Oral History with Tina White, Part 1

Rachel:

So good afternoon, Tina Madison White.

Tina Madison White:

Hi, Rachel. How are you?

Rachel:

I am well. We're beginning a new process in our interview oral history project that involves remote recording so again, your patience is appreciated as we work through this process and thank you very much for volunteering your time and telling your stories for this effort.

Tina Madison White:

Oh, you're welcome.

Rachel:

There are a couple things that are formalities, if you will, but there's a tex that I need to read you and if you don't mind I'll go through that now.

Tina Madison White:

Sure.

Rachel:

Again, thank you for sharing your time and the gifts of your stories. We can take a break or end the interview at any point. My name is Rachel [Muer 00:00:47] and I'm working with Blue Ridge Pride, YMCA and Amanda Wray to record oral histories from elders and members of the LGBTQ community and allies. With your permission, all stories will be archived with special collections at UNC 00:01:00Asheville and available as audio, video, typed transcript files. You will be contacted to review your typed transcripts in advance of publication in case you wish to make changes, corrections or name restrictions. I have an oral history release form for you to sign. You should have received that by email already. The gifts your oral history and other materials you have to special collections, with restrictions, mean you wish to restrict some information such as part of your interview, your name, withholding the interview until a certain date, for example. Without restrictions means that we can publish your name and story as stated once you've approved the final transcript. That will be signed ... That signed form will be given to Amanda Wray, who's coordinating our project. Any questions on that basic information?

Tina Madison White:

No. How do I get the form to you?

Rachel:

We need a signed copy of the form. Mail it please.

Tina Madison White:

Okay.

Rachel:

So make a signed copy of the form, make a copy for yourself and I will forward the copy to Amanda Wray and UNC Asheville.

Tina Madison White:

I saw ... I can't get out to mailboxes very easily. I saw a ... Can I just email it to you if I send you the PDF?

Rachel:

Well we want a signature on it.

Tina Madison White:

Well absolutely, no, I'll take a picture and send you that.

Rachel:

As a PDF you can.

Tina Madison White:

Okay, great.

Rachel:

That works, as well. We just need to have your signature and of course if it's just ... That's why in some ways a preference is to have a physical copy in our hands.

Tina Madison White:

Okay.

Rachel:

But we're versatile in that respect.

Tina Madison White:

Okay.

Rachel:

Okay, let me ... That was the proforma portion of the interview. Let me start 00:03:00with the introduction. Today's date is August 20th, 2020. My name is Rachel Muer, I'm a volunteer for this project. I am talking with Tina White, who was born in what year?

Tina Madison White:

1958.

Rachel:

In what city, state or county?

Tina Madison White:

I was born in New York, New York in Hell's Kitchen.

Rachel:

Oh my. Your preferred pronouns are?

Tina Madison White:

She, her, hers.

Rachel:

You've been living in this area for how long?

Tina Madison White:

I've been living in Asheville for about five years.

Rachel:

Okay. Well that ends our preliminary information. We're going to go onto the questions and let me emphasize again, this is your interview. At any time if you want to depart or enrich one particular portion of the story, please do so. That's what makes this your interview and not a cookie cutter version of what we 00:04:00want to record. I'll be taking notes along the way.

Tina Madison White:

Okay.

Rachel:

How would you describe yourself, Tina?

Tina Madison White:

Oh, a middle aged ... A woman of a certain age. I'm married. I retired technically but I'm probably busier than I was when I was in my corporate career. I used to consult to large scale corporations and now I'm really full time working as an activist, a volunteer activist for different organizations.

Rachel:

In regards to gender, race, socioeconomics, any-

Tina Madison White:

Oh, well I would describe myself as transgender. I fully own that. I think of myself as a human being who happens to be transgender. I'm white and grew up 00:05:00with kind of a privileged middle class, upper middle class background. My mother was a professor and my father a minister. I went to business school, so I have a graduate degree and were there any other identity labels you were looking for?

Rachel:

No, that pretty much covers our basic. If there's anything you'd like to add.

Tina Madison White:

No, that's ...

Rachel:

Okay. Well what brought you to Western North Carolina and how long have you been here?

Tina Madison White:

My wife and I moved here in 2016. I had been living in New York City and decided that I wanted to retire and really spend the balance of my life paying it 00:06:00forward and becoming an activist. At the time, I was hearing how horrible things were for transgender people in the South so I decided to move to the South. I picked Asheville because I wanted to live in a city that did feel welcoming and safe and Asheville is certainly that. We moved down here and as we were driving in our U-Haul, we actually learned the announcement that day of the passage of this bill called HB2 and that certain accelerated my immersion into activism in the South.

Rachel:

Exquisite timing.

Tina Madison White:

Yes.

Rachel:

Since you arrived here, what things have changed in positive ways from your perspective?

Tina Madison White:

In the South or for me? I'm not sure I understand.

Rachel:

Both for you and also in the community that you now reside in.

Tina Madison White:

Well, HB2, it's not completely gone but it's certainly better than it was when I arrived. I don't know whether I'd say things have gotten better. I'm glad I moved here. Mary and I love Asheville. I think it's more they're different. When I arrived here there was a big focus on the bathroom bill, on transgender rights. That issue remains but there's a much bigger focus, as you know, on racial equity and inclusion. I've been shifting more of my attention to that front.

Rachel:

Intersectionality type of questions, issues?

Tina Madison White:

I'm not sure ... What do you mean?

Rachel:

Intersectionality, the idea of people who have multiple identities that include racial, gender issues in which because of those multiple identities they're particularly subject to discrimination.

Tina Madison White:

Well it's not intersectionality for me, because I'm white, so I know what you're asking and I think intersectionality, it's a useful term but it suffers the same limitations of the labels that it tries to mingle together. I think in the end, each of us is a very individual human being and you can describe us as the intersection of lots of the labels or you can describe us as something greater than any of those labels. Personally I think more that second way. To describe 00:09:00myself as the intersection of something is to actually allow myself to be colonized not by one label but by many labels. I prefer to think that I'm Tina Madison White, thank you. Like the get to know me, I'm happy to tell you anything you want to know and I think intersectionality is a useful tool socially and politically because you have to address these broad social issues.

Tina Madison White:

I think it's useful there but at an individual level, I like to leave that aside because I don't want to label anyone. A good example is gender. I consider myself female, I identify as female. I understand on Facebook there are now over 50 different pronouns that they offer as choices and that's fine. I'm not sure 00:10:00that any one pronoun would ever capture how I feel about me and whether my definition of what that, the pronoun, "She," means is probably very different from what someone else means. Again, in the end I prefer just to focus on the limitations of any labels at really capturing a true person and we should not discriminate against people based on any label because it doesn't treat them as an individual. It reduces them to a class and I think that's kind of the original sin of language.

Rachel:

Now have there been things ... One of our questions is have you seen things that have changed in a negative fashion? That, I think, applies both to in Asheville, our immediate community because that's our principal interest but that doesn't exclude national issues that certainly will affect us locally and across the country. Are there things or trends or actions that have changed your view about 00:11:00your status, if you will, as an LGBTQ person since you've arrived in Asheville?

Tina Madison White:

Well I feel very fortunate personally. I've been welcomed by the community, particularly the allied community. I really have been broadly welcomed. I feel very comfortable going out and about within Asheville. If I travel 15 miles outside of Asheville I'm a little bit more cautious. Certainly for the country we've had just a horrible four years and it's not, I'm trying to stay away from politics or partisan politics, I think the ... We just accept lying, we accept 00:12:00as sources of information as a country thing that we would never allow in our house. If someone in my family lied to me as often as we're lied to on TV I wouldn't allow it. I feel that I certainly have experienced attacks from the religious Right, for example, against transgender people. Balanced against that, I've also felt the embrace of a lot more people than I have before. It's hard to say whether it's good or bad. It depends on where we are a few years from now. I think that a lot of the horrible things that have happened have brought out the 00:13:00better angels in a lot of people and gotten a lot of people a lot more involved and concerned. I'm very happy about that.

Rachel:

As you see changes, and this is a question that's particularly focused on Asheville and Western North Carolina, what would you like to see that would be positive? What kinds of trends, what sort of changes do you think would make life better for members for this community?

Tina Madison White:

I'd like to see, number one, this is at the state level, I'd like to see Raleigh changed and flipped so that we can have greater autonomy and an ability to pass laws and regulations that address a lot of the inequities and prejudices that still persist even here in Asheville. Absent that, I don't think we could get 00:14:00through the rest of my wishlist. I'm excited that the city is doing a lot more on an equity basis. I think we need to continue to press for that. The proof will be in the pudding. I'm seeing with festivals, with events, with various public properties a greater tension to equity based funding of those events. I'm seeing some positive trends in school policies and things like that locally. I'd like to see more of that.

Rachel:

Okay. Those are sort of general questions. Now the real focus is what we'd like to get to, is your personal story. So let's begin at the beginning. Where did 00:15:00you grow up and what was it like to grow up? How long did you live there?

Tina Madison White:

I was born in New York in the middle of Manhattan. Lived there for five years and then moved to Chicago for three years and then to Washington DC where from fourth grade on that's where I grew up. I generally had a pretty good childhood. Had lots of friends, had a big family and I'd describe myself as generally happy excited for one thing. On gender I was, from an early age, around six, I was very confused. I didn't feel comfortable identifying as a male. I had lots of male friends but I felt a connection to women that I didn't feel with the guys. 00:16:00I almost felt more like a girl playing with the guys in that I was a tomboy. As I began to age, that confusion grew in intensity. I'd say until I was 10 I was confused. We didn't have the vocabulary about gender back then so it didn't even occur to me to think in terms of identity but I would often ... I just thought, "Well I identify with women." I hadn't gone to, "Oh, I identify as a woman," though I often did privately.

Tina Madison White:

I would imagine, I'd read Nancy Drew and imagine myself as Nancy Drew or Pippi Longstocking. Pippi Longstocking was kind of my hero. I think because she was a 00:17:00girl but she also bridged that distance with boys and so that was an identity I could sort of inhabit. When I became a teenager I got very confused and I think that's because your hormones kick in and I was very uncomfortable with the feelings that I had, very confused, felt very conflicted socially. It was at that point that I really started to consciously but not willingly put on a face. The way I experienced it was that I was just trying to man up and that if I kept doing that, eventually it would make sense. I wasn't trying to fake it but I did feel fake and I felt the problem was me. That I just hadn't grown up enough or 00:18:00that there was something in my family's past. I spent the next 30 years trying every imaginable solution, prayer, and I tried lots of different denominations and congregations, would read different religious writers. I read a lot of psychological texts and medical texts just looking for something that would explain this.

Tina Madison White:

I was determined that I would conquer my gender and that I'd actually become famous because ... Well first, actually, until the internet came I thought I was the only person in the world who felt this way. I mean, I really thought, "I'm just a freak," and didn't dare to talk to anyone. My family had no idea but when 00:19:00the internet arrived and there was sort of every year a little more and more news I began to realize that a lot of people were struggling with this. That's when I started to say, "Well I'm going to conquer this and then I will write a book and I'll be famous and I'll help lots of people." As you can see, that didn't work.

Rachel:

Well I think it did, actually. In growing up, and this is sort of a two part question, what's your happiest memory? Then is there a memory specifically about LGBTQ identity or an, "Aha," moment that you'd like to recall?

Tina Madison White:

I think my happiest memory, it's a funny one, it was when I was very young and 00:20:00it was just ... I was walking. I was in church with my father who was the minister of that church. He was the minister to a Black and Hispanic congregation in Hell's Kitchen, New York. I just remember one day just walking down the aisle with him and I was holding his finger and when you're little, there's nothing more powerful. It was almost Godlike where I'm just holding onto that. He walked me to the front. I think he'd gone to retrieve me because I was talking. Yeah, I'd been saying, "I want my daddy." He just came and got me, blushing, and brought me up front and continued preaching and I was just beaming at the audience holding onto his finger. I never felt safer or just sort of more at the center of the universe. That's probably ... I mean, I had lots of other 00:21:00neat moments but I just remember that moment like magic. I mention that because one of the theories that people often have and certainly had when I was working through all this was that, "Oh, you don't have a good relationship with your parents." Or, "You didn't with your father. He wasn't there as a figure." Or, "Your mother did something, you were closer to her."

Tina Madison White:

That was never true. I didn't identify with my father's gender but in fact now, he and I talk about this, now that I'm Tina it's actually given me a solid foundation and so now he and I have grown much closer and I identify with him more strongly because now I have my own identity to connect to. I think something that people don't understand is if you deny someone their identity, 00:22:00you're denying them their core and my father would say that today I do far more good for society than I did as Tom. He loved Tom. He loved me as Tom but he can just tell I have conviction that I never had before, I have energy that I never had before. I have empathy that I never had before and if you feel hollow inside it's very hard to offer other people empathy or offer them yourself. I don't really care, you asked me way at the beginning of this what my preferred pronouns are. I almost don't care. I want them respected but what I care is that I have my own identity and I own it, no one else does and it's the most precious gift I've been given and now I try to think about what good will I do with that? Whatever, label me any way you want but let me go do the work I'm supposed to do.

Rachel:

Did your experience as a trans person when you were young, do you have a sense that it created energy for you to do other things? Did it create an internal motivation to try and tackle the world? You mentioned earlier that you wanted to write that book and change people's lives. Did that experience that you had growing up, do you feel like it propelled you or it held you back?

Tina Madison White:

Oh, it definitely did not propel me or it certainly did not propel me in a good direction. I was transphobic. I was as transphobic as the rest of the world and so something that I don't share with today's younger generation, they can point their finger and say, "World, you're not letting me be who I am." I never let 00:24:00anyone in the world know who I was because I was terrified of who I was. I was my own worst enemy. Now, if I had come out I would have had a very different energy propelling me but all of my energy was bent on denial and on what I would have described then as fixing myself. It wasn't fixing myself, it was actually trying to suffocate and silence myself. It was just filled with shame for no reason that I could understood because I always felt like I was a good person. The only thing I could say positive about it, and this is stretching, I think I tried extra hard to be a good person, to be a kind person, to be compassionate because I was walking around with a very deep wound and I didn't want ...

Tina Madison White:

I quickly empathized with people who seemed to be in pain but that said, I lacked the confidence and the energy to do anything about that. It's why I think I went into consulting because I could advise you. That's very different from being an entrepreneur and owner. I wasn't ready to own things. I was renting my own life and now I feel like I own my life and that's the big difference. I own my life now and so I'm invested in it. When you're a renter, you're not invested in something. You may clean it, you may still be a good neighbor, but you're not invested in your life if you feel like you're just renting it.

Rachel:

Along the line, was there any particular organization within a community or at any level, national or otherwise, that helped you in that journey?

Tina Madison White:

Oh, yes. There are a lot of good organizations but in my case it was Human 00:26:00Rights Campaign. Happened to be there right at the moment when I needed them. I was working for Pfizer, a very large organization. I was terrified of coming out. At the time I had not been aware of anyone else who had ever come out there. I subsequently learned that someone had a few years before and it hadn't worked out well. I was afraid to even call. I was afraid to even search on our intranet to see what our benefits might be because I was worried that the thought police would see, "Oh, someone used the word transgender on our intranet." My company actually was the one who turned to HRC. It wasn't me, it was Pfizer, because they wanted a third party to advise them on how to handle 00:27:00this. I think they did that more out of a need for safety, that they could point and say, "We turned to a reputable third party so you can't blame us." Because they didn't know how it was going to turn out. HRC was great. They, in the first place, they set benchmarks with the corporate equality index for my company on what policies should look like and they discovered that their policies weren't there.

Tina Madison White:

They provided training, orientation I think would be the better word for my colleagues who were interested in just attending a trans 101. That was huge. That's why I remained very involved with HRC. I'm just forever grateful for what they did and what they continue to do for a lot of people.

Rachel:

In the process of coming out, Tina, did you have a support group? Sort of a 00:28:00place where you could, say a smaller group, that you could talk to and talk about your experiences and share experiences?

Tina Madison White:

I did. It was in New York City in lower Manhattan and the LGBTQ Center on I think 13th street. Initially it was once a week and later once a month owing to funding cuts. There was a group of transgender people that would gather there. Often 50 people in a room just crammed in a circle. I was an outlier in that by far the majority of people were Black and Hispanic. The few other whites that were there were from working class or homeless backgrounds, so I kind of stuck out as the only certainly corporate executive, except maybe one or two meetings, 00:29:00who was there. That wasn't an issue for them at all and it was ... There's nothing like being in a room with 50 of you and to talk about very deep feelings, it allows you for the first time to see both your ... When I walked into my first meeting and I don't know, I'm not ashamed because it was an honest feeling, but when I first walked in. I looked around and my first thought that came to my mind was, "I'm in a leper colony." That really is.

Tina Madison White:

I winced just even hearing that because instantly my next thought was, "And I've never felt so at home." They were lovely people, loving people and I just got them right away. I felt connected in spite of all our other sociological 00:30:00differences. I felt at home in a way that I'd never felt in my life and I think those kinds of group sessions are just critical. It allows you both to feel support and then it also allows you, as I started to do, to individuate and say, "Well I'm like them but here's what's different about me or here's what's individual about me." It was the first time I was able to explore my identity in a way that was helpful. Up until then, whenever I would think about my identity all I thought about was, "I don't belong, I don't belong." I didn't have, until I had that I belong, I could say, "Oh and here's what's different or neat or whatever," about me. All I focused on was, "I don't belong."

Rachel:

Wow. Do you feel like-

Tina Madison White:

It's cool. Some of them are on now. So I see some of the-

Rachel:

Oh, really?

Tina Madison White:

Yes and it's so cool. Anyway, that's just my little [crosstalk 00:31:19].

Rachel:

How extraordinary.

Tina Madison White:

15 minutes of fame.

Rachel:

When you arrived, this is a question that probably applies to mostly folks who are relatively recent arrivals here in Asheville, do you feel like in terms of your identity you arrived fully formed when you got here to Asheville?

Tina Madison White:

No. When my first marriage ended I read this book, I don't recall the title, but it was based on the longitudinal study of divorced couples with children and 00:32:00they followed them for five years and they learned so much from that. They followed them for 10 and then 15 and 20 years. What was valuable about that was by following them they'd say, "Well how did the children turn out? What happened to them five years later? 10 years? What about each of the parents? What made them tend to be better off or not?" One of the most singular conclusions they had, one of the strongest, was that people who remarried without allowing for three to five years on their own in between, had a very high re-divorce rate. The reason is that they didn't give themselves time to re-anchor themselves in their identity as a person. I actually brought that forward to my transition and said, "I need to be very careful about anything I say for the first five years 00:33:00because ..." The physical changes are easy by comparison. You explore a lot and you learn a lot about yourself. I arrived at Asheville, I think, two years after coming out.

Tina Madison White:

I was always very public and I did write my book where I wrote my story. I felt that was okay but I was very cautious about writing things about what it means to be transgender or anything that was a broad social interpretation because I just felt that it was my job just to listen and learn and to accept my immaturity. I don't mean that as a judgment, it's just where I was. I feel like I'm emerging from that now and am finding my voice. Frederick Douglass in his 00:34:00autobiography, he wrote about that. That when he left slavery he was afraid to write or speak for the first seven years and this just blows my mind. Because when he escaped from slavery, even within the free Black community, he was kind of considered very low level because he'd been a slave and they had, both whites and free Blacks, had a very low opinion of freed slaves. That they hadn't been taught to think, that they were uneducated, just all these horrible things. So he didn't feel he had a right to speak. So when he finally published his autobiography, it's because he started to feel confident in his voice and thank God he did.

Tina Madison White:

I'm no Frederick Douglass but that really just meant a lot to me and yeah. I think ... A mutual friend of ours, our author friend, help me ... I'm spacing out. You just gave me one of her books. Jennifer [crosstalk 00:35:31].

Rachel:

Jenny Bowen.

Tina Madison White:

Yep. She's the one who convinced me to start writing and she wasn't talking to me, she was talking to an audience, but she said even as she encouraged us to write our story she said, "But be careful what you say because you're going to be learning a lot in your first years and you can hurt a lot of people if you just blather something that you haven't really thought through. You could hurt others in the community." I think that's good advice even today.

Rachel:

Yeah. Do you know whether personal relationships, were there organizations when you got to Asheville that you found helpful or influenced you? Have helped you to grow here in Western North Carolina?

Tina Madison White:

There are quite a few. I happened to get involved with Blue Ridge Pride but that was more an accident of circumstance. Their executive direct at the time saw me, this new person and just swooped me up and got me involved and they had some crises and I'd spent 35 years helping corporations with crises and so I got very deeply involved in it. I'm glad I did. So locally I've worked a lot with them 00:37:00but Campaign for Southern Equality, Trans Mission, NAACP are groups that I've gotten involved with. UNCA's leadership forum I've gotten very involved with. That one I valued. I valued getting involved with groups that aren't from my identity. I think that both are necessary and people need a group that they can sort of retreat to when they need care and feeding, but if we all did that, that was my first concern when I moved to Asheville was the LGBTQ community was so atomized into lots of different groups. Asheville Prime Timers, Gorgeous Lesbians in the Mountains, Pink Pistols, each of the colleges had a group and 00:38:00that's fine, but what worried me was they weren't talking to each other and they're often apart from society.

Tina Madison White:

I've loved that more churches have started either to create programs or groups for LGBTQ community or have been much more conscious about inviting them into other things. So for me, I think I was also very ... Remained very involved in Human Rights Campaigned, which consumed a lot of my time. I would have liked to have been more involved in some other local groups but activism learning is very time consuming. The one that I'm most excited about right now is I'm working with Aisha Adams, who runs the Asheville View and Equity Over Everything and I'm 00:39:00learning so much from her and her organization. I had something recently where I was very excited. One of my roles is to conduct interviews of people in the community that we then, I guess you don't call it televising, but we air on the internet. I had met, I was having lunch with a gentleman who had been in prison for 30 years and was struggling with reentry. I was having lunch with them and their mentor, their sponsor, and we had this excited conversation about doing videotapes of them and really giving them much needed visibility in the community and raising this issue of the challenges of reentry and racial prejudice.

Tina Madison White:

That night, the sponsor said, "Could I come by and visit you?" I said, "Sure." 00:40:00He came by, basically told me that he would appreciate it if I didn't conduct the interview because I'm trans. He said that the person in question faces enough challenges and to be interviewed by a trans person would just prejudice his friends and community against him and he had enough challenges reentering. I understood it, I also felt very hurt and sad but I still recognized that I have a lot of privilege. I called Aisha and told her that, "Look, this is important. You should have someone else interview him." She just said, "No." I said, "Aisha, this is important." She said, "Yes, and we are here to help. We are here 00:41:00to help the community but that doesn't mean that everyone's ready to be helped by us and you are one of us. When they're ready to be interviewed by you, we will stand there."

Tina Madison White:

It was ... I started to cry because when you park your identity like that, and I was willing to do it, but you're leaving a part of yourself. You're devaluing yourself and I'm fortunate that I don't have to make that choice very often and a lot of other people are constantly walking into rooms where they have to speak quietly, where they have to sit on their hands, let someone else speak. I'm glad that I get to experience it very rarely. I was also glad to see what it felt 00:42:00like to have someone stand up for me. It impressed to me the importance of us. When I hear people say they don't understand Black Lives Matter and, "Why do I need to get involved?" We need to stand up for them. If Aisha had said, "I'll do the interview but I just want you to know that I think that's wrong," I would have appreciated that but I still would have walked into rooms being afraid.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Tina Madison White:

Now I know how to walk into a room, and Aisha's in that room, anyone who disrespects me better look out because she has my back. I think we need to make sure that people who are minorities most of their lives, that they feel we have their back. I think we've done a horrible job. I've certainly done a horrible job of that.

Rachel:

Are there elements of LGBT community where when you arrived that you've felt 00:43:00tensions? Or that you feel that there are divisions and there's a healing process that needs to happen? How do you think that can be addressed?

Tina Madison White:

Oh, I think there are a lot of divisions within our community. I think they were brought out in Asheville when I arrived because we were so comfortable. I think part of what has kept us together as a community for the past couple of decades is we had kind of a common enemy out there and we had to stand together. In Asheville, in the heart of Asheville, that wasn't such a problem. I think we're generally accepted, certainly LGB. T and Q I think I've had more of a challenge, particularly if they were transgender queer people of color. But because people 00:44:00felt comfortable and accepted, they didn't feel the need to stand with each other and I think as I said earlier, when I arrived here what struck me most about the LGBTQ community was how separate and suspicious various groups and factions were of each other. Some of the worst prejudice I've experienced in Asheville has come from people within our own community who pigeonholed me very quickly without knowing me as a person.

Tina Madison White:

Which is part of why, as I've said, I'm willing to own any label like transgender, transsexual, I'm happy to own those but I don't ... That's not how I want ... I want people to think that I'm someone who cares for my community. I care for you whether you're LGBTQ or not and that we ... I value joining groups 00:45:00that don't necessarily identify as LGBTQ because if I could only join LGBTQ groups I would be saying that I can't be a complete person and so I love spending ... Mary and I often dine out, there's sort of a, it's not strictly gay or obviously we wouldn't be there but 90% of the people who are there are gay gentlemen. I say gentlemen because most of them are over 45, probably well over 45. It's just wonderful getting to know them and knowing that I can feel safe and comfortable with them. The same thing with adventures with the LEAF organization and other groups that are very welcoming but they don't have any 00:46:00identity that officially connects to gender or sexuality. They just are welcoming. I feel most at home in many ways with those groups. Part of that I recognize is because I'm privileged so I'm able to enter those groups pretty quickly.

Rachel:

How do you think your privilege, as you said, gives you an entree into those groups?

Tina Madison White:

I am very educated. I came from a ... I'm very degreed. I have a deep background in a lot of business issues, lots of skills that they value and experiences that they value that have nothing to do with my gender identity. So it's just, I 00:47:00think people feel more quickly comfortable with me because if you strip away the gender, almost everything else about me feels familiar to the power elite. I don't like that term but the people who tend to be running the city tend to be white and educated, from a corporate background or a business background. So we share a common language. I don't think it's conscious, it just makes it there's a lot that I could connect to them on where they go, "Oh, okay, I get Tina."

Rachel:

Tina, we're not even about half way through yet our discussion so I was looking ... The next set of questions I think are of a slightly different character. We've got about five more minutes I'd like to do in this first session of our 00:48:00interview. Is there anything you'd like to talk about at this point? Sort of sum up our discussion so far?

Tina Madison White:

No, I hope some things that we discuss later would be family. One of the things that I find very hurtful are when, I don't mind someone saying they don't understand or don't fully accept my gender identity, as long as they accept my right to have it and not to be discriminated against. I don't have a problem with it but it makes me sad when they accept it as gospel truth notions that we don't care about family, about our children, about our spouses. That's not just 00:49:00trans people, that's LGBTQ people and nothing could be further from the truth. Both speaking for myself then one of the things that's been a delight for me is I've gotten to know more people in the LGBTQ community in Asheville is how actually ordinary they are when they're allowed to be. I mean, actually if you let them alone and give them jobs, it's funny, they gravitate towards the same jobs that everyone else does. They want to go to the same picnics with their children. I mean, we have the same boring conversations. They're not tinged with sexuality or any of that and I wish that ... I'd like to see people understand more of that part of the story instead of just our identity and our story, which makes us sound very self absorbed.

Tina Madison White:

When I was coming out and I'll lead this towards a convenient closing point or pause point. I reached out by coincidence, I was living in New Jersey at the time and I had read about this trans woman about my age now who was an executive in the Triangle Research Park. Is it Research Park? Research Triangle?

Rachel:

Research Triangle.

Tina Madison White:

Research Triangle in North Carolina and a very senior executive. She seemed to sort of mirror the path that I was on where she transitioned later and she kept, held onto her corporate job and I called her. She was wonderful, generous with her time and the wisest thing she said was, "Tina, people think that we transition because we're obsessed with our gender and with gender and they have it wrong. We actually transition so that for the first time in our lives we can 00:51:00stop thinking about gender." It's true. I don't mind, I feel like I'm an ambassador so I'm not at all put out when people want to talk about that, but if society didn't talk about my gender, for the first time in my life, I wouldn't be thinking about it. I wouldn't be going, "Oh, I'm a woman going to work." I'd say, "I'm Tina, going to work. I'm Tina, teaching this class." They said, "We transition so that we can finally stop thinking about it," and he said, "It'll take you about five years but you'll get to the point where you just wake up and like everyone else, women who are, cis women, they don't wake up each day and go, 'Oh, I'm a woman going to work.' They say, 'No, I'm Judith or whatever my name is and I'm a Republican or I'm a teacher.'"

Tina Madison White:

Their identity is based on all the things that they share and do with society. 00:52:00Gender is actually something that's imposed with a set of expectations and that's how I feel. I'm very happy and love who I am but it isn't even close to the headline I want to leave on my ... I care about what I've done for my children, I hope for my community, for work, if I belonged to a church I'd care a lot about that. We can talk about that in part two. I think that's what people completely misunderstand because it's society that's so focused on my gender identity and on that unique element. They're obsessed with it. If they would let 00:53:00go of that, they would learn all these other wonderful things about me that they would value. Somebody might not. Some might not. Some people don't like my sense of humor. That's what I ought to be judged on. Not this silly nonsense that we keep talking about. We need to keep talking about it until people feel comfortable, just as we need to ...

Tina Madison White:

My neighbor across the street is Black and she and I, we're on each other's porches all the time. She just said to me last week, "I am so tired of talking about race. I wish we didn't have to do that." I said, "You know, you're right. I'm tired too, but we have to." She said, "Yeah, I guess so." Because we're just friends and we wish we could just talk about recipes or other things. I think it will be so nice when, as society, what we're really examining with all of these 00:54:00discussions aren't the ills of individuals or of classes, it's really the ills of society that we're discussing when we talk about gender, race, religion. The only reason they're an issue is because our society is rife with bigotry and prejudice. It has nothing to do with, in most cases, people's intersectionality, as you put it.

Rachel:

Well I think a better term and maybe the term we could end on today is in our next session we're going to talk about our humanity.

Tina Madison White:

Yes, I love ... Yes and if intersectionality gets us to that as a connecting point, I'm all for that. Yes, it's our humanity.

Rachel:

Tina, thank you for this first session. I've really enjoyed it. I'm going to 00:55:00stop recording in a moment and-

Tina Madison White:

Great.

Rachel:

Offline we'll set up the time for our next interview. So thank you.

Tina Madison White:

Thank you.