Content warning: Discussion of violence, murder, and sexual assault directed at LGBTQIA+ persons.
Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss events from their local community and the responsibilities people have to each other.
Transcription provided by automated service.
DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Revd. Deborah Duguid-May.
MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action. You know, I’d like to just check in. Like I would like to just have a little time to ask each other, how are you doing? How are you just dealing with life and the difficulties that we’re facing right now? And so Elizabeth and I chatted and we said, let’s do this. And actually, why don’t we every couple of episodes, just do this, just do a kind of a informal check-in and share some of the things that we’re kind of just grappling with.
DDM [01:13] I don’t know, how does that sound to you, Elizabeth?
MET [01:18] People ask me how I am right now and I’ll tell you the same thing. I feel sort of guilty about my answer because I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s wild out there. Like it’s the wild, wild west out there.
DDM [01:31] And you’re not just referring to weather, right?
MET [01:35] Like, things are nuts out there. The world is burning. It’s just crazy out there. And you can’t get online, you can’t turn on the TV without seeing something. They’re just like, huh, well, there we go. That’s the end of the world. But at the same time, like me personally, my life, M. Elizabeth Thorpe as an individual? I’m great.
DDM [01:57] Oh, that’s wonderful.
MET [02:00] I mean, we’ve had personal conversations about their specific things that are like, great for me. Like, I have some family issues that are, you know, but they’re not, like, explosively, you know, individually, like, out of the ordinary. typical things that happen. But like my life is going pretty well and I feel really bad about that.
DDM [02:23] Oh no, honey, embrace it, embrace it.
MET [02:26] And I have to say it is just me because like my family, everything that could go wrong with my family is going wrong. But like I say, M. Elizabeth Thorpe, the person, the woman, the legend, she’s doing fine.
DDM [02:44] That makes us feel a lot better. That’s awesome. That is so awesome. That is so awesome.
MET [02:51] So I don’t know if that completely gets to what you’re saying, but like, I’m doing ok.
DDM [02:57] Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s great. You know, I wish I could say the same thing this morning.
MET [03:01] That’s what I’m saying. I feel really guilty.
DDM [03:04] No, don’t, don’t. I think, you know, honestly, I think we all go through times when the wheels are wobbling and then we go times when we’re feeling okay, and I think when we’re feeling okay, we just need to embrace it and be like, I am okay, because we don’t know what lies around the corner, you know?
DDM [03:20] And all of us go through those great times, and then we go through those valleys, you know? And I don’t think there’s any human being that escapes either, you know? You know, I must say for myself, it was such a difficult weekend. and the snow storms and losing power and vehicles getting stuck on roads didn’t help. Yeah, absolutely. But it was really, really hard because, and this is quite personal, me sharing this now with you today. is we heard the news in our area where I live. So I live down in the Finger Lakes in Western New York.
DDM [04:00] About 30 minutes from our house, they discovered the body of a trans person.
MET [04:06] Yeah, this made national news. I think the Washington Post covered it.
DDM [04:09] Did it? Sam Norquist. Sam Norquist. And so for those of you who may not have heard it, Sam Norquist is a young trans man who had come here to Western New York in the Finger Lakes area. And basically, I don’t know whether he came here under false pretenses and was lured here, but they basically kept him for a month in a dog cage, tortured him unbelievably, and then ended up killing him and dumping his body in a field, which they found this weekend. Horrendous. I mean, the police were saying this is one of the worst cases of brutality that they’ve seen in their lifetime, which then in itself is just unbelievable.
DDM [05:01] But what I didn’t realize was how much it was gonna affect me. It really, for me, I found it hooking a lot of stuff for me. And for some of you who may not know, you may have guessed from my accent in our conversations before, I’m from South Africa. And I actually ended up moving here to the USA because once I came out as being gay and got married to my wife, number one, I couldn’t continue to work in the church in South Africa because you’re not allowed to be openly gay. You can be closetedly gay, but you’re not allowed to be openly gay.
DDM [05:46] And secondly, because it just wasn’t really safe living as an open gay couple in South Africa at that time. And so we moved here. But what I don’t often share is just the level of violence that we experienced in South Africa against the LGBTIQ trans community. You know, if I tell you honestly amongst my gay lesbian friends, I don’t think there was one woman I knew who hadn’t been raped. I mean, honestly, honestly. And again, these are not quote unquote reported rapes. These are not the rapes that form part of the national statistics. These are just the stories of people, somebody finds out you’re gay, they want to blackmail you, expose you, but if you allow them to rape you, we won’t say anything, you know, and it becomes in a cycle.
DDM [06:46] And this is with employers, this is with family members, community members. So, you know, the level of violence that the LGBTIQ trans community deal with is pretty horrific just under normal times. And you live with a, you get used to living with a certain just level of fear all the time, all the time. And so coming here, I have to be honest, once I kind of got used to the fact that this area seemed a lot safer and you could be more out, your guard starts to drop and you start to feel like, oh, this is pretty mainstream.
DDM [07:26] You know, there’s nothing, you know, crazy about me and my wife and living, you know, just our best lives. And then something like this happens on the weekend, and you’re like, oh my God, that was like half an hour away from where we live.
DDM [07:40] You know, my neighbors know the family of one of the guys who murdered, you know.
DDM [07:47] Grew up with him, you know. These are ordinary people in our communities that can, because of whatever hatred or fear, unleash the most horrendous torture and violence against just another human being. And it was interesting because, yeah, all of a sudden it was just like the all the fear from South African days of violence, and then this happening just kind of unearthed it all for me, you know? And I couldn’t leave the house, we were snowed in, but I didn’t want to step a foot outside. I found myself crying just every 10 minutes, I’d just break down into tears.
DDM [08:33] I mean, how’s this for crazy? Last night before I fell asleep, the note to myself on my cell phone under my notes was, take out the guns, put the bullets in and put them next to your bed for tomorrow. How crazy is that?
MET [08:50] Yeah.
DDM [08:51] Now, isn’t that crazy?
MET [08:52] Yeah, I’m so sorry.
DDM [08:53] I keep a rifle because obviously we’re in hunting territory and we have a rifle and a shotgun, right? And it’s always been there for if a bear attacked my goats or if there was a, you know, some kind of a something like that. Last night was the first night I thought I need to just bring my guns up and put them next to my bed. That’s crazy. You know, and It just makes me kind of wonder, you know, how many people out there are just beginning to feel really afraid, really afraid, you know, and I mean, God bless my neighbors.
DDM [09:32] I mean, you know, we live in a really rural part of the state. I think my neighbors knew that this was a rough weekend for Melanie and I. They brought me tulips, little like daffodil tulips. They brought me supper. They offered to help feed our animals. I mean, you could see they were just like, without saying anything, coming around us and saying, we got you, we love you, you know. And I can’t even tell you how grateful I am for just those acts of kindness, you know. But it was a rough weekend. It was a really rough weekend.
DDM [10:07] So that was my weekend. So I’m still feeling a little like my fingers are in the electric socket right now. My nervous system feels a little frayed.
MET [10:16] Yeah. Okay. Three things. One, there are whole online groups devoted to the idea that if you go far enough left, you get your guns back. As opposed to progressive gun control. So you could be in good company. Two, and this is just for your amusement, there is literally a gun advocacy group in Rochester specifically for trans people called Trigger Warning.
DDM [10:54] I’ve heard of this, yes.
MET [10:55] So there are a lot of people out there who are feeling the need to protect themselves that often you think of falling into the more like people who usually advocate for gun control.
MET [11:17] Three, and this is not a personal reaction to that so much as just kind of a timing thing. One of the things that happened in the last week that just made me livid in so many ways was the that happened with the Stonewall National Monument. I don’t know if you heard too much about that.
DDM [11:42] Say a little bit more about it. I heard some, but…
MET [11:44] So the Trump administration has done everything it can to remove all indication of transgender people and transgender progress from websites, records, et cetera, right? They’re just removing all record of transgender people, transgender studies, everything. They’re just removing it. To the point that the National Monument at Stonewall in New York, their website removed all reference to transgender people. Okay. If you know, and you should know something about Stonewall because we talked about it on this podcast.
DDM [12:33] We just had an episode.
MET [12:34] So, if you’re our regular listener, you know how ludicrous that is. You cannot remove transgender people from Stonewall because Sister Marsha P. Johnson threw that brick.
DDM [12:52] I was gonna say, it’s almost like removing people of color from race riots.
MET [12:59] That’s not how this works. Stonewall happened because transgender people were fed up with this.
DDM [13:08] Talk about rewriting history. Elizabeth and I are going to have an episode coming out on that quite soon.
MET [13:17] It just blows me away because on the one hand, you’ve got this group of people that are screaming, oh, you have to leave up these civil war monuments because we have to know our history, but also let’s take transgender people out of the history they started.
DDM [13:38] It’s a lack of consistency.
MET [13:40] I am fully aware of the arguments on all sides, and I can explain to you why that is not the same thing, and I can make it make sense for you, so if you want to have that argument, I am game. Bring it. I can do that. But erasing transgender people from the story of Stonewall is… I mean, it’s just shy of criminal, right? Like, you cannot erase that brick from history.
DDM [14:12] And you know what I think, Elizabeth, is for me, you know, you get these dominant narratives, like for instance, the taking down of, you know, trans or certain pages, you know, of healthcare or, you know, the taking out of those names. But what it leaves people in the community feeling like is, is my life being erased? Are they wanting to erase me, my existence? And that’s a very different level because we can have all these different arguments and debates, but when people in our community start to feel like, is my life wanting are people wanting to erase my life and my existence.
DDM [14:57] That’s another whole depth and level of, you know, and I think that’s what I sometimes struggle with, with what’s happening right now, is, you know, it’s almost like, you know, with the undocumented immigrants. You know, and all the debate around immigration. Are we just wanting to erase certain people out of our communities? You know, like there seems to be a lot of wanting of erasure, you know? And I think that is a very, very dangerous phenomenon in a society. very, very dangerous. Because then it just opens us to all kinds of horrendous human rights violations.
DDM [15:42] But also, you know, we get to the level of brutality.
MET [15:46] So I’m going to tell you a quick personal story. It is not particularly emotionally, whatever. But years ago, I was reading this book series with my kid. It’s a book series by Jonathan Stroud. It’s the Bartimaeus Trilogy. It’s a young adult series of books, and I absolutely love it. It’s, you know, if you’re giving up Harry Potter, I recommend this one. And it’s definitely like a fantasy kind of, so if that’s not your thing, whatever. But it, As the book series goes, it gets kind of into some political intrigue that when my kid and I were reading it, like I wasn’t sure they were kind of making sense of some of these bigger ideas.
MET [16:48] And in this book, one of the things that happens is the kind of ruling class takes over history classes and history books and takes over the library. And that is one of their kind of ministries of the government. It’s like the ministry of history and the ministry of librarianship and that kind of thing. And, you know, we’re reading this, and I remember talking to my kid, and I was like, do you understand why that would be important? And they were like, well, maybe, not exactly. And we had this really fruitful conversation about why It matters who tells the story of who we are and who’s in charge of the books.
MET [17:44] And as we talked, they got this expression on their face like, oh my gosh. And I remember telling them that kind of, who is it, George Orwell that says, he who controls the past controls the present, and he who controls the present controls the future. It’s something like that. It’s from 1984. And we talked about this kind of at length. they really seem to wrap their head around the fact that controlling language and controlling books and controlling what we understand of our past has a profound effect on what we see as ourselves. And I think we’ve talked about this in episodes, both that we have released and that will come up in the future about what it means to control a narrative, what it means to say, well, these are the choices that we make in the stories that we tell.
MET [18:49] It seems like a really simple well, we’re just going to say it this way. But that’s not the end of the story, right?
DDM [18:59] I mean, that’s why so many organizations have worked so hard to control the media. Who owns the media? I mean, that’s a huge issue in the USA, but it’s also globally. Globally.
MET [19:13] I’m actually gonna give you a rhetoric example. I didn’t plan for this, but I’m gonna give you one. That’s funny, our producer is gonna roll his eyes when I do this. Yeah, he’s looking at me.
DDM [19:24] Here we go.
MET [19:26] Because he’s been hearing this since I was in grad school. But there’s this dude named Burke who actually talks about the way, the word choices we make really do affect the way we see reality. And I’m not gonna go into like all of the five parts of the whatever, but let me see if I can give you an example that makes it make sense. So let’s pretend you’re in a courtroom and you are a jury member, okay? And you’ve got the prosecution and the defense. Now, this is a murder trial and it is up to you to decide what happens in this case.
MET [20:19] So the prosecution is going to get up there and talk about how Timothy was in this convenience store and he shot the convenience store owner callously and without regard for what the impact on the community would be. And it is your job to convict Timothy of this crime because he did it. And there’s not any question about it. We know what happened. He pulled out the gun. He shot the guy. End of story. He’s guilty. That’s what you should do. That’s the prosecution side.
MET [20:59] The defense is going to tell you about little Timmy and how he’s only 16 and the horrible environment that he’s in and how he had to take care of his sick sister. And he was in the convenience store and like he found the cash and he had a gun that he had just picked up outside and he was so scared and he didn’t know what to do. The gun went off in his hand, and he ran home, and he was so scared. He’s the one who called the cops, and they showed, like, wildly different stories.
MET [21:34] But the thing is, that’s the same reality. In one way or another, they’re telling the same story, but what they’re doing is emphasizing very different parts of that story, right? To the point that they’re even calling him by a different name, right? There’s Timothy and Little Timmy. The defense is emphasizing what’s called the scene of that story, right? The bad neighborhood. Little Timmy’s parents left him. He’s got a sick sister. They emphasize a different part of the story in terms of, did he shoot the person or did the gun go off in his hand? These are the same incidents.
MET [22:13] But the way the story is told presents two very different realities. So what’s going on in that courtroom is you’ve got two people trying to convince that jury of two very different realities. And that jury has to decide which one is real and that reality is going to decide whether Timothy or little Timmy is free or not free. So that…
DDM [22:42] And you know, Elizabeth, it’s so interesting you use that analogy because I feel like in our country, in the USA at the moment, that’s almost what we’re seeing. Yeah. We’re almost seeing two competing narratives. You know, there may be the same story, but the way in which people are telling that story, what they’re emphasizing, it’s almost like two surreal alternative universes, you know?
MET [23:07] And that’s why I emphasize in this little story that it really comes down to the choices that you make to emphasize, the story that you tell, the word choice that you use, and I will come back to this point over and over and over again. I mean, I’ve talked about it before now, I will talk about it in episodes to come, right? Like, this story that you tell is a huge part of the reality that we live.
DDM [23:34] Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, I think that’s why learning to listen to one another’s stories is so important. Because it’s as we listen to what has shaped a person, where they’ve come from, I mean, even like my own story,
DDM [23:49] You know, I can’t tell what happened this weekend without saying how that shaped was shaped by my entire history in South Africa as a person coming out, growing up, you know? So, you know, I think that’s why learning to listen to one another’s stories, even when they’re very different, is so important, you know? It really is, it’s crucial. Because when we stop listening, there’s no capacity for conversation. And I think we just become more and more polarized.
MET [24:24] At the same time, I think that’s true. I’m going to provide a bit of a caveat, which is not my bag, usually, because I am 100% in favor of listening to context and listening to… So I told this story to Carl the other day, and he was like, okay, get a little impassioned, why don’t you?
DDM [25:00] I feel like your house must be so dry. The humor must be so dry.
DDM [25:08] Sorry, I’m just, as you said that, I thought this must be one hell of a dry… not no alcohol, but dry as in humor.
MET [25:19] So I was at this conference and there was this guy who was giving his presentation and he was talking about something called invitational rhetoric, which I guess sounds great. But basically it’s the notion that Rhetoric is like this really sexist and misogynist thing and like it’s totally masculine and we’re all trying to convince each other and that’s problematic and aggressive. and we shouldn’t be trying to persuade each other. We’re gonna do invitational rhetoric, and that’s where we all come to the same table, and we all respect each other’s dignity, and we all have equity, and we come to consensus instead of persuading people.
MET [26:10] Sounds great. I had a problem with this. Not because I don’t think we should respect each other’s dignity and come to consensus. That’s not my problem. I told this guy or I asked this question or however, I don’t remember exactly how I said it. I was like, I think I have a bit of a problem with invitational rhetoric.
MET [26:33] And he was like, “what’s that?” And I said, “It seems to me, if you’re asking everybody to come to the table, you’re asking the marginalized to do a lot more work than the oppressor.” And he kind of got a funny look on his face. And I said, “Let me explain. If you’ve got a Jewish person and a Nazi and you ask them to come to the table together, you’re asking a Jewish person to do a lot more emotional labor than a Nazi and you’re just asking them to, you know, be decent. And I don’t think we need to be putting the onus on marginalized people to do all of the work of accepting their oppressors and asking oppressors to just not be blankety blanks.” So I have a problem with something like invitational rhetoric because it puts the onus on marginalized people to accept their oppressors and we’re not asking oppressors to do much at all.
MET [27:33] So I have a problem with that kind of let’s all come together because I don’t know that I should have to ask that of people who have already been oppressed in so many ways. So while I do love the idea of we respect each other’s dignity, we all come together, like I love that. I also don’t want to tell somebody who has been ostracized all their life, okay, now you have to do the work to make people feel comfortable. Does that make sense?
DDM [28:08] Oh, 100%, 100%. But I also wonder if we are also in some ways minimizing how hard it is for the person, for instance let’s take the trans issue, a person who all their life has been taught to hate, fear, demonize trans people. how hard it is for them to sit down and listen and hear those voices.
MET [28:36] I want to say that’s on them to do that work.
DDM [28:38] Oh, it is, it is. But I think the reality is, is that however we’ve been shaped and formed, we all have a lot of baggage. Of course, there’s power differentials, granted, but we all have so much baggage that sometimes makes it very hard to actually have the humility or the courage to sit down and listen to somebody very different from ourselves and hear what has shaped or formed or led that person to become who they are today.
DDM [29:17] I think it takes courage on both sides.
MET [29:19] I understand what you’re saying. I think it’s on the I think people with privilege need to do that work. I do not think a trans person or a Jewish person or a black person should be called upon to face their oppressor and do the work of.
DDM [29:36] Sure. And I mean, I think what I’m talking about more is community conversations. We’re in our circles of friends. We’re in our communities. We start to have a little more courage to actually say, What shaped you? How do you understand reality? What got you to this place? Because I feel like once we can begin to listen and hear Sometimes we come to more middle ground than we actually realize When we can begin to let down the weapons and let down the heightened emotional discourse, you know? Because I mean, the reality is somehow we have to find our way as communities back into some form of at least workable cohesion.
DDM [30:28] We can’t continue to polarize our societies. We’ll destroy not just the other side, we’ll destroy ourselves, right? I mean, we’re heading as a nation increasingly into a very dangerous place, very dangerous place. You know, so I don’t know. I just feel like at some point we’ve got to find ways to begin to hear each other better.
MET [30:54] Well, I will say this as a personal note. I have people I love very much who were ostracized and cut out of their parents’ lives or their grandparents’ lives because of coming out or who they are or whatever, I am not going to tell them it is on you to make good.
DDM [31:20] Oh, 100%, 100%, for sure.
MET [31:23] And I would be really mad at anybody who told them that.
DDM [31:26] Oh, absolutely. No, absolutely. I know, I agree with you with that, Liz. I agree with you 100%, you know? But I also think that for even our own healing, I mean, I’ve had those experiences, but I know even for my own healing, learning to understand why people have chosen what they have chosen and what shaped and formed them helped me deal with some of the pain of that in my own life and helped me come to a better place of wholeness and strength because I started to learn it wasn’t just about me. It was about other issues.
MET [32:02] was about other issues. And so I do, I think, you
DDM [32:03] I think you know, I think whoever we are and whatever side we find ourselves on, we become stronger the more we can understand. And it doesn’t mean we agree with, and I certainly don’t agree with what you were saying about how we all come to a place of thinking or believing the same thing. I don’t think we have to think or believe the same thing. I think diversity is healthy, diversity of thought is healthy, but demonizing each other, torturing each other, violating one another’s human rights, that’s not okay. That’s not okay. And we need to find ways, I think in some ways, to create a healthier society where that happens maybe less.
DDM [32:51] You know, but I don’t know. It’s been a tough week, so that’s where Elizabeth and I are. Where are you this week? You know, what’s been happening in your life or what have you been seeing or witnessing? How are you feeling about what’s happening around you or within you? And where are the places where you can have conversation? Where are the places where you can share what you’re thinking and feeling? And whose voices perhaps do you need to listen to and open yourself to? These are some of the questions I guess we’re all dealing with.
DDM [33:32] And I’d just like to leave us with a last thought, is how do we be that kindness for somebody else? You know, a lot of people are going through difficult times right now, and kind of like my neighbors, how do we just reach out to one another and say, I see you, I love you, your life is valuable, and just find ways, tangible ways, to reach out to each other and let people know that they are loved.
MET [34:06] Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prophet. find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
DDM [34:36] Music by Audionautix.com
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