PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao
This is Embodied, from PRX and WUNC. I’m Anita Rao. Rae Garringer grew up on a sheep farm in West Virginia. Once they moved away for college and came out as queer...nobody thought they'd move back home.
Rae Garringer
I mean, I don't think people explicitly said like, oh, you can't move home now. But it was like very clearly why would you do that to yourself? You know what I mean? as if it would be like a punishment, like a life sentence of being closeted and miserable and scared.
Anita Rao
Rae did move back...and since doing so has been on a mission to figure out HOW to build a thriving, country, queer life.
Rae Garringer
Clearly we were here and had been here. But I also really was like, this is hard and there's people who've been doing this, like they must know how to make it work.
Anita Rao
Today, we'll hear about Rae’s conversations with dozens of other country, queer people and their stories of compromise, tenacity — and a whole lot of driving. Just ahead, on Embodied.
Anita Rao
For a long time, Rae Garringer heard only one type of story about LGBTQ people living in rural areas.
Rae Garringer
In any kind of queer media I'd ever experienced. For the most part, there were no rural queer people or they were killed. Matthew Shepherd Boys don't cry. Broke back. Mountain
Anita Rao
Rae grew up in rural West Virginia, so when they left for college in Massachusetts and came out as queer, they figured they would never move back home. There was no place for their queerness in the country. I. But after almost a decade away, they did return to the mountains and realized they were wrong,
Rae Garringer
I started to see queer people and meet queer people. And through that started to then hear stories of other people that queer people my age had known or seen growing up. And I was like, why is this so hidden?
Anita Rao
Rae felt like they'd been lied to. And this frustration sied into a burning question. If queer people are building full lives in rural areas, how are they doing it? This is embodied. I'm Anita Rao.
Rae's question evolved into a years long oral history project involving interviews with more than 90 queer, rural folks across 21 states. The project called Country Queers is now a podcast and a book. The collected stories challenge stereotypical narratives about L-G-B-T-Q life in rural spaces, and I've also helped Ray find answers to specific personal questions about life as a country queer. We'll get into all of that, but Rae's story starts on a sheep farm in southeastern West Virginia with slow dial up and very little exposure to queer culture.
Rae Garringer
I grew up about an hour outside of a small town, and we didn't have tv. We listened to NPRA lot. My parents are hippies, so that was a lot of my exposure to the world, kind of beyond the farm and the public schools largely, I wasn't exposed to queerness. My stepdad's cousin is gay, and so I grew up once I was seven, maybe once a year we'd go visit his family in Massachusetts. Tom and John were, are a couple that I still know and love and they were the first gay couple I met, but I think that, you know, they live in Cambridge and Massachusetts feels like a very different planet from rural West Virginia. Yeah. So I didn't really connect it to me, so yeah, it's not like I didn't know that gay people existed, but. In terms of like gay culture, there was nothing local and, and it was like place specific or regionally specific. And the only gay people I'd met or seen were, you know, were like white, cis gay men living really far from any of the realities of my daily life.
Anita Rao
So there weren't any like out kids in your county when you were growing up. What was your own relationship with your sexuality like as you were coming of age?
Rae Garringer
I wasn't really aware of my queerness in a conscious way where I'd named it and sort of accepted it. There were just a ton of homophobic jokes thrown around kind of constantly. I definitely, in retrospect, had some crushes on some friends who were girls, but I didn't, it just wasn't, it didn't even seem like a possibility. You know, I, I wasn't even really totally conscious about it. I remember telling my sister at some point that I. Thought I'd been attracted to a friend of mine who was a girl, and she was like, oh, it's totally normal. It's just like a phase. It's just whatever. And I was like, cool, this isn't a thing. I do also remember, you know, people would make, especially like teenagers, and this is late nineties, early two thousands, just like anytime queerness came up, it was like, Ooh, gross. And lots of jokes and a big to-do, you know? So yeah, in retrospect, I think like there's all sorts of things that I see as my queerness and my younger self, but it was not really clear and conscious for me until I. Left for college in Western Massachusetts in 2003.
Anita Rao
So you did, you moved away, you left West Virginia once you were there, is there a, a story or a moment that kind of represents to you when you really started to personally see your own queerness as opposed to, oh, this is something that other people do out there? I can't connect it with me.
Rae Garringer
I mean, it was pretty immediate, Uhhuh and it, which makes me laugh in retrospect, I mean. I went to college in Western Massachusetts, maybe 15 minutes outside the town of North Hampton, which many people who went to school in that area and moved from other places knew was sort of a. Very queer, very lesbian kind of place and town. I had no idea. But yeah, I showed up to campus the first day with my head buzzed in cargo shorts and a pirate t-shirt, you know? And so all the queer kids like found me pretty immediately. And queer kids who'd grown up in San Francisco with queer parents, you know, trans kids who'd grown up in New York and were out as trans. And I also, um. So the first week of orientation before the upperclassmen got there, they brought Kate Bornstein to campus to be, do a big talk about her gender workbook, and my mind was totally blown. Mm. So it was pretty immediate.
Anita Rao
Was there a disconnect for you between your experience as someone growing up in Appalachia in a rural area without many narratives or exposure to queer culture and these kids from San Francisco with parents who had known and accepted them their whole lives? Like what was it like to kind of be in that space as you were coming into your own queerness?
Rae Garringer
Yeah, discovering my queerness and, and that whole process was like a huge part of my college experience and I'm so glad. Then feel really, really lucky that I kind of ended up in, in just like such a queer place and such a different place than home. I think it made my process of coming into my own queerness a lot easier than it would've been if I'd stayed in West Virginia for college. It still would've happened, but I think it would've been different. But a lot of what was really hard for me, there was about people having just like really terrible assumptions about the south, about Appalachia, about rural areas, and sort of constantly saying that without a sense that there's any reason why that's inappropriate or offensive or hurtful. So, yeah.
Anita Rao
So then after you graduated from college, you moved to Austin, Texas, which is a liberal city, but one that is in the south. I'm curious what it was like to be in spaces where aspects of country culture and queerness were really coming together in the same space for the first time.
Rae Garringer
Yeah, I mean, I do feel like Country Queers as a project really started without me being aware of it, out of being a regular, at a gay country bar in Austin for most of the time that I lived there, I lived there about four years, all in all, and so I, I found this. This gay country bar through a friend from college and she had found this bar that was called the Rainbow Cattle Company. Then I would go at least once a week on the weekend nights, usually Friday nights. And I didn't dance for the first nine months 'cause the dance floor was this sort of raised stage in this dark bar. People were like good dancers. And so it was the first place I really. Found country queers, you know? Um, because I think all the queerness in MA in Massachusetts that I was exposed to, it was super city influence. You know, it was like Boston and New York and the Bay and Chicago. Many of the students were from those places that were my peers. So in Austin, at these bars, it was like, you know, there was a DJ who'd grown up in West Virginia and hadn't been home in years 'cause he'd been disowned from his family and we just. We loved each other, you know, and there were queer people who'd grown up in small towns and on ranches across Texas. There are a lot of people from other parts of the country that were rural, so Oklahoma or Kansas, or like Louisiana, Mississippi. And people really loved country dancing and really loved country music. Then that was, I mean, it was like church, like I never missed a Friday and we didn't. We didn't have to check in about it. Like we'd all just be there, you know, 10, between 10 and 11, we'd all just meet there and dance and, but it wasn't my whole social world, but it was, it was such an important place to me and I was so committed to it. And I do think it's the first place I really met country queers, you know, people who were queer and a lot of them. Couldn't and would never move home, but didn't hate the country and actually really loved the country and really missed the country, and that I did never, I never found that in Massachusetts. Right. There was this couple we called the Leapers who were this older, gay couple. I'd guess they were in their late sixties, but it was just, it still makes me emotional to think of this older gay couple who'd clearly been dancing together for years to country music and just watching them move together across, across the dance floor was just stunning. They'd do these little synchronized leaps suddenly in the middle of the two step that we, we were trying to figure out what the cue was 'cause they didn't say anything. There wasn't a noticeable cue. It was like they were just so in tuned. It was amazing. So you, I miss those places.
Anita Rao
You, you mentioned this kind of feeling of like people who were. Interested in going back to the country or weren't like, this was a thing of my past this, this could be also a thing of my future. And I know that you started to get a little bit homesick while you were in Austin, but had some reservations about moving back to West Virginia. What were the pros and cons that you were weighing in the decision to move back home?
Rae Garringer
Yeah, I mean, I'm homesick every time. I'm not in West Virginia still. That didn't just start in Austin, but it got stronger I think, and. Every time I'd come home, and it still happens to me, even if I'm gone just for a week, I just have this full body relief and release of being back in the mountains. That's, it's just is like this ability to relax in a way that I, I've never had it anywhere else, um, in the world. And I'd come out away from home and very much in a place in a time where. I mean, I don't think people explicitly said like, oh, you can't move home now. But it was like very clearly the message in any queer space I'd ever been in that. Like, why would you even, why would you do that to yourself? You know what I mean? As if it would be like a punishment or a like a sentence, like a life sentence of being closeted and miserable and scared. I think there's real histories of that, right? Like, it's not, like that's not coming from a real place and it's not the whole truth. And so, I mean, I did, I definitely also for years was like, I wanna be home. I wanna be home, but if I don't move home with a partner, I'm gonna be single for the rest of my life. You know? That was a big, that was a big concern of mine. But. Ultimately I moved home because I just was getting really sick of Austin. I was getting really sick of sort of going to country shows in a city where it was so disconnected from country life and. I got really sick kind of for the first time in my adult life with my chronic illness that I still am navigating daily, and I just like really wanted to be home after that experience of being really sick in a city really far from home where I didn't have a car and it was really hard to get to doctor's appointments. There were all sorts of reasons why I ended up moving home, but I had some real reservations and doubts.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, we'll hear about how Ray navigated being an out queer person in rural West Virginia and the wealth of other country queer stories they began to uncover. You're listening to Embodied from North Carolina Public Radio, a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can also hear Embodied as a podcast. Follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Up to 20% of the LGBTQ population in this country lives in rural America. That's millions of people defying the narrative that the only place queer folks want to live is in a city or on the coast. This assumed disconnect between rural life and LGBTQ culture is something Rae Garringer has been interrogating for the past decade. As they've traveled around the country documenting the stories of rural queer people like themself. Ray is the creator of Country Queers, an oral history project that began in 2013 and is now both a podcast and a book. The project emerged from a deep need in Ray's own life. They were living back home in rural West Virginia after being gone for almost a decade, and during that time away they had come out as queer, so they wanted some guidance for navigating the unique tensions of rural, queer life.
Rae Garringer
In some ways, I think a lot had changed from when I left in 2003 to when I moved back in 2011, 2012, and. Some of that was about media shifting and the internet becoming more available. But I mean, it's not like I was like, oh look, it's a queer like paradise. We're everywhere. But I would go into town to, you know, I rented this tiny, funky old house right next to the farm I grew up on from a neighbor. But I'd go into the Walmart, right? And there would be like, I'd see queer people, we'd see each other or. I have what I call a goat mentor. She's been raising alpine air goats for 50 years and has taught me everything I know. And I think the first summer I was home, she was showing goats at the state fair, which happens in one of the counties I grew up in and. I went with her to help, you know, move goats around and uh, get them set up to be shown at the competition at the fair. There's a goat barn and I was in there helping move hay and water and looked up and there was this, this crew of lesbians kind of just like watching me. And I remember being really like, sort of startled 'cause I didn't just expect that there was a lot of old farmer dudes, you know, a lot of like old school straight farmers around. Um, but yeah, I just started to see queer people and then became. I got involved with a really incredible and ongoing, um, youth organizing network in Central Appalachia called the Stay Together Appalachian Youth Project Stay and found a lot of political and queer community in that regional network. So was meeting queer and trans people my age across Central Appalachia and they weren't necessarily living. In the same state or part of the state as me, but I think I tapped into this sort of, kind of like regional community of queerness that was so different than anything I'd seen in Massachusetts or even than Texas.
Anita Rao
How open were you with your queer identity in the other spaces you were a part of, like your job and and your work life?
Rae Garringer
Not very, I mean, I, I think I'm. Very visibly queer, like queer people always see me, right? But I think there's an amazing thing that people who are really tuned out of queerness or don't wanna engage with it can just sort of, not somehow through some sort of mental just, I don't know, they just don't see it always. And so, yeah, I was working in the public schools. I had a lot of different jobs in the first few years after moving home, and I definitely wasn't talking about my personal life at all in those. Settings. I had a principal at one of the schools I worked at the first week I was there, I was kind of talking about a, an anti-bullying curriculum that wasn't specifically about queerness that I'd found on the Southern Poverty Law Centers Teaching Tolerance website that I wanted to, to bring to some classes, which was my job at that middle school. And, um. He told me that tolerance is a pro-gay buzzword and we're not here to talk about that. Mm. And I was kind of like, all right, this is good to know. You know, it's like my second week of working here. Um, it's like, in some ways very good to know where the administration stands. And so yeah, I just never talked to my coworkers in the public schools about. Being queer.
Anita Rao
Well, what was your personal life like? You mentioned that you had this fear that if you were gonna move back, you needed to move back with a partner. 'cause how were you gonna date once you were living in such a rural area? What was dating like when you moved back?
Rae Garringer
Oh God. Um, yeah, I, so I did, uh, yeah, I mean, dating was hard. I didn't do a lot of it. I think. Um. I also didn't have internet or a cell phone, those first few years of being home, and so. I couldn't even get on a dating app if I wanted to. I did. I made an OkCupid account on my laptop that I could check at the library in town. Oh my gosh. But I was trying not to be out at work. Right. Like I going to the small town library, like you might run into students or the parents of students that you work with. So I was trying to like position myself in the library at a way where like nobody could see my computer to send messages to people on OkCupid, which none of those turned into dates at that time. But yeah, no, it was rough and. That hasn't changed for me. I mean, I think dating is really, I think some people have a fine time dating in the country. I, it is not a thing that's easy for me for all sorts of reasons. So, yeah, in some ways I feel like I, that concern of mine was really real.
Anita Rao
You know, I want to kind of then place us in this moment where you. Were then, so you had these connections to other queer folks through various organizations that you were a part of, but you also were feeling isolated. It was hard to date, you weren't out at your job, and you described this kind of increasing. Sensation that you needed to learn more about how other country queer people make it work and have been making it work. And this led to your project country queer, which you say it's not a passion project, it's a personal strategy for survival. So what did you need to learn from it to survive and thrive as a rural, queer person? What were you searching for?
Rae Garringer
Once I moved home and was out in my not sort of professional public school world, you know, adults who knew me and who I was out to would tell me about a couple that everyone maybe assumed were gay, that had lived in the county years and years ago. Like these stories started to trickle out. And so, yeah, I wanted to document it. I wanted it to not be so hard to find, 'cause clearly we were here and had been here. But I also really was like, this is hard and there's people who've been doing this, like they must know how to make it work. And so I think I thought learning from other queer people about how they kind of balanced their queerness with local and sometimes conservative community tensions, how people found queer friends and community and people to date. I also was curious if. People felt connected to queer scenes in cities, or if it felt kinda like a different world, like I just had a lot of questions.
Anita Rao
I wanna talk about the terms that we're using, country and rural. How do you define those two things? Is there a difference between the two?
Rae Garringer
In the beginning of the project, people ask me constantly, how do you define country? Like, what counts, you know? And is it a population number? You know, what is it? Yeah, I'm interested in, in all of the messiness of country and I'm interested in people who generally live outside of major cities. I'm both interested in like us complicating what we mean by country. 'cause I think there's so many people who don't. Identify with the word because it does get sort of coded in a lot of spaces as agriculture and white and straight, and I want to sort of shake a lot of that up. But I do think after all these years of doing these interviews with different kinds of people in different places, I feel most maybe connected to and also concerned about in solidarity within these times, like country queers who are living like. Truly rurally in places where a major progressive city is hours away. Right. And is not something that we are very much influenced by ever. I think it's just different. It's just really different.
Anita Rao
So one of the first people that you interviewed for the project was a longtime organizer in rural Tennessee named Elandria Williams. They also went by E and one of the things that you asked e about was whether or not they identify as a country queer. Here is what they said.
Elandria Williams
That is what it means for me to be country queer, is that like you can't leave your folk at the door. You can't act like you grew up with people that weren't, like the people that are acting all kinds of crazy and all kinds of things, and. It's different. What being queer means in New York is not what it means for me.
Anita Rao
So I wanna ask you about that. The, the specific, like, you can't leave your folks at the door. How does what E said align with your own experience?
Rae Garringer
I go back to that interview with e so much in my brain these days and, and e passed away, um, a few years ago and I just wish I could talk to them now for so many reasons about so many things that they said in their interview, but that I feel like sums up so much of, I think what feels really different to me about being queer in a rural place. Than being queer in a major city. Right. Is that, I mean, I think this is true for country people, regardless of queerness, like we're gonna see each other again. You know, we're gonna see each other again probably for the rest of our lives. And so I do think a lot of times rural communities, you're sort of forced to have relationships with people that you like totally disagree with about all sorts of things. And I think. That can be really hard and really fraught, and there are times where that really sucks. And I also think it's kind of like a superpower of rural people in these times. And so when I've lived in major cities, which is not very much, but also when I visit them, I could spend all day going to queer events, queer owned businesses. I could surround myself with queer and trans people, community. You don't have to. Interact with people who might be religiously and politically totally opposed to your existence. But there's also this thing that happens in real places where like there's a Baptist preacher who lives up the mountain from me, who I don't talk to about my big, my big public gay country project, you know? And I don't talk to him about my politics, and he doesn't talk to me about his. And if I needed anything, he would be here. Yeah. In the time it took him to get here. And he, he sees me. I'm not, I look very queer and androgynous, you know, I don't go to church. He knows this like he's been to my house when there's been a big pride flag up. Like he, he sees me and he genuinely cares about me and I genuinely care about him. And he wears his Second Amendment hat, and I'm sure he voted for Trump. And I like deeply care about this man. You know what I mean? And he does for me. And I think there's all sorts of reasons why. It is possible for me to have that relationship with him. And a lot of it is about whiteness. A lot of it is about, you know, all sorts of realities of me, and I mean, climate disaster, right? Like we are in a time where this is happening to all of our communities, but it's been happening in rural Appalachia for years before. People outside the region sort of knew about it with Helene and. We don't get support from outside the region in our communities in the way that when a disaster happens in major cities, you know, when LA was on fire, I mean, it was national news for weeks and when East Kentucky is flooded again and then hit with a tornado again within months. It's kind of just us.
Anita Rao
What did you hear from other people about how they make that work? That tension of like, I want to and need to stay in community with you because you're my neighbor and we, we need each other. Other people might not come and help us when the hurricane comes, but also I know that you may not agree with how I live my life. Like is it working by just. Talking about things and not talking about other things, or what did you learn from other people about how they navigate that tension?
Rae Garringer
I think it's important that it's like, it's so varied. Yeah. And it's not like my relationship with that pastor is one thing. There's other people that live out this road that I've not talked to and probably never will because I don't think it would go well. And I don't actually want them to know much about my life. But I do think that a lot of the people that I interviewed. Across geography, across age, across religion, across race, did share sort of similar things to what I'm talking about. That you know, there are people who just suck and are hateful and there are places we don't go and just kind of know not to go, or times we don't go certain place. You know, I do think we're kind of constantly like. Aware of safety in the back of our minds. Mm-hmm. I think that's true for queer and trans people all over actually. But yeah, I like a lot of it is so much about relationships and that came up in interviews again and again that you know, people, especially people who moved into a community that isn't where they grew up, that there might be kind of lots of rumors at first about them and then when they actually befriended. Their old farmer neighbor who got to know them as farmers and as neighbors. That sort of one-to-one relationship and trust and, and really being in community meant that he became someone who would tell other people to stop talking about them. Yeah. You know, because, because he knows them and they're good neighbors and they're good farmers. They take care of their animals, they take care of their land. And so I do think there's so much about relationship. That's important in small towns generally, but I think, um, and then there are realities where like people have had to leave certain places 'cause there's an environment in a town or because they're more visibly trans or because they're, there's something going on where people are facing harassment and, and violence and can't stay. Right. Like that's also a reality that's come through in some, some of the interviews too.
Anita Rao
What did you hear in terms of a particular story that stuck with you about how queer folks found, found each other, like actually found and built community while navigating geographic distance and, and, and rural life?
Rae Garringer
Yeah. I remember there's a couple that I interviewed in Texas early on who met each other at church. Um. I interviewed people who grew up together and went to elementary school together, or who had a best friend from elementary school who'd moved to the city and introduced their queer friend from the country to their new best friend from the city who were then married. You know, like there still was a lot of sort of word of mouth and, and local community ways of finding each other. And I also think that. You know, a lot of small towns still don't have public queer spaces. Most of the towns around me still don't have public queer spaces outside of very newly, um, some small town pride festivals once a year. But there is this way, I think, in small towns where queer people, you know, have always been seeing and finding each other. And so there's almost like unofficial. Places, a lot of places where you might meet queer people. So I interviewed some guys in Southern Colorado and there was a bar, it was not a queer bar, it was a country bar. There were lots of cowboys there, but it was kind of known that a lot of queer people went there and the bartender was really supportive and, and would kick people out who were saying homophobic things. And so this is not advertised anywhere, but. People knew it. And so I think that that kind of sort of, um, just like small town way in which things aren't necessarily publicly called a queer space, but you know, if there's a youth after school arts program or just any kind of an arts space in a town, like, you know, sometimes there's a couple queer people there who are artists. Like, there's just the places where we end up gathering. So a lot of people find each other in those kinds of.
Anita Rao
You've told us a lot of stories throughout this conversation and, and I'm wondering if there is an example of someone that you have met or that you think about a lot who has really helped complicate this understanding of country queerness that might be a good example of something so different to the, the narrative that we all have or, or the stereotype that we might have of a country queer.
Rae Garringer
In interviews that I just loved and think about a lot still, Robyn Thirkilll is her name and she lives in rural Virginia and she actually is someone that I met on OkCupid when I was back in those days of going to the small town library to log into OkCupid on my laptop and try not to get outed to my students' conservative parents. Um, and when I was in grad school in North Carolina, I drove up to where she lived outside a small town in Virginia. And Robyn had grown up in the city, like her dad was in, I believe, the Air Force she'd been born in London. She was mostly raised in dc. She'd lived in major cities in California. She lived in Richmond, Virginia, very much like grew up in cities and her family going back generations had this piece of land in Virginia that. Her mom grew up there. Her grandparents grew up there and I don't know, I think at this point with her, it's like fourth or fifth generation black family farm in Virginia that she had moved to, left, you know, a whole adulthood of life in different cities and moved back with her mom when her mom retired to live. On this family farm that had been in the generation, in the family for generations and like, she just was very, a lot of people actually, this happened when interviews she, the questions about queerness just like weren't that interesting to her. Mm-hmm. And weren't that important, you know, she was kinda like, it's fine. Yeah. Like I do home healthcare. People are nice to me. We don't really talk about it. It's not a big deal. You know, I remember her saying the main thing that was adjustment for her was like how much people chat at the grocery store. You can't just get things done. You know, just like slowing down and like having to really just like talk to your neighbors was her biggest adjustment. So I think that's a really beautiful story. I'm really glad I got to meet Robyn.
Anita Rao
Just ahead. We'll talk with Rae about the changes they've seen in rural, queer life, in this political moment, and whether or not they plan to stay in rural West Virginia. As always, you can hear the podcast version of the show by following embodied on your platform of choice. Stay with us after this break.
This is embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Over 3 million LGBTQ. Folks live in rural America, and from Rae Garringer's point of view, queer life in the country can be blissful.
Rae Garringer
I live with a bunch of goats and ducks and dogs and a cat and a really stunning view of the river valley and the mountain. Kind of across, across the holler from me and um. Yeah, I spent a lot of time outside and on my porch.
Anita Rao
Rae lives in rural West Virginia, a couple of counties over from where they grew up. They moved back to the mountains for the first time in 2011, and the second time, a decade later in the 10 years between Ray did a lot. They studied folklore in North Carolina and worked in radio production in Kentucky. They also traveled to rural places across the US to interview other queer folks about their lives for the oral history Project Country Queers, which is now a podcast and a book. When Rae moved home for the second time, they romanticized rural life a little less, but its hold on them was still undeniable.
Rae Garringer
I guess just personally, what has become clear for me after. All these years and travels and interviews and trying to live in different places. As, I mean, I have really tried to leave West Virginia, like I've really tried it. You know, I've tried it again and again and again and again. I'm just kind of desperately in love with this southeastern segment of West Virginia where I grew up. I just, I love it more than like anything I've ever loved and. It is like legitimately hard most days. There's something about my life here, whether that's just the logistics of, you know, I live in a funky camper on a hillside with water issues with a bunch of animals, and that's a lot of physical work. I have a lot of chronic illness, autoimmune. Stuff going on. That means I'm physically in a lot of pain, a lot. Dating is still pretty impossible for me here. I definitely feel isolated from queer and trans and political community sometimes. And also I think that, you know, maybe it's just like age, but I just know about myself that so far getting to be in these mountains is kind of worth it for me.
Like because. Ultimately, even with all the things that are really challenging and you know, this political moment, this legislative moment, like it is intense and it's been intense, I think in a lot of rural and mostly conservative places for years before we've hit this national level. But like everything that brings me joy in my life is about living in this particular place and like, yeah, I guess I just. Maybe learned through it all that I'm, I'd rather make the sacrifices that allow me to be in this place that I love so much than have sort of some things that legitimately would be easier as a queer and trans person in these times, but be like achingly, homesick, you know?
Anita Rao
Are there physical queer spaces that you frequent in your life in West Virginia now?
Rae Garringer
Not really. I mean. Some of this is I'm a hermit. Some of this is I am immunocompromised. You know, I work from home. I'm a solo farmer. There's a lot of things that keep me pretty on the farm. There are definitely like queer owned businesses that I will go to, but like outside of pride, which I do just like small town prides feel so radical to me in a way that. I haven't experienced in major city prides I've been to because sometimes it's the only day of the year where we publicly take up a bunch of space in a collective way, and it's really powerful. So yeah, no, I don't, I don't like go to a lot of kind of established formal queer spaces. That said, I think, I think country life a lot of times isn't based as much around like going to a place as it is. Getting together with friends at home or at the river, or at their house or on my porch. And so, yeah, I think my, my physical queer space is often with my, my other rural, queer, and trans friends. When we get together, usually at our houses or outside somewhere.
Anita Rao
I had love to hear just kind of logistically, like how you make time for connection and joy. Given that you are pretty far away from other people, how do you make that happen as part of your day-to-day and weekly life?
Rae Garringer
Yeah, I mean, one good thing about growing up on a farm an hour outside of a town of 3000 people is that. Like an hour's drive is just what you do to get groceries. You know, like that's sort of ingrained in my sense of time for travel. I think that's, that's just different when you grow up really in a rural place. So, you know, I still drive an hour to get groceries, so then it's like an hour and a half, three hour round trip to visit with a friend is like pretty normal. But yeah, I mean, I think winter's a lot harder because, because it's hard to get places off the mountain if there's snow and ice. It's hard. The days are shorter. I think summertime tends to be a much more social season because a lot of life in West Virginia is, I mean, it's part of what I'm always homesick for is I've never lived somewhere where there's so many, just like stunning rivers. I can get in within 15 to 20 minutes of driving, and so summertime, there's so much time I spend outside with my friends. Like at the drive-in theater, that's like halfway between our. Places where we live in different counties or at the river or at the creek in, in their county, you know, or out on the farm where I grew up with neighbors in the pond. Um, but yeah, driving is, driving is a big part of life here. And uh, you know, it's three hours round trip to my. Doctor's appointments for my chronic illness. It's an hour round trip. Probably drive to my closest friend who I see regularly. And then I also have a neighbor who I've known my whole life who's not related by blood, but is basically my aunt, who I see a few times a week, you know, and walk over and have meals. And so there's sort of that hyper-local like who's on your dirt road part of living here that I really love. Yeah, I definitely, I think the longest I've ever driven for a date was like. Five hours round trip. Wow. Was it a good date? You know, it was an only date. It was fine. It was fine. But yeah.
Anita Rao
I want to ask you a little bit about living in West Virginia in this political moment. You have kind of alluded to the number of proposed and past legislation and, and how that is increasing. I'm curious about how these conversations play out. Within the community that you are a part of? Like are you talking about policy changes with your neighbors or, or, or with kind of folks in your proximity? How, how does that kind of like politicization of your queer life intersect with the realities of, of day-to-day interactions?
Rae Garringer
I mean, I think because I work remotely, I, a lot of the, the kinds of interactions I had when I worked in the public schools. I don't have as much anymore. You know, I mean, I see a lot of people that I, our neighbors that I probably disagree with on everything, like at the general store, at the post office or at the grocery store, but I'm not sort of like in close proximity super often. So I'm not usually talking about politics or policy or anything about my identity with a lot of. People I interact with day to day, and I am more talking about that with like close friends or other queer and trans friends. And so, but yeah, I mean it's just this, this wave of sort of national anti-trans legislation like is not new. First of all. I think a lot of, a lot of us in, in very red states, mostly in the south and the Midwest and the sort of. West, not on the coasts, have been dealing with pretty like horrific anti-trans legislation escalating for five years. And so that's been, that's very much been true in West Virginia. But yeah, it's gotten worse, right? I mean, we, the governor that we had in West Virginia for years, um, I wasn't a fan of, many people were not a fan of, and the governor we got this round is. Wildly worse in terms of, in terms of his attitudes towards trans people. His almost his entire campaign was an anti-trans ticket. And so, yeah, a lot of my trans friends in the state are talking about moving, and I already feel like I don't have enough trans friends in the state. So it's, it's real. It's real. And it's here. Um, and I, I don't wanna go into like a lot of details of my personal experience, but I think since moving home and being more. Public about my gender identity, like it's put some strains on some relationships that when I moved home the first time and was just talking about queerness, that strain wasn't there. So. Yeah, and I, I just personally experience all of this very daily in terms of access to, you know, I, I don't have any gender affirming medical care in the state of West Virginia. I'm a chronically ill person who's in and outta doctor's offices often. And so, yeah, I just, I think it's, it's really real and it's really here. And I do think that, you know, the other trans people in the state that I know and other trans friends in. In deep red states, and especially in rural areas, I think are at the front of my mind 'cause, 'cause these national attacks are coming for trans people everywhere. Right. And when you're in a state where there's maybe one surgeon in the state who has done some gender affirming surgeries and Medicaid never covered gender affirming care and Medicaid might get cut for everyone. Like it's just. It's different, you know, in terms of, I think being in a place where we never even actually got to a point of having a lot of like trans rights and services and then how intense this, this moment is. It's, it's a lot.
Anita Rao
How do you navigate that, I guess specifically when it comes to like not being able to get the kind of affirming healthcare that you need? Are there moments where you think like, well, should I just move somewhere else? Yes. Like, like how do you, what comes through your head when you're dealing with that?
Rae Garringer
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, I think definitely, I think, um, I. Like sometimes it spins me into this very self-critical thing of like, what are you doing? Why are you making this choice? This could be so much easier. You've kind of done this to yourself, which is like my, my own stuff, you know? But yes, I think, I think across the board, as someone with an autoimmune disease who's chronically ill, who's constantly trying to get medical. Care without very good insurance in a very rural and really economically depressed state where every, a lot of people are trying to get healthcare that we all deserve that isn't gender specific. Yeah. I have a lot of questions and you know, I mean, yeah, I didn't think I was gonna say this, but I have been, um, trying to figure out how to get top surgery for years and. It just felt completely impossible. You know, I live in a state where there's literally one to two surgeons that I've heard of having done the surgery at all. Their wait lists are years long To even get in for a consultation, I have to have been on hormones for a year, which is not something I plan to do. It's, it's in many ways very like outdated sort of trans healthcare models that. When I talk to friends in more progressive states, especially coastal states that are liberal, they're kind of like horrified that that's still the expectation. And so, yeah, I have like crowdfunded money to have a surgery out of state because it's just not here. And I think a lot of people had from other states, even from other red states, right. Even from other southern states had suggestions of how to maybe get this covered or. That just like are not possible in West Virginia, which is, I think goes back to my sense of there's, there's different kinds of rural and I think that, you know, there's people living country ways, but close to a major city like Durham where there's a thriving queer and trans scene. And that's really different than, than being where I am, you know, not to mention people who are in like Wyoming or Utah, where it's. Eight hours.
Anita Rao
Yeah. To a city. Yeah. So, so I mean, at this point you have heard so many different kind of variations of what it means to live a country life. Do you feel like your own narrative of, of what it means to be a country queer has changed and, and what is that new narrative you have now?
Rae Garringer
I mean, I think a big thing for me is that I just, you know. There's so many TV shows and movies and podcasts based in New York, right. And I enjoy many of them regularly. And I think what happens when you have so many different stories about a place is that you get this like level of richness that's beautiful. And to be clear, there's a. Depth of variety of story in New York City. That's incredibly different than where I live in West Virginia. But I do think that something that happens to rural places in a national media context still is like, I just still think there's a lot of like overarching sort of stereotypes or like generalizations that get made, and I think that one thing that. Has become more important to me and feels more true to me in my own sort of country. Queer narrative is like there isn't one thing it means to be a country queer, you know? Like there's some similarities for sure. Maybe isolation, maybe long drives. Sometimes having to deal with people we grew up with who drive us crazy, whether that's like family or people we went to school with or like. The pastor at the church where our family went, you know that sort of Alexandria comment of you can't leave your folk at the door. There's, there's these similarities, but like people are having wildly different lives and wildly different geographies with really different local politics and really different layers of identity and terms of race and class. And so that's something I think that's really important to me that's come through is like there isn't one country queer experience and I don't think we should. Think about it that way. 'cause I think it flattens, it flattens rural places. And then for me personally, I mean, I think it's just like, I'll probably always be writing about this tension of like loving this place more than anything. Even when it doesn't always love me back. Right. Or even when I know that there's so many things that could be so much easier. I mean, just like. When I'm, when I'm having chronic illness, friends in cities will be like, can I, can I like get you a few meals? And I'm like, there, DoorDash, I don't know if DoorDash exists in the state of West Virginia, but like they're not coming up on this mountain onto a dirt road before they even get to my dirt driveway with like wild goats to bring me food. You know, like there's so many logistical basic day-to-day things that are easier other places and like, I just feel like. I'm not really a marriage person. Like I don't get it. I don't plan to ever do it, but I feel like my relationship to West Virginia makes me understand what that might be like for people who are into it. Like just like I just, I just wanna be here kind of forever, even through the hard stuff.
Anita Rao
Well, thank you so much for sharing that story and so many others with me today. Rae Garringer. Thanks so much for the conversation.
Rae Garringer
Thank you. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
Anita Rao
You can find out more about Rae Garringer and their country Queers project at our website, embodiedwunc.org. You can find all episodes of Embodied the Radio show there, and subscribe to our weekly podcast, get more content from our guests in a peek behind the scenes of our show by following us on Instagram. Our handle is @EmbodiedWUNC. Today's episode was produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Wilson Sayre provided editorial support. Nina Scott is our intern, and Jenni Lawson, our technical director. Quilla, wrote our theme music. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District. North Carolina Public Radio is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm Anita Rao.