that hangs from the pulpit and there's... I apologize for my phone.

Lynn, Interviewer: I thought it was the recorder and panicked a little bit.

Ann Marie Duncan: No, no. Let me turn my notification. I had the notification 00:12:00turned up in case you had any problems, so I just didn't. There you go. There's an altar cloth. My mother made the altar cloth. My mother made the cloth that hangs from the podium. Oh, this gets great. I had five priests marry us.

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay. That's a lot of priests.

Ann Marie Duncan: That's a lot of priests. One was head of the Marriage Tribunal, which the Marriage Tribunal in the archdiocese is, that's the core that you go to, the Catholics go to, to try and get an annulment. And he was the head of that court.

Lynn, Interviewer: Well, that must have been awkward eventually.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yes. Yes, it was. I'm so glad that you picked up on that one. So my mom made all of the vestments for all of the priests. Okay. Okay. This was, we had 350 invitations go out. We had 300 set up, come in, visit people in the church in the wedding. I had a bridesmaids luncheon at the Tea and Glass Tea Room downtown, which was the hoity-toity poshy... I mean, I had every quintessential Southern girl's wedding.

Lynn, Interviewer: You weren't just married, you were super married.

Ann Marie Duncan: I was super married and it was a fairy tale. And that's why I kept the pictures is because when you look at the pictures, I don't necessarily identify as me as my first marriage. It's just like, it's so fairytale.

Lynn, Interviewer: There's been enough time it's-

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. These pictures should have gone in some sort of wedding magazine. I mean that's how incredible.

Lynn, Interviewer: Kind of want to see those now.

Ann Marie Duncan: I can try and dig them up for you. That's not a problem. But yeah, so that marriage lasted three years, four years. But we had been dating, the relationship lasted about seven, eight years. He got violent. And so that wasn't... And I was still so steeped in the Catholic faith that I took a moral decision-making college level class to figure out if it was a morally correct decision to divorce this man. Okay. So I mean, yeah. And I understand, but wait. This is your coming out story. Well, wait.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh no. Oh no.

Ann Marie Duncan: I had to get around to coming out to me.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. That's the first step.

Ann Marie Duncan: So that was the divorce I was divorcing when I came up to this area. And I had started seeing this guy. And he decided to stay up here and help me. Poor choice. Oh my God. Poor choice. I got pregnant, pregnant in the natural way. Right. Natural. We're going to put that one in quotes too.

Lynn, Interviewer: Quotes natural for the transcript. There you go.

Ann Marie Duncan: So yes. And by that time I was in my kind of later 20s, 27, 28, when I got pregnant and gave birth. And I always told him if I was going to cheat on you, it would not be with a man. It would be with a woman. But I didn't... It was just, it won't be with a man. It will be with a woman.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. That's usually not something that straight people say.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. But I didn't realize that.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right, right.

Ann Marie Duncan: And so okay. I'm also starting to grow because I'm 525 miles away from my family. So some possibilities are becoming apparent while albeit it was in Hendersonville. And at the time, lots of lesbians in Hendersonville, but they were all closeted, severely closeted. I don't know if they're still as badly closet, but very much closeted at that point. So yeah, it didn't even strike me about that. It was just a toss off. Anyway, he wound up having the affair first with another woman.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, lovely.

Ann Marie Duncan: And by that point, my daughter was about two years old. And I tried really hard to allow him to have a wife and a girlfriend. And I didn't like who I turned into. And so I made him, I said, "You've got to choose." And his response was actually, we were at a therapist's office. And his response was, "Nobody's going to tell me what to do." And I said, "Okay, you got 48 hours to move out."

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: I wound up with sole care and custody of a little girl that 00:17:00the sunrises and sets in her ass. And we moved forward from there. And I was still more exploring the idea. I couldn't quite jump the hurdle to be with a woman. But that's really keeping with my personality. I never do anything, I'm rash about nothing. I love to swim. I get in the pool one step at a time. And I adjust to it and that's how I live my life. I never go balls to the wall about anything unless I've spent at least a ton of time really thinking about it, considering it, where the gross approximations. And so not unlike other women who have been with women, I was introduced... Actually my then, oh, I got pregnant. We got married. You have to understand. I only refer to this man as Dominique's father.

Lynn, Interviewer: Gotcha. Okay. If you'd like to only refer to him as such...

Ann Marie Duncan: Dominique is my daughter.

Lynn, Interviewer: Gotcha.

Ann Marie Duncan: And I mean, so in my brain, the whole fact-

Lynn, Interviewer: That didn't count.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. It is very much a distancing thing, but because up until relatively recently, and we're talking about a divorce that happened 28 years ago, up until really recently, if he introduced me, if I was out in public and Dominique and I were out in public and he saw us and he was introducing us to friends, he would introduce me as his wife. This is my wife and my daughter.

Lynn, Interviewer: Hmm. Interesting. Kind of a weird move.

Ann Marie Duncan: Very weird. Very creepy. We could spend the next 12 hours I 00:18:00promise talking about him. And what a bad decision it was on my part.

Lynn, Interviewer: If you want, that's fine. But-

Ann Marie Duncan: Mm-mm (negative). It won't apply. It's why I just kind of glossed over that whole, oh yeah, we got married, again because that's what I was supposed to do.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. Yeah. Maybe it'll work this time.

Ann Marie Duncan: Well, yeah, maybe it'll work. At the time, he had been married five times. I remember bathing and calling him the morning of our wedding and saying, "Are we doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results?" And his response was he laughed at me. I should have run. Sometimes my learning curve is not as sharp as I'd like it to be, but we can all be young and dumb.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Life is a learning experience. You learn more from mistakes than you do successes or whatever the saying is. Anyway.

Ann Marie Duncan: So it got to a point where my then ex-husband... I know, that was fast, introduced me to someone they worked with. In fact, a gentleman they worked with. They worked at a pawn shop. And I was in there because I was helping people do tax returns as a side hustle. And [inaudible] taxes and that kind of thing. Anyway, their name was Cameron and he was transgendered. And so Dominique was probably five. So this was about '95. This was...

Lynn, Interviewer: Early.

Ann Marie Duncan: Early.

Lynn, Interviewer: So just to clarify Cameron was a trans man? Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Had not had any surgery, was on hormones, but it was at a point where one could only get hormones from Mexico.

Lynn, Interviewer: Mm. Different time.

Ann Marie Duncan: Very different time. And had been in New Orleans, had moved up to this area to have their year as living male before they could go back to New Orleans and see about surgery. And thought, I don't know why he thought Hendersonville. I swear to God. But this area, even back then, there were doctors, at least up in Asheville, that some of the leading doctors at that time were in this area even then. And although being with a transgendered man who had not transitioned surgically, had not had any surgery is not like being with a woman... any stretch of the imagination. But for me, it was also not like being with a man. And that was okay, too.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. Yeah. Would you say it was your first queer relationship? Got you.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yes, that was my first really queer relationship.

Lynn, Interviewer: Got you. Got you.

Ann Marie Duncan: I had, before I moved up here, this whole recovery piece. 00:21:00Okay? Where I was going to 12 step meetings, okay? And the women that I gravitated to, and who gravitated to me, who took me under my wing during some very painful parts of my life at the time... I was trying to deal with my own therapy. I was trying to deal with not trying to drown myself in alcohol. Although it was more alcohol abuse than dependency, but the problem was at the time that I was running away from a lot of things emotionally. And 12 step meetings, these women were very, very safe. And they were not afraid to hold me. So the first real experience of safe touch, not sexual touch, safe touch was with this group of lesbian women that were in the recovery groups.

Ann Marie Duncan: And that really impacted me. I mean, yeah, that was pretty impressive. And there was nothing sexual about any of it. But at the time, and I'm don't know because my whole life has changed, but the heterosexual female hug, do you know what that looks like?

Lynn, Interviewer: Ugh. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: They stand two feet apart, bend at the waist and pat each other on the back. Yeah.

Lynn, Interviewer: It was not that. Got you.

Ann Marie Duncan: It was not that. It was a full body hug, because they weren't afraid of touching a woman, and had very clearly in their mind the boundaries between loving friendship touch and sexual touch. So that was my second interaction with queer folk. The first real dating was Cameron. And actually, he and I are still on Facebook. He's back in New Orleans.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh. I was going to say, would you want to interview [inaudible]? But, you know.

Ann Marie Duncan: Well, you can do it on the phone.

Lynn, Interviewer: We could, maybe.

Ann Marie Duncan: But yeah, that was really cool. And unfortunately, he decided I was too real and needed to stop dating me.

Lynn, Interviewer: Too real.

Ann Marie Duncan: Too real. "You're too real." It's like, "Okay, all right." There really were no services for transgendered individuals. And so he really was trying to cope with a lot, himself. By that point, I did have standards in 00:24:00my relationship, which I'm sure that there are people in the right wing of the world would go, "What?"

Lynn, Interviewer: [crosstalk] those, but.

Ann Marie Duncan :Yeah. His being transgendered was not the issue for me. It was his ways of going about coping with/for it. And so, I mean, I cared about him at the time, I got it. It's like, "Yeah, I understand. I know what you're saying." But we've kind of stayed in touch over the years.

Ann Marie Duncan :And then things kind of just naturally gravitated. I wound up getting back in with some friends who were lesbians. They were coworkers at Park Ridge Hospital when I was working there. I worked on the women's disordered and psychiatric ward. And kind of the more they talked, the more I kind of went, "Okay, I kind of feel like..."

Ann Marie Duncan :And really, up to this point, I was also very sexually active with men. And because I'd had the experience with Cameron, I was less afraid of the idea of being with a woman. And I met my first girlfriend kind of through this... at that time, I was still kind of attending meetings, kind of through that. And it was one of those things of, I will never, ever, ever forget. 00:25:00Because when I went down on her, I orgasmed. I had this huge light bulb experience of, "Oh! Got it. Okay."

Lynn, Interviewer: "Oh, that's what the big deal is, okay." Got you.

Ann Marie Duncan :All right?` And so I have been with women since, I have not been with a man since. That doesn't mean that that's not something that is out of the possibility, other than the fact that I'm now married. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. How would you identify yourself in this way?

Ann Marie Duncan: I don't. I don't.

Lynn, Interviewer: There you go. Valid.

Ann Marie Duncan: I haven't thought about this a whole lot. This is probably a cop out.

Lynn, Interviewer: No, no, that's okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Let me explain why I say that, okay? I don't feel bad about myself, about it, but it's also like a back and forth about the political piece of coming out to other people. Okay? So this is kind of where I go with thinking about this. I am in a relationship with another woman. The reality is, if Rita were in a male body, I would be in a relationship and married to Rita in a male body. If she came through that door and said, "You know, I've been living a life wrong, I really am male. I'm transgendered, I want to transition."

Lynn, Interviewer: You'd be like, "Cool."

Ann Marie Duncan: I would be, "Okay, fine." And we would still be married.

Lynn, Interviewer: It doesn't need a label. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. And so for a long time, I thought about myself as bisexual, and it's not that. That doesn't feel like it fits, not because I have any prejudice against bisexuality, I don't. In fact, I think probably most of the population actually hovers around bisexuality. They either don't have the chance, or there are lots of reasons why they don't explore it, but they may be on the heterosexual side of bisexuality, the homosexual side of bisexuality.

Ann Marie Duncan: But again, and pan is only a very new word. And I'm not particularly interested in co-opting a younger generation's word. Ish. Not that I mind it. And I think I get when people say I'm pan. That would probably, if somebody were to nail things down, that probably would be what I would say. In my generation, in the social circles that I run with, if you're in a relationship with a woman, you're a lesbian. So I say, "Okay, that's their label for me. I don't care."

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. The evolution of language is really interesting to me.

Ann Marie Duncan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Because we're just talking about words at this point, and labels, and so if it makes somebody feel better to think they're sitting at the table with the token lesbians, well, fine. Whatever.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. If you find a label useful, then great. And if you don't, then that's also great.

Ann Marie Duncan: But I don't. And I introduce her as my wife. And prior to that, it was my partner.

Lynn, Interviewer:[inaudible].

Ann Marie Duncan: It is. So that's kind of my own personal coming out to me. When it was all said and done, I didn't really identify until I was in my early 30s. Which leaves me in a very different place than a lot of the queer community. Because I was a fricking adult. I was not having to say to my parents at 16 that I think I am interested in the author in the same sex, and run the risks. My coming out to family, comparatively, has been very low risk. All right?

Ann Marie Duncan: My mother had changed her perspective by then, 15 years later. Of course she had. My dad just thought it was funny as hell. Because by this point, we knew that my cousin, who was my dad's sister's son, okay? So I had a cousin on my paternal side, who was gay. Okay? And dad just thought it was hilarious that my mother, who I suspect in their conversations had been like, "This is your family." So dad could say...

Ann Marie Duncan: Except the family thing is, my mother grew up with her cousins. I mean, she had lots of cousins and things right around. One of who, her favorite cousin, wound up being gay.

Lynn, Interviewer: Well.

Ann Marie Duncan: And so anyway, so my dad thought it was funny because it was just kind of the big hoodoo on my mom. And my siblings, I've got two sisters and a brother. My two sisters have, and my parents, always welcomed whoever I was dating. At this point, my family thinks Rita's the bee's knees. She is born on the exact same day, date and year as my oldest sister.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, wow. Huh.

Ann Marie Duncan: Uh-huh (affirmative). Which is another one of those "ha has" from God. But anyway. My brother and I have a difficult, at best, relationship. We were... No. Don't, no. Not at all.

Ann Marie Duncan: We were estranged completely for 15 years. He disowned me. I wrote him a letter when his daughter was born and basically asked him to get some help. Because I didn't want to see generational issues repeating themselves. And at that point in time, he disowned me. And of course at that point, I'm going, "Well, that's awful for me. I don't have to have anything else to do with you."

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. You tried.

Ann Marie Duncan: At my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, I... which meant the generation of kids. My daughter was 15. Okay? So it had been that 15 years, okay? She knew about her uncle, my daughter did, and she knew about her cousins. My brother's children didn't know they had another sister. They thought they only had two aunts and one other cousin. They didn't realize that my daughter existed, they didn't realize that I existed.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh. Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: And he didn't tell them until they showed up at my parents' house for the 50th anniversary.

Lynn, Interviewer: Surprise! Oh, wow. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. "Surprise!" So I tried very valiantly for a period of time to be open to a relationship with my brother. And then the federal right to 00:30:00marriage act came about.

Ann Marie Duncan: He had welcomed me into his home. I mean, I was in a lesbian relationship at my parents' 50th, okay? He had welcomed you to his home. Me, girlfriends, the whole nine yards.

Lynn, Interviewer: Just because the law changed?

Ann Marie Duncan: Well, he's very conservative, he's very Republican, he's very Donald Trump, he's... And the vitriol that was on his social media about those gays, and about them not being entitled to those rights. And the thing I kept going back to is, this is not some nebulous group of others.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. This is your family.

Ann Marie Duncan: You are talking about your youngest sister. What in the hell is the matter with you? And so I cut him off at that point. And we're, what, coming up on the fifth, or we came up on the fifth year anniversary of the marriage, the family act? Something like that.

Lynn, Interviewer: What year was that?

Ann Marie Duncan: I don't remember. I could pull out my "save the date" cards. That was the one [inaudible] we made to people when we got married.

Lynn, Interviewer: I love it. Awesome.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. As an aside, when I sent out... Well, when every single person in my family, when I told them we were getting married, my... Not my daughter, my daughter's a different subject. My immediate family, every single one of them said, "Is that legal?"

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh my gosh. Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: It's like, "Yeah, there's a federal law." So on the back of 00:32:00our... I went and got the law, I printed on the back of our save the date cards the law.

Lynn, Interviewer: See? Told you it was legal. Love it.

Ann Marie Duncan: And, of course, the statute and the whole nine yards. And that was it. And there was nothing else. I suppose if one was truly heterosexual in very conservative about it, they would have said we had a lesbian wedding. A lesbian, gay, a queer wedding.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh. Scary.

Ann Marie Duncan: But we really didn't. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, that was it. But so, yeah. Where was I going with that? So, because of my brother's views about queer, the only contact I have with him centers around our parents. And my dad in April and my mom is 87. And so literally, that is the only communications I have with him, are around our parents. And probably when my mom passes, that will dissolve. Whatever. I have no need to have any communication with him. I've tried. That's it. I've tried.

Lynn, Interviewer: It's his loss.

Ann Marie Duncan: It is. There are two other pieces. There's coming out at work, and there's my daughter.

Lynn, Interviewer: I was wondering about that. I was like, "Phew."

Ann Marie Duncan: So at work, I have always, I guess... How are we doing?

Lynn, Interviewer: Cool, okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: At work. I have worked in places where I was more out than others. I worked in Marion and Morganton for a bit. And pretty much because I lived up in Leicester, and I was commuting down...

Lynn, Interviewer: That's a bit of a drive.

Ann Marie Duncan: It is a bit of a drive. And I was three days in Marion and 00:34:00two days in Morganton. And the next week I flipped three days in Morganton, two days in Marion. There were specific people that I worked with that knew, but generally speaking, I was not out at work. Because it was more distressing to those folks, to think about me being in a relationship with a woman, than it was worth to me.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah, I understand that.

Ann Marie Duncan: Again, you kind of go into that political thing, but. And then I moved my work up here to Asheville. And the climate here in Asheville is very, very different. I started out as not not out. Kind of, I call it standing in the open door of the closet.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah, one foot in, one foot out.

Ann Marie Duncan: But I really believe that if you're going to come to work and you're going to talk about what you do with your family and your relationship, so am I. Am I going to rub your nose in the fact that it's something that bothers you? No, I'm not. But you don't get that privilege. And just generally, that just kind of evolved to being completely out at work.

Lynn, Interviewer: [inaudible].

Ann Marie Duncan: For a time, even then, I was more out to coworkers than I was to my clients. Because sometimes you need to be selectively... You hold specific things back, because your personal information is your personal information.

Lynn, Interviewer: And at this time, what kind of work are you doing?

Ann Marie Duncan: By that point in time, I had my masters and my license, and I had both a license to work with mental health folks and folks with substance use disorder. Okay? And probably about that time, we're probably talking about... I was probably working at MARC by then. I could have been working with women.

Ann Marie Duncan: I did a few years working with women who were substance use disordered, who were parenting, pregnant, had given birth, were parenting or were trying to get custody back of their children. So a lot of involvement with DSS. And I was out to some of them and not out to others.

Lynn, Interviewer: Kind of on a case by case basis.

Ann Marie Duncan: Kind of on a case by case. And then I went from there into working at MARC, which was Mountain Area Recovery Center. Back in the day, it was the first methadone clinic in the area. And that was the last job that I had as an agency job, was working for that group. And I did that for about eight years. Okay? And I was very out to them. I mean less so to my clients, but again, kind of that setting, I mean... a non issue.

Ann Marie Duncan: As far as work is concerned, and the general public, have I ever been discriminated against? Probably, but you know what? I don't expect it. And so...

Lynn, Interviewer: Ah. Surprise discrimination.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. And I understand that I am blessed. Okay? I am blessed because I look feminine. I pass. Basically, unless you know that I'm in a relationship with a woman, you look at me and there is nothing about me that screams anything other than cis-gendered, heterosexual, upper middle-class white American female.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. But at the same time, that kind of makes you invisible, too. Yeah?

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay. I mean, I'm in a dress. I'm in a nice little cami, I mean. And that's just who I am. And so I'm not expecting it. So if you're not expecting it, even if someone behaves in an off-color sort of way, I'm just as likely to chalk it up to something else.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Any number of things.

Ann Marie Duncan: Any number of things. It doesn't occur to me that, oh, they have a problem with my sexuality. Because again, I'm blessed. I was blind growing up. So I never had that struggle. By the time I came out to myself and was coming out to the people that were close to me, I was an adult. And the weightiness of that, I mean, they all live 525 miles away from me. What do I care what they think?

Lynn, Interviewer: My brother, have I gotten discrimination from him? But yeah, even if I wouldn't have been in a same-sex relationship, my brother would have been an ass to me. That's just kind of the way he is. So no, are there probably clients out there that have decided not to work with me because of my queerness? Probably, but they don't tell you that.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right, yeah. There's not an exit survey. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: No, not like that. So that's work. And then the last little piece, and I know this may feel like it's running on and on, is my daughter. Okay? My daughter. And she actually might be someone that you might be interested in, except she's not old. I don't know if there's an older age group with this.

Lynn, Interviewer: No, we interview anybody in the community.

Ann Marie Duncan: She'll be turning 31. She was born in Hendersonville, she grew up in Hendersonville. We moved up to Asheville here when she was 10. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: And that decision was a direct result of being in a relationship with a woman. And not really in the way one might think. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: So by the time my daughter was... Kindergarten, I was separated from her father. We were divorced by the time she was... See, we separated when she was three. By the time she was four, we were divorced. So by the time she was in kindergarten, I had her by myself. Okay?

Ann Marie Duncan: By the time she was in first grade, I was in my first relationship with a woman. All right? Well, the interesting thing in 00:39:00Hendersonville was the following. They would not allow anyone at her school to hurt her or to be ugly to her because she had two moms. Nor would they let her talk about it, or anything that led to talking about it. So if the assignment was draw a picture-

Lynn, Interviewer: Draw a picture of your family. Oh my gosh.

Ann Marie Duncan: And then get up and talk about your family, she could draw the picture, but she couldn't stand up and talk about the family. So in this interesting mix, they both protected her and ostracized her in one fell swoop.

Lynn, Interviewer: How interesting. So that was late '90s?

Ann Marie Duncan: That would have been about '90... Yeah, '95, '96. Right in there.

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow. All right.

Ann Marie Duncan: So we joked it was the worst-kept secret in Henderson County. And so she went through her elementary school years in Hendersonville schools. Okay? And her experience fairly early on, at least by second grade, she was getting statements from her friends like, "I can't be friends with you because your mommy's going to hell." All right?

Lynn, Interviewer: Gosh.

Ann Marie Duncan: So she received a bit of this. And the best I could do for her was say to her, "Look, these people don't know us. And people are always afraid of what they don't know. And if they just get to know you better, then this won't be an issue." all right? So what my beloved daughter did was, her vetting procedure around her friends... And I'm talking about second grade, third grade, right?

Lynn, Interviewer: The little ones.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. Was, "Hi, my name is Dominique Duncan, and my mom's a lesbian."

Lynn, Interviewer: Just get it out there immediately. Yeah. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. Or, "I have two moms." I mean, that was the introductory sentence.

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: Just, "My name is Ann Marie Duncan, and I use she/her pronouns." I mean, it was just like, there wasn't even a pause. And so one gets over being outed.

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow. When your child does that regularly. Oh my God.

Ann Marie Duncan: To this day, at 31, she still does that.

Lynn, Interviewer: Bless.

Ann Marie Duncan: It is her way of protecting herself, because-

Lynn, Interviewer: That way you know upfront. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ann Marie Duncan: ...she knows upfront. If you have an issue with it, then she does not have time for you.

Lynn, Interviewer: That is so funny, that in contrast with how you describe yourself as thinking things through and taking baby steps, and she's just like, "Nope." Just straight to the point. I love it. Oh my gosh.

Ann Marie Duncan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep. She weeded out people really quickly.

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: I mean, it's like...

Lynn, Interviewer: Good job.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. She decided at some point in time that she wasn't going to put up with people saying ugly, religiously, [crosstalk].

Lynn, Interviewer: Good for her.

Ann Marie Duncan: ...bad things to her.

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yes. That has an influence on whether I come out to people because it's like if you don't know before you meet my kid, you're going to know after...

Lynn, Interviewer: She'll take [inaudible]. Don't even worry about it.

Ann Marie Duncan: Even to the point where as she became an adult and started working [crosstalk].

Lynn, Interviewer:... go to?

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. In her career, in her job interviews, one of the things she'll put out there is that at this point, her mom is married to a woman because her philosophy is if they have an issue with it and don't want to hire me, that's not an organization I want to work for.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yes. Oh my gosh.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay? The organizations that she works for don't have an issue. I mean, she vets them the same way.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right upfront. Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: Like I said, she's very much part of my coming out. When I was dating Cameron, Dominique was about five or six, and she looked at me and she says, "Mom, what happens when two women get together?" "Dominique, what do you mean?" She said, "Well, when a man and a woman get together, they can make a baby." I said, "Right." She goes, "What happens when two women get together?" I just had to do this, I said, "Let's call Grandpa." My dad's a biologist.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh my gosh.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay? Here we are, we're in the middle of the pawn shop, and here is my very sweet little girl, she's very petite, and she always has been but she was very petite and blonde hair, blue eyed, quintessential little girl.

Lynn, Interviewer: She's got questions. Honest questions.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. She said, "Grandpa, what happens when ..." [inaudible] exact same thing. He paused for a minute and she gave him the context of, "You know, a man and a woman have a baby and what two women ..." He gave a great big pause and he goes, "Nothing."

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Because he went to the straight biological piece.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Very matter of fact. Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: You know? I mean, yeah. It's like the kids say the strangest things. I just had to ... He handled it so well. You know? It never had been an issue.

Lynn, Interviewer: I love that.

Ann Marie Duncan: Ain't that funny? Yeah. I've run out of that.

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay. Let's see [crosstalk].

Ann Marie Duncan: An hour later.

Lynn, Interviewer: An hour later. All right. Do not worry. We have more topics. I really want to hear more about your work.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay.

Lynn, Interviewer: In a way that's relevant or just part of your story but that's just personally what I'm interested in.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay. I'll start with what's relevant. What is relevant is that ... Well, I can't ever start ... I have to start at the beginning of the story. I went into private practice a bit ago, not a whole long time ago. Well, it's been less than five years I've been in private practice. One thing leads to another and I eventually wound up practicing from home. I had an office out in the place at one point in time.

Ann Marie Duncan: I was looking for alternate streams of income. This was about, it'll be three years ago, maybe four, but I wasn't bringing in enough as a private practice in my own home to be able to support myself. I went online and I'm contracted with Better Help. Better Help has got a sister site called Pride Counseling.

Ann Marie Duncan: I basically signed up with them. If you look at my whole caseload, I have got more people who are transgender, queer ... I'm just going to 00:49:00say queer because that's going to encompass the whole thing. Probably two-thirds of my case load.

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Folks that are in various places in their journey in transitioning, folks that are questioning what their sexuality is, and although I have had the education to be able to treat these people, I did not until I started working with Better Help really develop this population.

Lynn, Interviewer: Interesting. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Then as COVID happened, I had been doing telehealth for Better Help for a couple of years when that happened.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, okay. The switch was like nothing.

Ann Marie Duncan: It was nothing.

Lynn, Interviewer: Nice.

Ann Marie Duncan: Of course, it's like with any population, I knew this was going to be a population that I enjoyed working with but the more I work with them, the more I enjoy it. I understand or, at least, my belief I guess, and I'm fixing to show my age, that monogamy versus poly doesn't necessarily fit into under the queer umbrella, although, none of my clients that are poly consider themselves normal.

Lynn, Interviewer I think I get what you're saying.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay.

Lynn, Interviewer: It's not necessarily queer but there is a bit of overlap in ways ... Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. There is overlap. There is a surprising ... In the therapeutic community there was a surprising lack of people who knew what to do with folks who are in poly relationships. There's that over-layer piece that's really a part of my practice now too.

Lynn, Interviewer: Interesting.

Ann Marie Duncan: Both people who are exploring it or have gotten into relationship with someone who is saying, "I am poly" and they're going, "I'm monogamous"...

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. How to deal with that.

Ann Marie Duncan: How to deal with all of that. Which is not to say that I haven't had folks from the queer community throughout my career, I have. Again, more closeted than not. When I come out of the closet for my clients, it creates a safer place for them.

Ann Marie Duncan: I find that very few of my clients who are queer outside of ...Let me go back. Very few of my clients who identify as queer with retrospect to their sexuality...

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay. As opposed to gender?

Ann Marie Duncan: Opposed to gender.

Lynn, Interviewer: Got you.

Ann Marie Duncan: Very few of them have I had to work with them as that as an issue.

Lynn, Interviewer: Got you. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: The issues that they bring to the table are things like family stories of abuse, indoctrination of religion, conversion therapy practices, so it is almost more working with them from a trauma-based or a trauma-informed therapy than it is, "I'm in this queer place and I'm not okay with myself about it."

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. It's less of a coming out and more like dealing with the social...

Ann Marie Duncan: Their history and the coping mechanisms that they came up with to help them deal with being queer in an environment that was not ...

Lynn, Interviewer: Supportive.

Ann Marie Duncan: Supportive at all.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. It's sad that that is such a common area across [crosstalk].

Ann Marie Duncan: It still astounds me that even where we are today [crosstalk].

Lynn, Interviewer: Even now. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Occasionally, I'll have one or two folks just sprinkled in that are questioning their sexuality. I have had more people questioning their gender than their sexuality. Both of those are process things. Both of those are helping create an environment for folks where you can create a safe place for that person to explore.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. I can't give you the answer but I can help you find it.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. Because the forum is an online forum that they're held with Pride Counseling, it's not a platform that's setup to deal with suicidality, although, I've had a fair amount of interacting with folks who were suicidal and I will say the one person in my career, who has successfully completed a suicide was someone who was transgendered. That being said, I've only had one other individual who is transgendered come to me because they were feeling suicidal.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: What that had to do with is that had to do with not being in the body that matched who they were and this was an individual who was in their fifties.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh gosh.

Ann Marie Duncan: The damage that 25, 30 years of adulthood had done of effectively in their life of living a life, of being somebody who they were not.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. It builds up.

Ann Marie Duncan: It was more about helping them get to a place where they could transition and get resources and this happened to be where they lived was closer actually to Virginia [crosstalk]. It was that rural of a North Carolina tiny city.

Lynn, Interviewer: Got you.

Ann Marie Duncan: I have worked...I'm double licensed. I work so that I can deal with mental health issues and folks with chemical dependency issues. The methadone treatment that I worked with, I love that population. I can get derailed into that. When you're dealing with folks who are opiate dependent, really at that point, all of the rest of their issues are eclipsed.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. You have to deal with the big problem before you can tackle anything else.

Ann Marie Duncan: Most of them were still dealing with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that bottom...

Lynn, Interviewer: Basic safety. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Basic safety, food, housing, how do I make sure I get my medication every day so I don't get sick so I can function, to ever get to kind of that...Which is not to say I didn't work with a bunch of sex workers, because I did, because that very much is a way to fund a substance use issue. Again, with that population of sex workers, it was not a question of what is my sexuality?

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: It was this is activity for which I need to get money, I'll get money for. Yeah. Did I answer the question?

Lynn, Interviewer: I believe so. Yeah. Let's see. Another topic that I'd like to touch on, outside of work, what is your experience with the local community? 00:58:00Have you been to any community events like Pride? What does your friend group look like? That kind of stuff.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay. That kind of stuff?

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: My friend group is a very mixed group of individuals. There are same-sex couples, there are heterosexual couples. There are individuals that are queer...I mean, there's a big umbrella. Close versus not close. I mean, that friend circle.

Ann Marie Duncan: I thought as far as the community, been to Pride a few times, I try to hook up my clients with supports in the community. I've been to a few events by Campaign For Southern Equality. I love that organization. I think they're freaking amazing.

Ann Marie Duncan: There is a lesbian meetup.

Lynn, Interviewer: Interesting.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. Yeah. Which is just about women loving women but it's social. It's not a hookup kind of thing.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. Right. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: I've been to things like bowling and game night and ...

Lynn, Interviewer: Stuff to do.

Ann Marie Duncan:Literally just stuff to do. WNCAP because we worked fairly 00:59:00close with WNCAP when I was working in the clinic because a fair amount of clients were hep C, hep A, HIV positive. There's little exchanges, there's condom distributions and so it's kind of another way...Again, sex workers. Another way into and to be involved with WNCAP you don't have to be queer but, again...You know?

Ann Marie Duncan: I have done a couple or a few of the 5Ks that Blue Ride Pride has put together. Yeah. That's probably...

Lynn, Interviewer: I'm looking at this list of questions and you've pretty much hit on most of them. I'm really impression. Let's see. I guess this is a good one to finish on. What do you hope for the Asheville and western North Carolina community in general? Like moving forward.

Ann Marie Duncan: If I could wave a magic wand, I would like it to be a non-issue.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: I mean, which is the equivalent of I would have world peace. I understand that. In thinking about that kind of piece of this, I struggle with it because I really am...It baffles me why anyone is caring about what two consenting adults do.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. [inaudible].

Ann Marie Duncan: Seriously. In a bedroom. I'm more worried about that person who wants to know what you're doing in your bedroom than I am about what you and the consenting adults you're involved with are doing in the bedroom.

Ann Marie Duncan: Like I said, it just...I don't comprehend it. I know it exists but I don't comprehend it. Again, like I taught my daughter, the place I go back to is if they knew more about us, instead of the defining factor of what you know, what the general public knows about me or you or any member of the queer community, is that we're queer. If they know that we are mothers and daughters and husband and wives and sons and fathers and soccer players and runners and foosball players and whiskey drinkers and don't want pot to be legalized and do want pot to be legalized...Because who you are is so much more than the gender that you identify as, what pronouns you use, what name you want to call yourself, who you want to have sex with, how you choose to express your gender...

Lynn, Interviewer: It's such a small part.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. It just seems so damn small.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: That's the piece. I guess that could be said for any subset of the population. It's really hard to hate someone when you've gotten to know them and you realize, "Oh, we like to do the same things, we like to drink the same drinks, we like to read the same books."

Lynn, Interviewer: That human connection.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. I do have one soapbox.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, oh boy. Please, climb on up.

Ann Marie Duncan: It has just become like on me within the last couple months and that comes from working with folks who are transgendered and the hoops that these people have to jump through to get gender-affirming surgeries. It's fucking nuts.

Ann Marie Duncan: I'm a large breasted woman. If I went to a plastic surgery and said, "I don't like the size of my breasts. I don't like how they look. I want them smaller. I have divots in my shoulder. I have back pain." You know?

Lynn, Interviewer: They'd be like, "Oh, yeah. Come in tomorrow. We'll do it."

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. "Come in tomorrow. In fact, we'll even work to get your insurance to pay for it. It's fine. Here. Measure. Yeah. Blah, blah, blah" and that surgery would go. There wouldn't be anybody that would say I need a letter from your doctor, there wouldn't be anyone saying, "You have to bind for a year so you know what it's like."

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Nothing.

Lynn, Interviewer: You have to prove that you really are...You're not faking it.

Ann Marie Duncan: You have to go to a therapist and have a therapist evaluate you to make sure you really don't like the size of your boobs.

Lynn, Interviewer: You've got to be sure.

Ann Marie Duncan: You've got to be sure because this is permanent.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. You do know that this is permanent, right?

Ann Marie Duncan: You know? The hoops, the hoops. I've had two people... Because of COVID, there's states that opened up...Normally, I am only licensed, I'm licensed in North Carolina to work with North Carolina clients. Other states because of the crisis opened up their states, the licensing board, to say if you are licensed and in good standing in your home state, we will allow you to treat our citizens.

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: I have some folks in California, I have some folks in New York, and folks dotted around. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: I have had not one but two different people ask me for letters. Here in this area, there are physicians that will treat without the...

Lynn, Interviewer: Informed consent?

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. The informed consent. Well, not in New York. Not in Rhode Island. Not in...You know? I really had to have a come to Jesus discussion. One, I couldn't do because my license didn't meet their specifications. It had to be a licensed social worker. Couldn't be a licensed clinical mental health professional.

Lynn, Interviewer: That's [crosstalk].

Ann Marie Duncan: That's political.

Lynn, Interviewer: Infuriating.

Ann Marie Duncan: That's political. That is all that is. That's political. I couldn't do one. The other one, I had to have a come to Jesus discussion with myself because it's like, okay, I feel this is politically and morally wrong and could impede my client from getting the surgery that they need because I 01:03:00politically want to stand up and say, "This isn't right. I'm not going to participate in this."

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: Two very important values. You know? I wrote the letter and they're getting their surgery and that's great. Again, I did it kicking and screaming and gnashing my teeth and every time I'd sit down to write it, it's like it would piss me off again. I had to be real careful because I wanted to 01:04:00drag my feet out because I didn't want to do it. Think about when you don't want to do something, you have an issue, right? I'm sorry. It's ridiculous. My family and friends, some of them who don't have a clue of understanding the first thing about a transgendered individual and...

Ann Marie Duncan: I run with basically liberal people who are open-minded. I still have friends that don't get pronouns, don't get names, don't get transgendered folks. Every one of them, all of my friends had to listen to me go through this soapbox for me to be able to write this blessed letter because it's ridiculous. It's not fair. It's not right.

Lynn, Interviewer: No. Just write the letter and then post-script, this shouldn't 01:05:00even be a thing.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah.

Lynn, Interviewer: I shouldn't have to do this for life-saving medical treatment. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. It's like, "And why are you asking me? It's medical." So yeah, that... In New York, they cannot even schedule an appointment for a surgeon, unless... Because they can't schedule. They can have the appointment for the surgeon, and surgeon can talk to him, but they can't schedule that surgery without those letters. And they have to have one from a mental health professional, and they have to have one from a doctor.

Lynn, Interviewer: Geez. And I mean, that's just to contact the surgeon. You're still going to have to wait? Oh man.

Ann Marie Duncan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). When I finally got that letter done and 01:06:00got it to them, they got put on a waiting list. February 2022.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh my God.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay. First of all, that's a lot of surgeries happening.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right?

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Just take a minute to fathom that, but still.

Lynn, Interviewer: But you know, "They're all probably faking it," and no. Oh my gosh.

Ann Marie Duncan: Or confused.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. I'm in the middle of getting top surgery scheduled, so I am painfully aware of this whole thing. But it not as-

Ann Marie Duncan: Thank you for sharing that with me.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. I know, I don't want to interject too much, but it's the hoops, exactly.

Ann Marie Duncan: And it's ridiculous.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: It's like, "What do you mean?" You're being treated like a second class citizen.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. I mean, I have been in this process for a year and a half just trying to get the surgery scheduled and the insurance to cover it. But 01:08:00I've been binding for five years, at least.

Ann Marie Duncan: And when you start talking about binding and the medical issues around binding, it's like, "Holy cow." And now I do know, and again, working with the population, not being of the population-

Lynn, Interviewer: Right, yeah. Outside perspective.

Ann Marie Duncan :... that there is taping that can happen.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah, I do that.

Ann Marie Duncan: I was going to say, I also know that folks that are more well endowed, that I couldn't tape... it wouldn't do a damn thing. And so if you already belong to the itty bitty titty committee, then binding becomes less of an issue and you can tape. But if you have anything that remotely resembles breasts.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: So, yeah. But I have learned that taping is a thing and the part of me goes, "Ow."

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. The removal sounds not fun, but-

Ann Marie Duncan: Not fun, no. And why? Why should that have to be?

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: I mean-

Lynn, Interviewer: Well, it's like you said, if it was just somebody just wanted a reduction, there wouldn't be any problem with it. They'd be like, "Yeah, come on in, we'll do it now."

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. Or surgery on any part of your body that you don't like. I mean, there is a mental health disorder of folks. Well, it's body dysmorphia. Where these folks go to plastic surgeons and say, "I don't like my nose, fix my nose." I mean, they have one surgery after the next, after the next, after the next and the blessed surgeon just keeps cutting on their body.

Lynn, Interviewer: That's what's interesting about transgender people, that doesn't usually happen. They get what surgeries they want and then they're done. Fascinating.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right, because things are aligned, because life is no longer incongruent for them. It's amazing how much of our mental health stabilizes out when that happens.

Lynn, Interviewer: And the fact that there's so many restrictions. Even now, I 01:11:00realize, I compare it to five, 10, 15 years ago. Even the hoops that I have to jump through, it's still an option for me. It's still achievable, but it was so much harder in the not so distant past.

Ann Marie Duncan: I don't even know if my friend ever did have surgery. I know that they are on hormones, are on steady hormones. I haven't asked. That is his business.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: And if he wanted to share that with me, that would be one thing. I would be honored, but again, it's like a woman having to have a 01:12:00hysterectomy, but for whatever reason. Birth control. Oh my God.

Lynn, Interviewer: That's a whole 'nother can of worms.

Ann Marie Duncan: That's the other thing, is if I want to go in and have a tubal, or if for the sake of whatever.

Lynn, Interviewer: Sure.

Ann Marie Duncan: Sure, we'll rip the thing out. You don't need it. You're post-menopausal, you're fine. It's okay. Anyway, so yeah. That's...

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah, that is-

Ann Marie Duncan: It's a huge [inaudible]. But, so pardon my ignorance, please, if I can ask.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh, yeah go ahead.

Ann Marie Duncan: So when it comes to the surgery, even here in North Carolina, you have to have the letters to give around informed consent.

Lynn, Interviewer: I had to have letters for my insurance to cover it, if not I would have to pay out of pocket.

Ann Marie Duncan: So it's the insurance company in North Carolina. God love them, not the doctors.

Lynn, Interviewer: That was at the one place that actually takes insurance. The other place that I went to doesn't take insurance at all.

Ann Marie Duncan: I'm sorry.

Lynn, Interviewer: So yeah. It's just, like you said so many hoops and I am so 01:14:00tired of jumping.

Ann Marie Duncan: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lynn, Interviewer: My legs are hurting.

Ann Marie Duncan: And that's the thing.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: And I also understand being in the position that I am, other than... Well that's nice Ann Marie, I appreciate the support, but it's like, "Yeah, there's not enough." There's not anything you can do with with my anger and frustration other than, "I can commiserate with you."

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. Well, and also you're in a position to help support other people who are going through this, through your work and through dragging your feet when politically advantageous.

Ann Marie Duncan: And it's just like, "Ah." And I don't know what that's going to take. I don't know what it's going to take to change that. And gosh, the other thing is I think abou you must have whiplash as an individual who is transgender, because I mean, politically we have gone from literally right to left to right to left.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: At any given point, "Wait a minute, can I get medical treatment?"

Lynn, Interviewer: "I have rights. I don't have rights. Oh boy, do I have rights? I'm not sure."

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. Right, yeah. "Can I get medical treatment? I can't get medical. Can I get medical? I can't."

Lynn, Interviewer: Exactly.

Ann Marie Duncan: "Oh, the VA is paying for my transition. No, it's not. Oh, it is? It's back on."

Lynn, Interviewer: Quickly go! Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. I mean, it's been a crazy few years just in general. Let's put that out there.

Ann Marie Duncan: Well, yeah. Okay. What, you're talking about Trump and then the Biden switch over whichever and a little bit of COVID.

Lynn, Interviewer: Just a little bit. Yes. Pandemic, it's fine.

Ann Marie Duncan: Pandemic, right.

Lynn, Interviewer: It's fine. It's not... Yeah. It's a weird time to be alive, it's a weird time to be trans. It's just a weird time.

Ann Marie Duncan: It's just a weird time.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: It is. It's a very weird time.

Lynn, Interviewer: I did think of one more question.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay.

Lynn, Interviewer: You grew up with a Roman Catholic background, and this is also a very selfish niche interest of mine, but where would you say you are spiritually? At all, not at all, and how has that interacted with your identity?

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay. All right. So-

Lynn, Interviewer: You don't have to answer if you don't want to.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. Nope. This is... Like I said, I understand how a, privileged I am, and how b, fortunate. Because I mean, there are ways that my parents could have fucked me up so badly, but they didn't. They chose other ways, but that's everybody's family. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Right, yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: I wouldn't have a career if that wasn't. All right?

Lynn, Interviewer: You're right. You're right though. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay? So that being said, I went to public school. My first year, my first grade was parochial school. I went to public school, second grade on. And I was going to school in the deep south, the Bible belt. All right? So for me, that was very helpful because at a very early age, I was asked to justify the atrocities of the church.

Lynn, Interviewer: Interesting. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay? And really, I really had to pick out what is my belief system? And explain it to non-Catholic people who were hearing about the reformation in history.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh boy.

Ann Marie Duncan: And so here I was token Catholic and, "Oh, we're going to ask you about it." When there was a Catholic high school. There were Catholic schools there, but even up through high school because it was an archdiocese, which is bigger than just the normal hierarchy. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan :And again, very liberal.

Lynn, Interviewer: Gotcha.

Ann Marie Duncan: I was an altar server. There are altar boys.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay.

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay. So you were in a place that was like-

Ann Marie Duncan: I was an altar boy before it was okay with the Vatican to have altar boys.

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow. Trailblazing.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. Now our priest got around it because the girls that were altar servers were prepubescent. And because you hadn't started your period, you could be an altar server. And then of course, he didn't want to know if you started, so he just slid that by so you could just-

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah, whatever.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. Just continue.

Lynn, Interviewer: Nevermind the grown men's obsession with children. Oh gosh. Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. And so again, for me, my experience was not even as a kid, any kind of violence or any kind of oppression or any kind of abuse from the Catholic church.

Lynn, Interviewer: That's great. I wish... yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: It's amazing. Again, where am I privileged? That's another one. Okay? And my religious training was Sunday school, and I had to go to it because I didn't go to a parochial school, a Catholic school.

Ann Marie Duncan: Well, at the time the nuns still taught. Yeah see, and that's the face everybody gives with the nuns.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah, like, "Oh gosh."

Ann Marie Duncan: Not my experience.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh.

Ann Marie Duncan: They taught Sunday school. And I will tell you the biggest feminist examples that I ever had growing up from the age of 10 through graduation of high school were the nuns, were sisters at our church.

Lynn, Interviewer: That's awesome. Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: It was amazing. They came out of their habits before everybody. I mean, so the parish I was in was a very liberal parish. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Thus women on the altar, thus... okay? But basically these nuns were, the message that they sent was, "You can be anything you want." It was very feminist, very forward-thinking. And as a matter of fact, I can remember telling one of them I wanted to be a priest.

Lynn, Interviewer: Wow.

Ann Marie Duncan: And she said, "Well, why don't you go talk to father about that?"

Lynn, Interviewer :Interesting. What'd he say?

Ann Marie Duncan: "Uh, well, um." But again, she was stirring the shit pile to get, you know?

Lynn, Interviewer: Okay. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So was there women's oppression in the church? Yes, there were. But within the framework of the church.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right, right.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay? That little thing of the priest firing me just knocked my legs out from under me. Really. And so I have not practiced regularly since then. I've had periods of time. My daughter was baptized. My daughter had her first communion and her confirmation.

Ann Marie Duncan: In fact, when she had her first communion and confirmation, I was in a relationship with a woman and we were in church, we were going to Boulevard. And the priest cornered us as a family on the way out of church within the first time or two that we went.

Ann Marie Duncan: And he basically said, "You're a new family here." And I said, "Yes." And he said, "Well, you need to keep coming because this church needs to see you as a family." And so we got a lot of support from that particular priest. We also sat in the front row and my daughter was on her blanket and she ate Cheerios.

Ann Marie Duncan: And as a matter of fact, a few years later, there was one of the conservative members of the church that tried to stir up some shit for this priest over the fact. I mean, she refused to serve us communion. She refused to... and he basically said, "You go. Go somewhere else," in support of that.

Lynn, Interviewer: Nice. Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: Because I wasn't going to raise my daughter in a situation where we hid who we were.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: You don't want to teach your kids shame.

Ann Marie Duncan: No, and this was not... It would have been a new experience for her up here in Asheville, if all of a sudden her family was closeted at church, because as far as she was concerned, remember she's introducing her mother.

Lynn, Interviewer: Straightforward.

Ann Marie Duncan: And so I just thought that was too damn confusing. And so when we moved up here, we changed parishes. I went to the priest and I said, "Look, this is a new parish. This is what we are, and I'm not going to-

Lynn, Interviewer: Hide that.

Ann Marie Duncan: ...hide that because I'm not going to confuse my child. This is more important." And he said, "Don't worry about it." And so within that church, we were allowed to practice. My partner and I, at the time were parts of the choir, the whole nine yards. Now, when we'd go down to cathedral downtown, that's a bit more conservative and we would all joke. There's this big hook that hangs down in the middle of the church, or did at the time. And it's-

Lynn, Interviewer: That's kind of weird.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. They use it to raise the advent wreath.

Lynn, Interviewer: Oh okay, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: And we would joke that we needed to be really quiet because they hang people like us from that.

Lynn, Interviewer: A little dark humor, yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: A little dark humor, that's right. And then our conservative Pope died. And we got that very conservative creep in, who I promise. But I... 01:29:00Well, I won't say that. That's not nice.

Ann Marie Duncan: And there was just too much. Because the message, there were pockets of acceptance within the Catholic church, but basically it swung over to the, "We will accept you-

Lynn, Interviewer: But just...

Ann Marie Duncan: ...Oh no. "But you can't be having sex. You have to live a celibate life if you're going to be practicing. Otherwise, we will accept you and pray for you, but we're not going to embrace you."

Lynn, Interviewer: But is that really accepting?

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. Right. Yeah. And so I really moved away from that. And I still have a strong spiritual life. There are traditions that I hold dear to 01:30:00me. I mean, I said when my dad passed, that was the first thing that was... He had a mass of the resurrection, his funeral was a mass. And technically speaking, I couldn't receive communion. Basically if I would have gone up to receive communion, the priest would have had... I would have forced an issue. He would have had to because he knew I was married. He got introduced to Rita as my wife.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: So, if he didn't know he could have pled... but because he knew, so I didn't go up in the communion because I wasn't going to put him, in my father's funeral, in that place.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. Not the place, not the time.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right. And I hope with the relatively new Pope that we have now, I have really, really hoped that we were going places. And then he took a great big step back. So it's like, "Okay, this is a human organization, and it's going to have human faults."

Lynn, Interviewer: Right, right.

Ann Marie Duncan: Does that mean that I'm going to stop believing that there is a creator, and something greater than myself? No, I'm not. There is a spirit, that there's an energy. There is something out there greater than us. And that's okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Quite frankly, I go back to I don't care about labels. You want to call that creator, God, great. I will talk to you in the terms that you want me to talk to you. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ann Marie Duncan: Do you want to call that great spirit? Okay. You want to call that trees.

Lynn, Interviewer: Universe. Or trees.

Ann Marie Duncan: You want to call it the universe.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: You want to call it the collective consciousness. I'm not hung up on that. I believe that that can all be true. That which I might call God is large enough to encompass all of that. Because if I say, that's not the case, then I am then limiting.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right.

Ann Marie Duncan: I mean, it's like it's so [inaudible].

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah. I feel like it's simultaneously very important to recognize damage that has been caused to queer people by religious communities. But at the same time, spirituality and queerness are not mutually exclusive, and they can very much co-exist. And I think more stories of that kind of coexistence need to be elevated so that all of those environments can become more welcoming. And I think we're seeing that in some capacity.

Ann Marie Duncan: I think we are.

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: There is an organization called DignityUSA, and that is a sect of the Roman Catholic church.

Lynn, Interviewer: Interesting. Okay.

Ann Marie Duncan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And that is still promoting, is working within the constructs. And maybe because I was a female that grew up in a patriarchy of the... I mean, the Catholic church is a monarchy. Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Don't get it wrong. And it's a male dominated monarchy, you know?

Lynn, Interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ann Marie Duncan: And when you grow up in that, if you don't like it, well, that's fine. And what those feminist women taught me was how to work within the organization to change the things you don't like.

Lynn, Interviewer: Right, right.

Ann Marie Duncan: Okay?

Lynn, Interviewer: Perform versus revolution.

Ann Marie Duncan: Right?

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah.

Ann Marie Duncan: Both are necessary, but... And you're right. Organized religion has done horrible things to people. And if I can let someone who has 01:33:00been so hurt by organized religion that they loathe the part of themselves and they know they're going to hell, it's like, "That's not my God. That's not the God of my understanding." That's not even a New Testament God, that's an Old Testament God. And it's bad theology, because if you look at what the bible...Remember, did I mention this training in youth ministry-

Lynn, Interviewer: Yeah, some about that.

Ann Marie Duncan: Jesuit College, yeah, certificate, all that kind... Yeah. There are some very good books about what does the Bible actually teach about homosexuality? And no. No, because your gender was born into a body that was not congruent with that gender, that does not mean that God made a mistake.

Lynn, Interviewer: It's this fantastic quote, and I cannot remember the source, so I apologize.

Ann Marie Duncan: That's fine.

Lynn, Interviewer: But it was somebody talking about being transgender. And they said, "God made me this way, in the same way that he made grapes and not wine. And we've been outbred so that I can also take part in the act of creation." And that hit me so hard.

Ann Marie Duncan: That is amazing.

Lynn, Interviewer: I love that.

Ann Marie Duncan: That is a fabulous quote. And that is on target. My Catholic teaching was God created me. God does not make mistakes. The gift of my sexuality comes from God. There is a creative force. I dare anyone to say there is not a creative force that happens when two human beings get together and share deeply, intimately, in love. Creation happens. Doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a baby.

Lynn, Interviewer: No.

Ann Marie Duncan: Creation happens. And that's what our sexuality is about.

Lynn, Interviewer :I love that. That is great.

Ann Marie Duncan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And there's no way I'm going to hell because there is no way all of that preceding thought, logic, teaching and theology can then come up with, "But you're abhorrent."

Lynn, Interviewer: Right. Yeah. "You picked the wrong person to smooch, I'm sorry you're going to hell."

Ann Marie Duncan: That's right. "All of this is right. Yes, God did create you. Yes, God..."

Lynn, Interviewer: Great, great, great, but.

Ann Marie Duncan: Yeah. But... No. I think a lot of people are going to be surprised when they get to heaven. That's it. That's just.

Lynn, Interviewer: I love that. Oh my gosh. Oh, well, do you have anything else you would like to share?

Ann Marie Duncan: I don't think so.

Lynn, Interviewer: Well in that case, thank you so much.

Ann Marie Duncan: Oh it's my pleasure.