Coming Out Pod

Tahitia Timmons' parents were hippies, and so Tahitia had been around queer people since childhood. But when she came out to her mother as a teenager, Tahitia was shocked - and angry - to be met with the response "Why would you choose to be gay when you're already Black and a woman?" Tahitia shares how it wasn't until years later when one of her own children came out to her that she finally gained a real understanding of (and compassion for) her mother's fear-based response. We have a fascinating conversation that runs the gamut from asexuality to the evolution of lesbian stereotypes to that first queer heartbreak that just GUTS you. Plus, Tahitia explains how her company, Conscious By Us, tackles DEI specifically from a health (especially mental health) and wellness perspective.There are a ton of places where you can find Tahitia! Check out her website, consciousbyus.com, connect with her on LinkedIn, and follow her on Instagram at @consciousbyus. Also, check out all the folks she shouts out at the end of the episode!

New episode coming at you next week, but first: it's time for another Lez Hang Out POD SWAP! Countless Coming Out Pod guests have talked about how stumbling upon the now-infamous Lesbian Masterdoc figured into their coming out stories. In this episode, Leigh and Ellie take a deep dive into the doc itself!Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that googled “Am I Gay” before it was cool.This week Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out to talk about one of the most controversial and widely read pieces of modern lesbian “literature” on the internet, the Lesbian Masterdoc. The 31-page document titled “Am I a lesbian?” first appeared in 2018 and experienced a rather large resurgence during the pandemic shutdowns of 2020 (when people actually had enough time to read a 31-page document).For those of you who somehow managed to avoid reading the Masterdoc, it is essentially every “Am I gay” quiz from 2002 onward condensed into a 31-page pdf. The main issues that we have with the Masterdoc are that it greatly oversimplifies the experience of compulsory heterosexuality, completely ignores all nuance involved with sexuality (to an almost comical degree), and uses exclusionary language when the doc absolutely can apply to anyone who experiences attraction to women. It also somewhat reads like an attempt by the writer to get her straight best friend to sleep with her. However, we still want to give some props for the Masterdoc being very purposefully inclusive of trans and nonbinary lesbians and at the very least not giving off terfy vibes.Even though the Masterdoc should certainly be taken with many grains of salt, some of the experiences listed really hit home (a little too hard if you ask Leigh). We’ve said it before, but comp het is a doozy! We dive into our own experiences with navigating comp het back in our ‘straight’ days and lament about why straight women have to speak so negatively about their male partners all the time (be less confusing, straight women!). If you are looking for a fun activity to bust out at your next shindig, we absolutely recommend pulling out this bad boi (fun for the whole family!) and seeing how many of your straight friends get clocked by the Masterdoc.Follow us on Twitter: Lez Hang Out (@lezhangoutpod) and answer our Q & Gay questions at the end of every episode. You can also join us on Facebook.com/lezhangoutpod and follow on Instagram (@lezhangoutpod). Find us individually on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida).

Writer Elliott Maya (they/them, and "a sprinkle of he/him in, like, a fruity Victorian dandy boy way") has a real way with words, in case you couldn't tell from that parenthetical. Raised in the *extremely* strict Jehovah's Witnesses religion, Lio and their brother were also the only Black kids at their school. As if this weren't enough, Lio started going through puberty quite early, which coincided with them realizing that they were "not like the other girls, in many ways." Lio knew that college was their only chance of escape, so they started working at the age of twelve. Along the way, they attempted to hide their queerness in high school by becoming a gay bully...but in an ironic twist, they ended up becoming "horrifically" attracted to their (also queer) victim. Besides being an absolutely HILARIOUS storyteller, Lio also has Long Covid, and started the group Covid Cautious Queers. We spend the latter half of the episode talking about the ways in which Lio's illness has changed their life, and the (easy!) ways you can help not only them, but everyone in your community.First thing's first: follow Lio on Instagram at @bougiebasquiat, and please please please see their bio for links to their GoFundMe, their Health Hub, and their Ko-fi! You can also follow them on TikTok at @transnaruto, and check out their *gorgeous* website at elliottmaya.com. Last but not least, follow @covidcautiousqueers on Instagram, especially if you're in Southern California. It's Pride Month, y'all - let's be there for Lio!!

OH, HELLO, EVERYBODY! The pod is coming out (wink!) of hiatus for Pride Month, and we're kicking things off in a big way with Nashville singer/activist Heather Mae! Heather recently dropped her new single "Kissing Girls," which is not only a "super-queer bisexual Pride mega pop song" but also serves as a reclaiming of her own coming out story. Mercilessly bullied for her weight throughout childhood, Heather's only solace used to be the music videos she would run home to watch every day after school. But when she started attending Sunday school in the fourth grade...the bullying stopped. As a result, Heather became deeply invested in both the Church and the purity movement, and although all of her early kisses and pseudo-relationships were with girls, she truly never believed that they "counted." Heather shares how isolating with her partners during lockdown and re-examining those early experiences (not to mention learning about comp het for the first time!) made her want to write a song that captured "the sonic embodiment of queer joy and liberation." It's a beautiful, celebratory episode and the perfect way to start off Pride!Follow Heather on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter at @heathermaemusic, and check out her website at heathermae.net and her YouTube channel at youtube.com/heathermae, where you can watch the official music video for "Kissing Girls." "Kissing Girls" is streaming everywhere, so go listen and add it to your Pride playlists!

Lauren couldn't put the podcast on hiatus without doing one of her favorite kinds of episodes: namely, a REDUX! When producer and writer Jenn Lee (formerly Jenn Lee Smith) was first on the pod in July of 2022, she was celebrating the publication of a book she had co-edited called "I Spoke to You with Silence: Essays from Queer Mormons of Marginalized Genders." Jenn herself was raised in the Mormon religion, and despite having come out in 2008, she had chosen to remain in a monogamous marriage with her husband of twenty-one years, with whom she shares three children. Suffice to say that a lot has changed for Jenn since the summer of 2022. She explains how the book tour for "I Spoke to You with Silence" kicked off a chain of events, and shares how her love for her children has only deepened now that she is finally living as her whole self ("I have been able to love them so much more since feeling right in my own body and skin"). Plus, Jenn describes her experiences on the dating apps as a "little post-Mormon gayby," and Lauren asks Jenn a question that she's been mulling over ever since the day they first met...Connect with Jenn on Facebook at facebook.com/jennlee.smith2, and follow her on Instagram at @bewilderfilm. Also, check out her upcoming documentary at homecourtfilm.com and on Insta at @homecourtfilm!

Pop-punk/alt-rock artist Chloe Star is so obviously comfortable in her own skin that you would never know she struggled fiercely with her sexuality throughout her adolescence. Chloe's mother is Native American, and so Chloe grew up going back and forth between the radically different worlds of Los Angeles and her family's reservation. Some of Chloe's stories from this time are deeply relatable (such as Googling "am i gay quiz" and secretly having a huge crush on Kristen Stewart while all of her friends were Team Edward/Team Jacob), but she was also grappling with more than her share of darkness. This culminated in Chloe being sent to an incredibly intense three-month wilderness treatment program at the age of sixteen; her mother's last-ditch attempt to free Chloe from addiction. Chloe's upcoming single, "Wasted Youth," is all about that experience, which she finally feels a sense of closure on a full decade later. We have a funny, vulnerable conversation about first loves, coming out at diners, songs about exes, and much more!As of this Friday, March 22nd, you can stream "Wasted Youth" everywhere! Also follow Chloe on Instagram and TikTok at @frenchtoastkiller, and watch the videos for "Fool," "Found My Peace," and "Happy Place" on Chloe's YouTube channel, youtube.com/@frenchtoastkiller!

Lauren gives a transparent, hilarious, and WAY the f@#k too long explanation of why she is putting the podcast on hiatus at the end of March!Info and resources mentioned:- The pod's website is comingoutpod.com. That's where you'll find a link to search episodes by keyword, as well as multiple resources on the "Resources" page (including the virtual queer community Google doc and "Lauren’s List of Lighthearted LGBTQ+ Stuff with Positive Queer Portrayals!" media list).- Other queer, female-helmed podcasts that Lauren recommends include Bad Queers, Two Dykes And A Mic, and Lez Hang Out.- Last but not least, the pod's AMAZING engineer/editor Averie Severs can be found on Instagram at @averie_severs!And stay tuned for two more new episodes on March 20th and 27th...

Author and librettist Leah Lax ("Not From Here: The Song of America") shares a series of incredible stories in a truly one-of-a-kind episode of the podcast! Leah grew up as a Jewish genderqueer lesbian in Northern Texas, and struggled with the fact that she didn't understand how to "be a woman" in the intuitive way that all of her (straight) friends seemed to. So when she was approached by members of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community at the age of sixteen, Leah felt "like somebody handed me a bulleted list. And all I had to do was follow it, and...I wasn't marginal anymore at all. I was completely accepted." Leah was matched with a man at eighteen; she had seven children in a ten-year period and spent thirty years with the Hasidim. Leah shares what ultimately made her leave the only community she had ever known, and explains the unlikely path that led to her writing down the life stories of over a hundred American immigrants for a new opera! It's a truly beautiful episode, and a reminder of why, to quote Leah, "we all need to be dangerous.""Not From Here: The Song of America" comes out on March 28th! To find out all about it (as well as Leah's memoir "Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home"), go to leahlaxauthor.com. And don't forget to preorder on Amazon! You can also follow Leah on Instagram at @LeahLax120, and on Facebook at @LeahLaxAuthor. Lastly, check out therefugemusic.com to hear snippets from Leah's opera!

Arohi Kumar has been a HERstories participant for the past several years, and in that time, Lauren has seen her confidence and happiness grow exponentially! Arohi (whose identifiers include transfemme, poly, and "bi enough") is a child of Indian immigrants, and the prevalence of male/female separation when she was growing up led to her feeling ostracized on both ends. When it came to attraction, Arohi knew she was attracted to girls, but describes the experience as wanting to be "attracted to girls in the way lesbians are attracted to girls, which is like a very specific, different thing." We debate gender roles vs. gender, and muse on why so many people (including Arohi!) came to terms with their queerness during lockdown. Plus, we talk anxiety, dissociative identity disorder, and OCD...but in a fun, quirky way, like the fun, quirky girls we are!(TW: discussion of suicidal ideation in childhood, but nothing descriptive)Speaking of fun and quirky, Arohi made a fun, quirky board game! It's called Grad Rush, and you can check it out at grad-rush.com.

Lauren has a genuinely hilarious conversation with comedian and podcaster Carmen Lagala, who spills all the details of her recent coming out story! Carmen grew up in Vermont, which is arguably one of the very best states to be a queer woman (hiking; leftists; liberal arts colleges; you get it). Carmen was so sure that she *wasn't* queer, however, that when a lesbian rumor spread during her freshman year of high school, she actually came out to her family as straight. Carmen, who now identifies as pansexual, describes having "teenage boy levels" of horniness as an adolescent, while simultaneously carrying a deep shame about sex in general, and masturbation in particular. She discusses how being in back-to-back relationships with men led to her feeling like her sexual attraction to women somehow didn't count, and how coming out on stage actually helped her get past that ("it legitimized it to me as soon as people laughed at what I was saying"). Also, Carmen shares her high school obsession with G.I. Jane, and Lauren tells a story about Michelle Rodriguez that she probably shouldn't!Follow Carmen on Instagram at @carmstagrams and on Twitter at @CarmenLagala, and subscribe to her YouTube channel at youtube.com/@carmenlagalacomedy! Also check out her comedy OnlyFans, and listen to In Cahoots w/ Corey & Carmen wherever you get your podcasts!

When 23-year-old grad student Maddy Kling asked if she could interview Lauren for her project on coming out stories, Lauren jumped at the chance to sit on the other side of the mic! But not only that; the work Maddy was doing sounded so fascinating that Lauren asked if she would come on the podcast to discuss it! Maddy is getting her master's in Dance/Movement Therapy, and her project explores how DMT can help the queer community "by allowing them to tell their coming out stories through dance and movement." Maddy identifies as both bisexual and demisexual, and regarding her own journey, she says that "the most comfortable space I felt being out was dance." Maddy describes the relief she experienced when she finally discovered the demisexual label, and also shares how she lived the bi dream of coming out in a Vans store! Now THAT'S how you embrace a stereotype!Learn more about Dance/Movement Therapy at adta.memberclicks.net/what-is-dancemovement-therapy.

It's Valentine's Day, and the pod is serving up a hot 'n spicy episode with educatrix, writer, and former AVN-nominated director, Tina Horn! Regarding her sexuality, Tina says "as soon as I knew that I had a crush on Fox Mulder, I knew I had a crush on Dana Scully." Unfortunately, she was growing up in a small, homophobic town in Northern California, and so the majority of her early sexual partners were restricted to cis men. Tina categorizes those early experiences as "all right," but even as an adolescent, she was already aware of a fundamental truth: "I knew that I really liked sex, and I wanted to do it all the time, and I wanted more variety and, like, different kinds of sex." Tina discusses becoming a sex worker at a time when the Bay Area had a thriving queer and feminist porn scene, and explains why it is so important for her to be out as such, even though her time in the sex industry has "waxed and waned over the years." We also talk about Tina's comic series, "Deprog" (which features a hardboiled leatherdyke detective and a genderqueer femme fatale!), and her upcoming book of fetish cultural criticism, "Why Are People Into That?" based on her long-running podcast of the same name. All this, plus Lauren gives a special Queer Root Shout-Out (TM) to the most sapphic music video of ALL TIME!Go to tinahorn.net to find out where you can pre-order both "Deprog" and "Why Are People Into That?: A Cultural Investigation of Kink" (and while you're there, sign up for Tina's newsletter as well!). Also follow Tina on Twitter and Instagram at @tinahornsass, and check out her podcast "Why Are People Into That?!" on all the usual platforms!

LGBTQ-affirming therapist Chris Tompkins clearly remembers knowing by the age of six that he was gay. So when he was told that his six-year-old nephew was "not old enough" to understand that he had a gay uncle, it started Chris down a path that ultimately led to him a writing a book titled "Raising LGBTQ Allies: A Parent’s Guide to Changing the Messages from the Playground." Chris describes how his religious upbringing made him genuinely believe that if he put all his energy into becoming "the best Christian," he could eventually make himself straight (spoiler alert: he couldn't). A natural storyteller, Chris details several close calls he had during his study abroad in Italy ("I feel like I was trying to come out"), and shares the beautiful story of how he eventually met his first boyfriend through a series of random-but-fateful events. Plus, Chris's record-breaking tour where he came out to a whopping seven family members during a single visit home!Follow Chris on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @aroadtriptolove, and check out his website, aroadtriptolove.com, for info on his book, his work, and much more!

The pod welcomes its first ever Singaporean guest, Tania De Rozario, whose memoir "Dinner on Monster Island" comes out next week! At the time that Tania was growing up in Singapore, positive representations of queer people were literally illegal on public television. Since this was long before streaming platforms and the prevalence of the internet, this meant that all of Tania's childhood teachings about "homosexuality" came from her Evangelical-convert mother. Things culminated in Tania being subjected to a gay exorcism (or as it was called at the time, a "casting out") when she was just twelve years old. Tania, who now lives in Vancouver, shares this and other stories from her past with a good deal of perspective, and an admirable amount of levity. Plus, we discuss how the horror genre is intrinsically linked with queerness, which is a real bummer if you hypothetically can't watch scary movies because they give you nightmares HYPOTHETICALLY.Follow Tania on Instagram at @_tania.de.rozario_ (make note of all the underscores and periods!) and at @TaniaDeRozario on Twitter. "Dinner on Monster Island" comes out February 6th; find out where to pre-order/purchase it at linktr.ee/TaniaDeRozario, but also check your local bookstores!

Lauren gets into it with comedian Andie Main, who just released her aptly titled comedy album, "Rocky Mountain Bi!" Andie grew up in Portland's artsy district, and identifies as "classic '90s bi." She reveals the various cartoon characters who helped her realize her sexuality, discusses her adolescent passions ("I was a horse girl, and then I was a boob girl"), and details the path that led her to who she is today ("a divorced, 43-year-old bisexual woman who had dreams of Alanis Morissette as an early child"). Andie also describes the challenges of dating couples, and - brace yourself - because we talk a little bit of smack about astrology SORRY!!! Also, a word of warning to the person who left the podcast a three-star review on iTunes titled "Would love this if it weren't for the foul language": you should probably skip this episode.Follow Andie on Instagram at @andiemain, and listen to "Rocky Mountain Bi" (as well as Andie's first album, "Magpie") on all streaming platforms. Also, check out Andie's new podcast, "Recovering with Andie Main," wherever you get your pods!