Chapel Probation s4- Sheila Chappelle- Freed-Hardiman Pastor to Deconstruction Mentor

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[00:00:09] Thanks for listening to this podcast from the Dauntless Media Collective. If you enjoy what you're hearing, we think you'll also enjoy some of our other shows, which you can find by visiting dauntless.fm. Here's a sample from one of them.

[00:00:22] D-E-C-O-N-S-T-R-U-C-T Gotta Deconstruct

[00:00:28] Hello Deconstructionists, this is Maggie, the host of our podcast, where we'll collectively share our stories and experiences of leaving high-control religion, along with what it's been like for us to find new practices that help us feel good and confident in ourselves.

[00:00:52] I hope that hearing these stories reminds you that your deconstruction is valid, and most of all, that you are not alone on this journey.

[00:00:59] You are good, you are loved, and you are worthy, just as you are.

[00:01:03] Hello Deconstructionists

[00:01:15] I regret to inform you, you're on Chapel Probation, a podcast that takes a critical look at evangelical colleges and universities.

[00:01:24] And today, we have a new school for me. I've never heard of this one.

[00:01:30] I'm your host, Scott Okamoto.

[00:01:43] Greetings, reprobates.

[00:01:45] Now, if you listen to this podcast, which you are doing right now, you're likely aware of a community of podcasters, writers, social media folks.

[00:01:56] And they likely know of each other, if not the fact that they know each other.

[00:02:03] And this community, it turns out, is just one of who knows how many other communities centered on Christian deconstruction exist.

[00:02:13] And I don't necessarily think we all need to join together and make one big organization.

[00:02:21] More people isn't necessarily better.

[00:02:23] But I do think we should all find each other and be there to support one another.

[00:02:29] So a few months ago, a friend in our LA arts community tagged me in a post by today's guest, Sheila Chappelle.

[00:02:37] I had never come across Sheila.

[00:02:39] But I learned that she leads a group of survivors of church and Christianity.

[00:02:45] We exchanged some messages and I quickly realized that other than our mutual friend, who is a celebrated costumer for all the big TV shows here in LA, we had no other mutuals.

[00:02:58] In this work, it's easy to assume that we know all the players doing it.

[00:03:04] And especially if we're part of a large community that puts on events like content warning.

[00:03:08] But this is a big country and this is a big world.

[00:03:13] And I'm grateful to the stars in the universe for bringing Sheila into my orbit.

[00:03:19] If not for a random social media interaction, Sheila and I would have never known we exist doing the same work.

[00:03:28] So Sheila leads an online support group of folks who have been brutalized by the church for their identities.

[00:03:36] And she's been doing it on her own with no support.

[00:03:40] It makes me wonder how many other communities and groups and just individuals are out there.

[00:03:50] In any case, enjoy getting to know Sheila Chappelle, a former cis male preacher turned trans activist and deconstruction mentor.

[00:04:02] And she went to Freed Hardiman College, I think.

[00:04:10] It's kind of like BJU with a little more grit.

[00:04:19] Hi, my name is Sheila Chappelle.

[00:04:21] Pronouns are she and her.

[00:04:22] I went to Freed Hardiman University, a Church of Christ college in Tennessee.

[00:04:26] Tennessee.

[00:04:27] What city is that?

[00:04:30] That's well, I would scarcely call it a city.

[00:04:33] It's Henderson.

[00:04:33] Henderson.

[00:04:34] Near Jackson.

[00:04:35] But it's a tiny little town controlled by the Church of Christ.

[00:04:39] The town is controlled by the Church of Christ?

[00:04:42] Pretty much everybody in the government there is also affiliated with the university because the university is the town.

[00:04:49] Oh, okay.

[00:04:50] Yeah.

[00:04:51] All right.

[00:04:51] Well, now I want to know.

[00:04:52] One of those small town things.

[00:04:53] How you got here.

[00:04:54] So did you grow up in the area?

[00:04:57] Did you?

[00:04:57] Did you?

[00:04:58] I did not.

[00:04:59] But when I was a child, I grew up as a Church of Christ preacher's kid.

[00:05:05] I was in a pew from the Sunday after my birth.

[00:05:10] I was born on a Tuesday.

[00:05:12] I was in church on Sunday.

[00:05:15] And I heard from preachers, itinerant preachers who would come through every once in a while, you know, hey, we want you to go to Freed Hardiman University because that's where they had gone to.

[00:05:29] That's where they had taught at and things like that.

[00:05:32] And my dad had never gone to college, so he wanted me to have the chance to do that, but only in a Christian college.

[00:05:42] And our definition of Christian was very narrow.

[00:05:46] Yeah.

[00:05:47] And the definition of college is very wide.

[00:05:50] Right, right.

[00:05:51] So, I mean, I couldn't just go – I had scholarships to, like, the University of Georgia and other places like that that would have been better suited to my needs.

[00:05:59] Yeah.

[00:06:00] But I was not going to be allowed to leave the house or go away to school unless I went to a Christian school.

[00:06:11] So I had to pick between two or three different Church of Christ colleges, and that one is the one that gave me the scholarship.

[00:06:17] Okay.

[00:06:18] So I went there.

[00:06:19] Yeah.

[00:06:19] Okay.

[00:06:19] So how big a school is this?

[00:06:21] Because I've never heard of it, but that doesn't mean anything.

[00:06:23] But I was not aware of the school.

[00:06:25] Currently, I believe it's about 2,000 students the last time I checked.

[00:06:29] Okay.

[00:06:30] So it's not tiny.

[00:06:31] It's not tiny.

[00:06:32] It was maybe about 1,800 when I was there.

[00:06:35] But it's grown slightly, although, you know, like most church institutions, it's stagnating.

[00:06:43] But, yeah, I went there.

[00:06:47] It's about 2,000 students.

[00:06:48] It was a lot bigger than the town that I lived in.

[00:06:50] Oh, okay.

[00:06:51] So I lived out in the middle of nowhere and hadn't.

[00:06:56] I couldn't date when I was in high school because there were no other Church of Christ teenagers there.

[00:07:01] So I was super excited to go because I thought, wow, there's going to be people I can go out with at that time.

[00:07:09] Only women.

[00:07:10] But that I knew of.

[00:07:13] But, yeah, it was like a whole big adventure to me.

[00:07:16] So that's why.

[00:07:16] And it also was a day's drive away from my family.

[00:07:23] So that's how I ended up there.

[00:07:25] I was like, yep, I'm going.

[00:07:26] The day's drive was a good thing for you, was it?

[00:07:29] Oh, yeah.

[00:07:30] So I wanted my space and independence.

[00:07:32] I was tired of being controlled.

[00:07:36] But then I didn't realize I was going out of the frying pan and into the fire, basically.

[00:07:42] Just a different system of control.

[00:07:44] I had different parents, basically.

[00:07:47] Wow.

[00:07:48] Yeah.

[00:07:49] So when, just to finish up on your childhood, is those high control, you said you couldn't date.

[00:07:57] Did they control who your friends were?

[00:07:59] And did you go to a public school or did you go to a Christian school for?

[00:08:02] I went to a public school because we didn't have a proper Church of Christ school where I lived.

[00:08:08] Because my dad always wanted to keep us down in Georgia because that's where he came from.

[00:08:13] And he felt that was his, quote, unquote, mission field.

[00:08:17] And, you know, of course, there's no churches in Georgia at all.

[00:08:21] You know, only on every other corner.

[00:08:24] Not on every corner.

[00:08:26] I heard there's a few there.

[00:08:26] Yeah.

[00:08:27] Yeah.

[00:08:28] So they did control my life quite a bit.

[00:08:34] I was not allowed to date.

[00:08:35] I was not allowed to go to parties.

[00:08:38] I was, strangely enough, I was allowed to drive and work.

[00:08:41] And they really didn't pay attention to where I went to once I left the house.

[00:08:46] But, you know, if they ever found out I was with the girl, which that happened a couple of times.

[00:08:53] If they ever found out I was with somebody I was dating, then that would be all hell breaking loose.

[00:08:57] But, yeah, there was a lot of control.

[00:08:59] I had to be in church on every Sunday, every Sunday night, every Wednesday.

[00:09:03] I had to follow the rules.

[00:09:07] I couldn't, you know, I'm being a transgender woman.

[00:09:11] I definitely couldn't express myself the way I wanted to.

[00:09:14] Yeah.

[00:09:14] I was going to ask, did you knew that you were at the time or were you just questioning?

[00:09:19] Well, considering this was the, like, my teenage years were in the early 90s.

[00:09:28] I didn't have the words for it.

[00:09:30] Like, I had this vague idea of crossdressers and transsexuals.

[00:09:36] But they were always just on the outline.

[00:09:39] They were always the freaks, you know.

[00:09:41] I didn't know that I was a freak.

[00:09:43] I was just like, you know, so to speak.

[00:09:46] I didn't really think of myself as being that much of a freak.

[00:09:49] I just thought I liked girly things.

[00:09:51] And I thought I liked, I wanted long hair.

[00:09:53] I wanted to paint my nails.

[00:09:54] I wanted to do stuff like that.

[00:09:56] And I didn't really have any idea of what that was.

[00:09:59] I just thought I was a girly boy.

[00:10:00] I thought I was kind of a little bit of a sissy.

[00:10:03] Do you remember at what point you realized this or you started to realize this?

[00:10:08] It really gelled for me the first year of college.

[00:10:11] Oh, so later.

[00:10:13] I'm thinking, like, when you were a child, did you have moments of...

[00:10:17] Well, when I was a child, I used to do the things, you know, like, I would stuff my shirt with fake boobs or make myself pregnant or something like that.

[00:10:29] I would play with...

[00:10:30] I would sneak my sister's Barbies out of their room, play with them for a while, and then quickly put them back.

[00:10:36] And, you know, there were small little things.

[00:10:39] And I never really, like, never really gelled to me whether I was a boy or a girl.

[00:10:43] I was always supposed to be a boy.

[00:10:46] So you're not allowed to push in that.

[00:10:49] No, you're really not.

[00:10:50] There was one incident that I remember very, very clearly.

[00:10:55] And it was a church cleanup day.

[00:10:57] So we had an attic in the church, and it was full of clothes that were meant for the less fortunate, meant to hand out to the poor,

[00:11:06] which were, of course, sitting moldering away in the church attic, not being given to anybody.

[00:11:10] So I was tasked that day with cleaning and straightening the attic and getting clothes.

[00:11:16] And I was going through, and I found this amazing wedding dress.

[00:11:23] And I can't believe somebody donated it.

[00:11:25] It was so beautiful.

[00:11:26] It was all tooled out and everything.

[00:11:28] It was just as blingy as my little heart could desire.

[00:11:31] And I thought to myself, I wonder what I'd look like in that dress.

[00:11:37] I put it on.

[00:11:38] I must have been about 12, probably my daughter's age right now.

[00:11:41] I'm about 12.

[00:11:43] And I put it on, zipped it up, looked at myself for the longest time in the mirror.

[00:11:49] And then I had the dumbest idea possible.

[00:11:52] I was like, I'm going to go downstairs and show everybody how pretty it looks on me.

[00:11:56] And I got downstairs, and my mother took one look at that wedding dress on me.

[00:12:01] And she was like, get your butt back up those stairs and take that off right now.

[00:12:09] And it shocked me for a minute because it had never occurred to me that this was sinful.

[00:12:17] Oh.

[00:12:18] Like this was wrong.

[00:12:19] And then it was just really strongly impressed upon me at that moment that anything feminine, anything – the girls could wear the guys' clothes.

[00:12:30] Nobody cared.

[00:12:31] But me wearing anything feminine was going to be met with severe reaction.

[00:12:38] And so I was like, well, I guess I don't try that anymore.

[00:12:43] I still like trying on wedding dresses to this day.

[00:12:46] But I haven't gotten a chance to wear one that was mine yet.

[00:12:51] But yeah, those are the things that kind of clued me in.

[00:12:55] There were a few other things.

[00:12:56] Yeah, yeah.

[00:12:56] There were some significant memories.

[00:12:59] I was going to say you talked about sneaking out to drive and date.

[00:13:02] And I was going to say you had a double life.

[00:13:03] But you kind of have the triple life, right?

[00:13:05] Because you've got this identity issue.

[00:13:07] You're also finding your own identity just outside of the realm of your parents' control.

[00:13:14] And you're performing this sort of masculine identity that your parents want you to and going to church and doing all that.

[00:13:23] Well, yeah.

[00:13:24] And it's like they were very big on me being in leadership roles because I was being groomed to be a preacher.

[00:13:34] That was my parents' goal for me from the moment of my conception.

[00:13:37] And they were grooming me to be a minister in the church.

[00:13:44] And my mother has told me many, many times throughout my life that I was going to be the great minister there to save the church and lead them back away from apostasy.

[00:13:59] And so that was a pretty big burden to be laid on my shoulders.

[00:14:02] But, yeah, I guess a triple life is a pretty apt description of it because I was living trying to be masculine, trying to act like I wanted to be this preacher.

[00:14:12] I didn't.

[00:14:13] I didn't want to be a preacher.

[00:14:14] I didn't want to be a leader.

[00:14:15] I had to lead the music, the song service.

[00:14:19] I hated it.

[00:14:21] I was a young tween, early teen.

[00:14:25] My voice was garbage and changing.

[00:14:28] And that was causing all kinds of gender dysphoria.

[00:14:30] Wow.

[00:14:31] And I just wanted to not be doing all those things.

[00:14:35] But I kind of – I didn't have a choice.

[00:14:37] They were like, you get up in front of the church and you do it.

[00:14:40] That's it.

[00:14:41] That's that.

[00:14:42] And you're going to be a preacher someday.

[00:14:45] Were you a true believer, though, of the faith part?

[00:14:50] As much as a child can be, I guess.

[00:14:52] I mean, I bought into it for a long time.

[00:14:57] I started questioning right about the time I got to college.

[00:15:01] But when I was in high school, I was so sheltered.

[00:15:04] I didn't have any other reason not to except for my peers in school.

[00:15:11] I did realize I was different than them.

[00:15:14] Yeah.

[00:15:15] And I wasn't comfortable with it.

[00:15:17] But yeah, I mean, I believed it.

[00:15:19] I'd say even throughout my adult life, I was a card-carrying Republican subscriber to Rich Limbaugh.

[00:15:31] Glenn Beck.

[00:15:32] Yeah.

[00:15:32] All of those, I voted for John McCain and I was a pastor for a while.

[00:15:39] And now I'm an atheist, leftist, trans woman who's out there trying to fight against everything that my parents made me stand for.

[00:15:54] Yeah.

[00:15:54] So that gives us a nice end goal of where we're going with this.

[00:15:58] So let's go back to college now.

[00:16:00] So you think you have this freedom, you're away from your parents.

[00:16:03] What were the rules like in the dorms?

[00:16:06] And did you have chapel?

[00:16:07] And how many days a week?

[00:16:11] Chapel was every day except for Saturday and Sunday.

[00:16:14] So any day we had class, we had chapel.

[00:16:17] Is it required to?

[00:16:19] Required.

[00:16:19] We had a certain amount of skips we could get each semester before we went on chapel probation.

[00:16:29] And if you missed too many, you actually stood the chance of being dismissed for the semester.

[00:16:37] You could be suspended for the whole semester and none of your work would count.

[00:16:43] They would kick you out.

[00:16:44] And if you did it twice, they would kick you out for good.

[00:16:47] Wow.

[00:16:47] So you had to be there.

[00:16:49] We used to actually pay people to sit in our seats.

[00:16:53] Sometimes when we absolutely had to miss, we'd be like, listen, can you take a skip?

[00:16:57] Okay.

[00:16:57] I'll give you $10 if you'll sit in my seat today.

[00:17:00] You had assigned seats in chapel?

[00:17:02] Yes.

[00:17:02] We had assigned seats.

[00:17:03] So they would have chapel checkers in the back that would be going through the seats.

[00:17:07] And if they saw somebody's missing, they would know the number of that seat.

[00:17:12] And your name would be next to that number.

[00:17:14] So they'd assign you.

[00:17:16] Now, later years, I got to know one of the assistants in the dean's office.

[00:17:21] And I'd go in there and I'd be like, come on, listen, I just had to miss today.

[00:17:25] And I'd get them to scrub my name out of it.

[00:17:27] But yeah, we had very strict chapel attendance.

[00:17:32] I slept through about 99% of the chapels there because the seats were very comfortable.

[00:17:36] Oh, okay.

[00:17:37] Okay.

[00:17:37] So when you used to, were they bad speakers?

[00:17:41] Were they just...

[00:17:42] I mean, they're Church of Christ speakers.

[00:17:44] Speakers are dry.

[00:17:45] It's very...

[00:17:48] It was very much like a church service.

[00:17:51] It was dry, formal, stuffy, and very easy to sleep because I wasn't sleeping much in college anyway.

[00:17:58] They didn't check for sleepers?

[00:17:59] Because at APU, they had monitors walking around waking people up.

[00:18:03] And then if you didn't wake up, they would not count that day for you.

[00:18:08] They said they did, but I never got caught because I learned how to sleep looking like I was awake.

[00:18:13] Yeah.

[00:18:13] Some people said they would pretend they were praying.

[00:18:16] They would assume like a prayer position.

[00:18:18] Like, yeah.

[00:18:18] So gosh, in Jesus' name, amen.

[00:18:19] Yes.

[00:18:21] Yeah.

[00:18:21] No, I learned to sit and look like my head was up.

[00:18:25] So, and I would, a lot of times I'd be sitting next to a girlfriend and she'd just jab me with the elbow and be like, listen, get up.

[00:18:35] They're looking.

[00:18:36] And there was one, I can't remember which year this was, but it was at one point they got so tired of people sleeping in chapel that they made a stand for the whole chapel.

[00:18:48] Yeah.

[00:18:49] And they were like, no, no sitting.

[00:18:52] If you're sitting, you're absent.

[00:18:53] You have to stand.

[00:18:55] and first of all the chapel checkers were like okay now i don't know where anybody is like i

[00:19:01] can't see what the seats are because they're standing up and you can't see which row it is

[00:19:05] and all that it just looks like a crowd yeah and then second of all the students were like oh no

[00:19:10] we're not standing for a half hour every day just because just because that lasted for about a week

[00:19:17] yeah because the school can't make a chapel worth staying awake for i yes that and that that's been

[00:19:24] true of church throughout my entire life anytime you suggested that it be more exciting they're like

[00:19:30] no it's about what you put into it not about what we present to you which is horseshit interestingly

[00:19:38] i'm trying to decide which which is worse because apu and like evangelical you know non-denominational

[00:19:45] schools try to make their chapels really exciting so they get these speakers like we had people like

[00:19:50] kurt cameron and you know who are very dynamic but fucking lame is fuck like like so bad the theology

[00:19:59] is so bad and so thin that even when i was a christian i was like shit this this makes no sense

[00:20:04] but they were funny and they're entertaining and they shouted and and carried on and kept the

[00:20:09] students awake but at what cost i'm not gonna lie i'd go see kurt cameron just to see the train wreck

[00:20:16] oh yeah kurt cameron inspired the only student protest i ever remember at apu um because he gave

[00:20:25] a whole talk on why love was overrated and fear and hell were the way to go and the good christian

[00:20:31] kids were were upset that they had a protest our most exciting speakers were politicians

[00:20:39] oh um they would bring in politicians for um especially during election season you know

[00:20:46] local politicians would come in and give this little this little um spiel about christianity and then we'd

[00:20:54] all talk about them because we knew they weren't members of the one true church right they're just

[00:20:58] trying they were allowed to speak yeah they're they're just trying to get votes and we were like oh

[00:21:02] i heard that they were a baptist yeah but they were probably better than trump they're methodist they

[00:21:07] probably didn't say two corinthians no i can't remember any of them doing anything like that

[00:21:14] no but i mean chapel as a whole there there are a whole lot of people who leave that college who

[00:21:21] are like i miss chapel because that was when we were all together during the day and the real ones are

[00:21:27] always like i don't miss having to give away an hour out of the middle of my day

[00:21:32] no you know so much more we could do during that time you don't get that hour back um no and it's

[00:21:39] every day and it's like right before lunch and then you have to cram lunch in your face and then go to

[00:21:44] your next class yeah it's it's rough and parts of the time i had choir practice so i had to run from

[00:21:50] uh i had to run from chapel go to choir practice go to uh from choir practice i'd have 10 minutes to go

[00:21:58] grab a lunch and then grab take my lunch and go sit in my one o'clock class so it was it was

[00:22:05] stressful to say the least so what was the um what were the classes like did you feel like it was a

[00:22:11] college experience academically or was it like a lot of these schools where it's pretty much just

[00:22:15] religious indoctrination in all the classes uh against my my father's best wishes i did not major

[00:22:23] in bible or ministry um i chose to major and he i got him to agree to it because i said listen i need

[00:22:32] a backup in case ministry doesn't pay the bills you know i can do something and then then minister

[00:22:39] you know as part of my uh as part of my daily life um and so i decided to first of all go into

[00:22:47] communication and then i switched midstream and got a psychology degree because i wanted to find out what

[00:22:53] the hell was wrong with me um and it seemed cheaper than therapy um but i um the classes

[00:23:05] um for for bible classes we had to take at least one bible course every every semester um so you had

[00:23:12] to take at least two credit hours of uh of bible um i mean they were your basic run-of-the-mill

[00:23:21] sunday school classes i thought and you know they had memory verses and college have classes in college

[00:23:30] yes we'd have classes like acts of the apostles uh we'd have life of christ we'd have um there were some

[00:23:41] tailored specifically to ministry and there were um you know i i would if you were really daring you'd

[00:23:50] take the class on revelation because nobody really understood what that book was still don't understand

[00:23:55] that book um i don't think we're meant to honestly but yeah we would we would take bible classes and

[00:24:03] those were those were just like any normal um sunday school class you'd ever go to in a church any

[00:24:10] given church you say sunday school because you're it sounds like you're not describing someone with like

[00:24:15] a phd in theology teaching these classes you know breaking it well the thing is they did have phds

[00:24:21] but they came from those schools right so they had doctorates from those schools and other schools like

[00:24:29] it so i mean it was all basically you know you're pouring out of one picture into another you know and

[00:24:37] then back into the original one it's it's kind of it i i mean they were all from these little

[00:24:43] fundamentalist preaching schools and stuff like that and some of them didn't even have uh doctorates so

[00:24:49] um i mean in the the other classes the academic courses like my communications classes uh were

[00:24:58] basically teachers presenting me with a bunch of um a bunch of here's how to technical now go do

[00:25:05] something yeah like basically everything was field practice everything i learned about broadcasting and tv

[00:25:11] production was done on my own uh sort of like a practicum or internships even and then when i

[00:25:19] switched to psychology we had two professors that uh had classes in the basement in one of the girls

[00:25:26] dormitories and uh they were both so close to retirement and could not have given less of a fuck

[00:25:34] that you know they were just like here here's a course material i need you to read this we'll talk

[00:25:39] about it in class we'll make it as boring as possible for you and then you know we'll give you an exam and

[00:25:46] you pass all right so i mean you know it i really left there and i i struggle to say whether or not i left

[00:25:55] there feeling uneducated because i was i was um because of issues with my family i was being plunged into a deep

[00:26:06] dark depression my family my gender identity everything was kind of coming together at that

[00:26:11] point so i had trouble following the classes but they also weren't very easy to follow and nobody ever

[00:26:20] checked on me no nobody ever checked on me at all nobody ever thought to say hey uh sheila are you

[00:26:29] okay like you look like you're struggling or you haven't been to class in uh in a month are you are

[00:26:36] you okay nobody ever reached out my advisors didn't do anything like that uh counselors didn't um

[00:26:46] people at the churches i would go to didn't pay attention to it so i struggled through it and the

[00:26:53] education was subpar and honestly most of the people i knew who were successful after that got got so

[00:27:02] because they went to another place it sure sounds like sheila went to the bju of tennessee right high

[00:27:12] control no fun chapel every goddamn day basically no commingling in the dorms uh you have to tell them

[00:27:22] where you're going when you leave campus there's curfew and of course the usual shitty education

[00:27:29] faux theology bigotry sexism all that look out bju freed hardiman is coming for you

[00:27:41] and speaking of coming the students at freed hardiman seemed to be experts in living that dual or

[00:27:50] triplicate life that sheila has described so it's like mostly adherence to the high control you deny

[00:27:58] your humanity um but it's also i don't know you drink you party you sex it up you have fun in the shadows

[00:28:09] of course it also sounds like a lot of work but hey a for effort now if you listened to the valentine's

[00:28:18] episode uh sorry um uh back in february uh you'll resonate with some of the stories sheila is about

[00:28:27] to tell yeah we're just getting into this because this is a christian college after all

[00:28:34] but prepare to learn a new word boogin that's boogin i had i had her spell it for me b-o-o-g-i-n

[00:28:45] uh apostrophe no g no g okay back back to sheila yeah so yeah it was it was not a great education

[00:29:00] honestly yeah yeah and it's i would be surprised if you said it was um right right real quick what

[00:29:07] was what was the dorms like they had the oppressive rules of you know no no uh no girls in the boys

[00:29:14] dorms it's in all that stuff dormitories okay so i was in the boys dorm at that time of course um

[00:29:24] and um girls were not allowed to come into our lobbies even if they were definitely not allowed

[00:29:30] to come into our rooms but they couldn't even come in the lobby okay so if it was raining or storming

[00:29:34] or snowing or whatever your girlfriend had to wait outside if she was coming to get your storm

[00:29:39] uh nope it didn't matter the um if if tanks were rolling down the avenue they couldn't come in

[00:29:47] yeah and we were allowed to go in their lobbies because of course men are supposed to come pick up

[00:29:52] the ladies when they're courting um we weren't allowed to lay down in the lobbies because that's

[00:29:59] a sexual position right um as far as the men's dorm goes i can't really speak to the women's dorm because

[00:30:07] i wasn't allowed but the men um i lived in a dorm two two guys to a room and um

[00:30:16] we had communal showers which meant that if you wanted to be clean you had to be naked in front of

[00:30:23] your whole floor basically um because anybody could come in at any time um and uh we tried putting

[00:30:33] shower curtains up at the beginning of each semester but the but the uh macho alpha males would rip them

[00:30:40] down because who knows shower i was waiting for that yeah the same ones that would uh streak through

[00:30:48] the halls at night trying to get you to look at their dick you know because they're totally straight

[00:30:52] and non-homosexual in any way um the ones who would knock on your door and flash we had a we had a whole

[00:31:02] back and forth because we would get like uh icy hot oh jeez like uh and try to try to get it you know

[00:31:11] get somebody's dick with icy hot you know when they tried to flash you like okay this is

[00:31:15] payback for flashing me you know and then we would uh just it was just so in retrospect especially it's

[00:31:24] just so uh homoerotic it's it's it's almost unbelievable and i believe it but everybody

[00:31:32] everybody felt comfortable doing because it's like surely there's no homosexuals in this dorm so

[00:31:39] they don't even have to say no homo there were yeah exactly well if you say no homo you're you're

[00:31:45] absolved of everything yeah and i was like well you know looking back at him like oh my god you don't

[00:31:52] know who was looking at you and uh some of them were well represented and some of them not so much so

[00:32:00] i always knew the tea whenever a female friend of mine was thinking about dating one of those guys in

[00:32:06] my dorm like listen yes yes go for it or maybe not wait maybe not because of their identity

[00:32:13] no because they they've showed their stuff to me oh and oh and you had like a rating system of yeah we

[00:32:19] would have a rating we were like when we're looking at about a 3.4 you know something like that

[00:32:24] well yeah this yeah oh my god but yeah it was very uh the rules for the dorm we had to uh we had to be

[00:32:35] what time was it we had to be in we had to be in by i think it was 11 or 10 o'clock 10 o'clock on weekdays

[00:32:43] we had to be in and we or they got really liberal towards the end there and let us stay out till 11 30 on weekends

[00:32:53] um and when we would come in at night if we would come in after check-in uh they would they would have

[00:33:00] somebody sitting at the front door of course where were you or what would mark know what time you did

[00:33:05] you did to come in what your name was and uh what were you doing and you know i would sometimes look

[00:33:11] at them and they'd be like really none of your business i have to put something that was a bible

[00:33:18] study yeah okay so exactly i was at a quilting bee or something i don't know just put something

[00:33:24] down where were you they would ask that if i can ask what can i ask where you were

[00:33:31] i was mostly good oh okay mostly good i i um i did not let the rules about no sexual activity

[00:33:43] stick to me i was pretty i i bought into the i bought into the doctrine for the most part but

[00:33:52] i always knew that my libido was too strong and i was never going to be able to hold off until marriage

[00:34:01] so you know when i had a girlfriend we would go to somebody's house you know in the next town over

[00:34:07] and that's where we would we would do the deed so sometimes i would be out there sometimes we'd be

[00:34:13] parked out at one of the state parks somewhere after hours uh running off whenever the rangers caught us

[00:34:19] and you know uh but i would always try to get back by by midnight at least anyway because we had like a

[00:34:25] grace period there um and the you know if we weren't in our dorm dorms they would go through and check the

[00:34:33] rooms room by room and check to see if you were in and if if you weren't you got reported and you went to

[00:34:39] the dean's office and probably got kicked out but yeah me uh i found and and lots of other people

[00:34:46] in my campus found plenty of ways to let our uh post-adolescent hormones go interesting so yeah it

[00:34:55] was prevalent enough that so on the surface you're all acting like good christian kids because that's

[00:35:02] what you're supposed to do but the underground of sexual activity probably drinking i assume was was a

[00:35:09] real thing yeah wow i had a uh when i moved into a new dormitory my sophomore year i pulled the bed

[00:35:18] away from the wall and somebody had knocked part of the blocks out and used it just that's what was

[00:35:23] the contraband hole oh it was uh where you would put the porn and the booze and hide it there and i

[00:35:31] took i had a bulletin board up on the wall too i took that down there's plenty of gay porn on the back

[00:35:35] of that one um so there there was lots of stuff going on there we even had slang for it amongst

[00:35:43] ourselves it was one of the worst kept secrets we uh if you took you took your partner and went off in

[00:35:50] your car somewhere to the state park or out somewhere and you used it for a little bit of getting close

[00:35:56] we called it booggin booggin and yeah because we were country as fuck but yeah we called it we called it

[00:36:03] that and uh you know we would uh we would laugh whenever somebody come in y'all gone booggin tonight

[00:36:11] and then they'd be like yeah we did it's just such an open secret and but it was coded enough

[00:36:17] to where you didn't actually say yes i gotta i got head in the in the front seat of my car

[00:36:23] tonight or you know i went and we we had sex in the backseat or something that we'd say we we'd gone

[00:36:29] booggin that yeah y'all it was just an unwritten thing y'all did it did it good in tennessee um

[00:36:37] yes uh we we hide our drinking and our sex pretty well in in tennessee yeah yeah that makes me happy at

[00:36:45] least you're in this high control no fun no frills environment but but you're having fun and you're

[00:36:51] figuring out how to how to do life and you know this faith however you it makes you into a sneaky

[00:36:59] bitch though honestly that's been said before like yeah you have to you you learn like this has served

[00:37:06] me well as an alcoholic in my adult life it's made it it made it gave me plenty of practice on hiding my

[00:37:12] problems um so i was able to hide my drinking pretty well into my 40s so it um yeah it taught me some

[00:37:21] pretty bad habits and how to how to um how to mask really well yeah and as long as you especially even

[00:37:29] as a right queer person say uh yeah say the right things i mean as a queer person you you know i i

[00:37:36] couldn't say you know hey listen i'm i'm getting online every night here in the dormitory and and uh

[00:37:44] i am logging in as a female with with uh you know i was logging in as as my name my legal name now

[00:37:54] sheila uh i was logging in as that there and chatting with people as a female and getting to

[00:37:59] stretch my legs as a transgender woman online because these are back in the days when we didn't have

[00:38:05] pictures and text and video and all that chat oh yeah all that even somewhat before that like you

[00:38:12] know we would do icq uh the uh telnet mushes muds stuff like that chat rooms and uh you know people would

[00:38:23] be like you know age sex location and i'd just be like you know i'd be like 17 female you know tennessee

[00:38:32] and uh they there weren't many questions asked after that and that was my nights you know in the

[00:38:39] in the dorms you know after hours i'd be logged in talking to my friends as sheila and so but i'd have

[00:38:45] to put on this face on sunday morning yeah you know and i had a girlfriend at the time too uh

[00:38:51] throughout most of college did she know this about you know oh no goodness no um i mean we were we

[00:38:59] were active together but i never told her about that part of my identity uh so yeah you're you're

[00:39:06] living at this point four or five different lives yeah because you're you're having to be

[00:39:12] like i just i just remember getting up to pray or to talk in front of the congregation on sunday

[00:39:18] um about the virtues of waiting until you're married when i just had sex with my girlfriend

[00:39:25] the night before yeah you know and she was sitting out in the audience and i knew she heard it and i

[00:39:30] knew she was turning red and i was i was internally blushing and thinking gosh you know i'm sitting up

[00:39:36] here telling everybody how virtuous i am and i just had the most fun last night got drunk got laid

[00:39:43] got everything else there's just and then it struck me later you know what probably everybody else

[00:39:48] was too a lot yeah yeah it's probably a good portion of them were thinking the same thing like yeah i

[00:39:55] agree with you but yeah still i did that you know so it is very much a split identity very much teaching

[00:40:02] you to hide yourself and to be a good little christian was there a part of you that thought about maybe

[00:40:09] integrating a more sexually open lifestyle with christianity or what did that not even occur to you

[00:40:17] it occurred to me later on in life not not around in that time and that time i just it was just the

[00:40:24] shame wow like it was just like well i i i need to do better at this and then you know at another point

[00:40:33] where it got a little bit more desperate it was like i'm never going to be able to do better than this

[00:40:38] and so i got to thinking towards the end of my college career i was thinking gosh you know um

[00:40:45] i'm never going to be good enough to make it into heaven so if i'm going to hell let's get my money's

[00:40:52] worth oh and it led to a lot of problematic dangerous behavior wow so yeah it's it's hard because you're

[00:41:01] taught to be perfect and you know you're not i mean it's an impossible standard um right and i embrace it

[00:41:08] now yeah yeah you know i embrace my imperfection my flaws and everything now i don't like now that i

[00:41:15] don't worry about a hell to go to you know i'm like okay i'm just being me i'm just you know i'm making

[00:41:21] mistakes i'm owning it i'm doing better but back then it was so much harder because you'd start the day

[00:41:27] off thinking okay i'm in a saved state let me um you know let me not go out today so i won't do

[00:41:33] something and mess it up um to whatever degree you're comfortable with what what were some of these um

[00:41:40] not good things that you're saying it's well i mean um i um at that time i would have thought

[00:41:49] smoking weed was simple so there was that you know um drinking uh mostly like sex and stuff as i was

[00:41:58] very very sexually active um as much as i could be anyway and uh i i didn't see any way to reconcile

[00:42:09] the way my body wanted to be without and then also being transgender um you know feeling thoughts

[00:42:18] not just not just for women but also with men um and uh it it took me a while before i was ever

[00:42:28] even able to uh approach that with somebody who is a male at birth but um just honestly being human

[00:42:40] right i don't even know that i would classify it as sinful in the way i think right now but back then

[00:42:46] i would think you know gosh i can't stop having these these illicit thoughts i can't stop having

[00:42:52] these impulses i can't stop acting on them and because they're they're normal right and

[00:43:01] you know i just thought at a point at a certain point when do you quit when do you give up and say

[00:43:06] listen i guess i'm just going to hell let's have fun yeah yeah because earlier you met you used the

[00:43:12] term i forget what you said but it was not you know something negative but everything you just

[00:43:16] described sounds like things that are positive in right well i mean scenario if you think about it

[00:43:23] in that paradigm that i was in back then it was negative like having sex outside of marriage was

[00:43:29] negative in in our thoughts there uh having um an affair with the married person which i did um

[00:43:39] was thought of as negative and now i sort of think of it as hey maybe not a great idea but

[00:43:43] it's not inherently wrong as long as both adults are consenting and nobody's getting harmed

[00:43:49] you know it's it's uh sex to me right now is just something people do yeah and being in same

[00:43:56] sex attraction is no normal um back then it would have been perverse and unthinkable um

[00:44:05] um so yeah it's it's also changed so so if i talk about it in that past tense way the way i used

[00:44:11] to think about it in college i think i and i think i would ascribe the negative connotation to it just

[00:44:19] based on how i thought i just want to clarify that because i think where we're heading now is

[00:44:24] to who you are today and how how did how did you go from

[00:44:29] there to here because i think you mentioned you were a pastor right you became a pastor i was

[00:44:35] yeah talk about that and i was i was a pastor i it took me a moment to get to that point because i

[00:44:42] tried to go uh i tried to work in secular jobs for a while and that i never really found my

[00:44:50] quote-unquote calling there um and uh i thought well okay i you know of all the things i know how to do

[00:44:59] i do know how to be a pastor so i grew up as a pastor's kid i went to that school and i was like

[00:45:06] you know i can i can construct a pretty good sermon i can do church work and i i still at that point

[00:45:13] believed in it although i had questions and so i decided to just throw out a bunch of cvs you know

[00:45:23] we had within the church of christ we had our own little list that people would submit their churches

[00:45:28] to it's like hey we're looking for a preacher we're looking for a full-time minister we're looking for a

[00:45:35] youth minister something like that they would we had a database of it so i and my college had one of them

[00:45:42] so i would just you know call my college uh my college's office there and be like hey can i get

[00:45:49] the list of churches looking for preachers they send it over and they would they'd send it over to

[00:45:55] me and they would i would go through and i would send out resumes to all of them and i get calls back

[00:46:01] and uh go out and uh audition for lack of a better word uh go out and preach on a sunday if they

[00:46:08] liked me they'd invite me back and if they liked me again they would they would hire me and so i ended

[00:46:14] up doing that for a while um in a couple places uh mostly in the south tennessee and south carolina

[00:46:22] and uh i like i said i still believed in in god at that point there were a few things about our

[00:46:31] denomination that were starting to not make sense uh one of them was uh the lack of music instruments

[00:46:39] in church uh we were very very strong about that and that was one of the first dominoes to fall i'm

[00:46:45] like that doesn't make sense there's no reason why we can't play a piano or play a guitar along with this

[00:46:50] christian song and so i kept that belief i did mention it to a couple of friends who immediately

[00:46:56] unfriended me and so i kept that belief down below because i figured you know what we can get by without

[00:47:02] that but then i started thinking about the role of women in the church and then i started thinking

[00:47:07] about the way we treated gay people and so on and so forth but at that point i'm keeping it down i'm

[00:47:13] like okay i just won't preach about homosexuality or i won't preach about women's roles or i won't

[00:47:19] you know i'll preach about other things and we'll we'll be okay but after a while you know of doing

[00:47:26] that i was just like well this is starting to wear on my soul a little bit you know i to what extent

[00:47:33] i thought i had a soul back then but um i thought i need to change this i need to do something different

[00:47:40] so um i was married at the time i got married right before my last ministry job and uh

[00:47:50] my my wife and i at the time uh we we had a uh my sister was a missionary in china um and she was

[00:48:01] working through a church of christ program that placed teachers over in china we replaced there to

[00:48:06] teach english and to uh on the down low convert people to our religion um which was sneaky and illegal

[00:48:15] but they do it um and the chinese uh the on the chinese side they knew we did it but they needed

[00:48:23] teachers so we did uh we we talked about it we decided to do it and uh we packed up sold all our stuff and

[00:48:34] then moved to china and uh we were there for we were going to do it for a year at first

[00:48:41] um and see how we liked it and we did like it but while i was there during that first year everything

[00:48:47] was just ripped open for me honestly um because i've heard all of the things people say about the

[00:48:54] chinese culture and all the prejudicial things and the racist things and things that people still believe

[00:49:00] about china today um especially when they hear somebody like trump talk about china it's not like that

[00:49:08] you know and then you know here seeing the reality of these wonderful people

[00:49:15] and this wonderful society and we were coming over there to make their lives better by bringing jesus and

[00:49:21] we and i was got over there and i was like you know they have a pretty decent life as it is i mean

[00:49:26] they're they're just like us they work hard every day you know they've got creeping capitalism taking

[00:49:31] over their country but you know they're by and large they have their families they love each other

[00:49:37] they they they're not like godless they they they do uh they do things a little bit different they might

[00:49:45] go to their taoist temple where we go to our baptist church you know but they're they're having a good

[00:49:52] life and i thought what am i doing here am i actually up their their their lives by bringing this into it and

[00:50:00] in some cases i was yeah that's causing them to lose to miss out on opportunities and causing them to be

[00:50:06] outcast from their families and i was like no i can't keep doing this and i came i went in a

[00:50:14] conservative republican i came back after that first year a bleeding heart liberal wow and i i no longer

[00:50:23] believed that gay people were going to hell i no longer believed that uh women could not lead in

[00:50:30] the worship i you know all all these kind of things the dominoes just kept falling and falling and falling

[00:50:35] and falling and uh i spent 10 years there oh wow and yeah 10 years in the 10 years i got to explore a lot

[00:50:45] about myself i got to i i quit ministry altogether i no longer represented myself to churches as a

[00:50:52] missionary over there i was an english teacher oh so you just took like a regular english teaching job

[00:50:57] yeah i just took a regular job wow and uh taught at some pretty high level universities in china

[00:51:04] and uh built a pretty good career and i was grappling with my gender identity during the time now

[00:51:14] china is not a great place to be a trans woman um even gay you keep that there were gay teachers there but

[00:51:23] it was quiet you went to the club you you hooked up and that was that as long as it didn't become

[00:51:30] public you were good um i mean it was it was very much my you know i i started grappling with that my

[00:51:39] marriage fell apart in china uh did your wife do various factors from conservativeness with you

[00:51:46] or what did that cause tension too she still claims religion um but she also um is friends with the lgbtq

[00:51:56] community community we've got a queer daughter together uh my daughter who was born in china

[00:52:02] uh just came out as non-binary and bisexual um this last this last couple of months actually she's 12

[00:52:12] um and so you know we've got a queer kid so she can't exactly be a hater well she could um a lot

[00:52:18] i guess she could my parents are haters um and my parents reacted much differently to me than

[00:52:25] i did to my child but yeah she's she's okay she's still she's still got a little bit of the jesus juice

[00:52:31] in her but like she we we she takes her mining to church sometimes and we uh we've we've talked about

[00:52:40] that but i feel like you know hermione's smart enough to know uh at this point what she does and

[00:52:45] she claims to be an atheist so i mean you know it's it's you know having a marriage breakup in a

[00:52:53] foreign country is a whole thing it's it's a really big thing and it was pretty traumatic for all three

[00:52:59] of us i think but and then having that happen gave me the perfect opportunity to be like okay i'm trans

[00:53:07] i'm doing this thing when you were in church or if you go to church now like do you or did you ever

[00:53:19] look around and wonder how many of these fools are doing sinful things all week before they come

[00:53:27] to church and perform christian goodness i wondered all the time because i actually knew of people who

[00:53:34] lived this way i think it's a form of white christian privilege um you know white men can go through a

[00:53:42] given week uh or boys in my case cussing bullying having sex drinking and then show up on sunday to

[00:53:51] sunday school or service and act like they're like jesus it made me furious at the time because everyone

[00:53:59] seemed to buy it but now i'm just jealous uh i didn't even try i was trying so hard to be a true

[00:54:08] believer never did any of the fun things never had sex with the two girlfriends i had from age 15 to 18

[00:54:17] didn't drink didn't do drugs i wouldn't have even known where to get drugs so hearing sheila talk about

[00:54:26] the wildly fragmented lives of the christians in tennessee is it weird that today i just have a sense

[00:54:37] of awe and wonder that they were able to do that i don't know sounds fun um apparently though this kind

[00:54:47] of life is not sustainable for any thoughtful people with you know any shred of integrity

[00:54:54] and so for sheila she knew she had to make some changes and of course those changes would come at

[00:55:02] great cost i'm i'm finally i don't feel i have to feel like i'm betraying my spouse by by announcing

[00:55:10] my gender i'm free to do whatever i want so i did it and i started transitioning uh i started

[00:55:18] socially transitioning uh right after covet because covet is what brought us home from the from the um

[00:55:26] from china uh rather famously we got into uh we got into quite a bit of the newspapers during that time

[00:55:32] oh because of the struggle we were in wuhan we were in wuhan where the epicenter of the virus was that

[00:55:40] was in the news so yeah we got um hermione my daughter was the face of the um face of the wuhan

[00:55:48] evacuation um and then we also got in the news again after we got home before catching covid

[00:55:54] at home because our parents would not my parents would not stop going to church all right so yeah

[00:56:02] i started transitioning after i got home slowly at first and then i found tick tock um and i was like

[00:56:10] well this is going to be as good a way to document a transition as any and so i started making videos

[00:56:16] there showing my transition and started learning how to do my hair and my makeup started having pink

[00:56:21] hair instead of blonde hair started wearing women's clothes and then eventually that's all led on through

[00:56:28] like medical transition and everything um and uh i've been living on my own as a woman since um

[00:56:38] uh it was late 2021 uh to 22 so i've been at this for a couple of years now yeah and and it's that's

[00:56:50] another journey in and of itself um navigating gender and and the socialized nature of gender and what's

[00:57:00] expected of you as a woman versus as a man and so mm-hmm yeah so you're you're kind of just starting out

[00:57:08] uh you got a nice life ahead yeah i'm going through my second my second puberty now so yeah i mean they

[00:57:15] literally described it that way when they gave me the the hrt at the doctor's office they're like

[00:57:19] you know basically there's going to be some changes and it cracked me up when i was in there because

[00:57:24] the doctor was like all serious and stuff like listen if you're on this you're not going to be able

[00:57:29] to have any more kids and i was like okay and then they're like and you might grow breasts and i was

[00:57:37] like yeah i'm waiting for the bad part here like yeah and and they were like are you are you all right

[00:57:45] i'm like no you're selling this pretty well keep going and uh yeah i going through all that i was ready

[00:57:51] to i've been 40 years of pin pinning this all up inside and i was ready to let it all out and i've

[00:57:58] i've been a lot happier since transitioning and owning myself yeah and my parents have not right so

[00:58:10] yeah i am no longer associating with them they are not um they are not trans friendly at all um

[00:58:20] their first act upon finding out that i was a trans woman was to i was living with them at the time

[00:58:26] uh was to evict me from their house so i'm sorry that's that's i you know what it actually turned

[00:58:35] out to be the best thing yeah best thing i could do i was already planning on moving out anyway but

[00:58:40] that kind of rejection from your family is never fun it's never easy so yeah it's never easy but

[00:58:47] like i struggled and i struggled with it not like i was mentioning before when i was in college

[00:58:53] that was a major cause of my depression because their abuse of me and their uh their continued uh mental

[00:59:00] abuse of me even by proxy when i was in college um but that last right before i left i my my mother was

[00:59:11] being an absolute monster to me and uh i just turned around and looked her looked at her and said you

[00:59:17] know what if you keep treating me the way you're treating me right now when i leave in a couple of

[00:59:22] weeks you probably won't see me and your granddaughter again and she was like that's okay and i said

[00:59:31] you mean what do you mean that's okay and she's like we don't want you you changed your name you're no

[00:59:37] longer part of this family you decided that you're not our son anymore so we don't want you and i was

[00:59:44] like okay and it gave me that permission to close that chapter of my life and stop worrying about it

[00:59:51] the the things that have been stressing me out since college or and before i could i could close the

[00:59:58] book on that and i could get closure on it so that actually turned out to be a healing thing

[01:00:04] as opposed to the hurtful thing that she meant it to be so yeah but i there's i still feel heart

[01:00:12] broken for you because being rejected by you know your parents your family

[01:00:19] is is hard it's hard but i i'm glad that it is hard side of it as well but man that is a lot

[01:00:26] not a lot it's a lot to go through honestly um and especially when you do when you i mean gender

[01:00:34] identity is a whole thing to go through i my daughter when she came out to me as bi she was um

[01:00:43] and when she came out as uh she they she she stumbled and stuttered a lot and just like paused and

[01:00:50] everything and and i'm like what what do you want to say and she said well i'm bi and i'm like awesome

[01:00:59] let's let's go get some ice cream or something you know like i'm like give me a hug you know

[01:01:04] i'm thinking myself i i am and i know people in the podcast world can't see me but i am this big pink

[01:01:10] haired uh fully made up trans woman here queer i'm every letter in the acronym basically and i'm just

[01:01:19] as queer as you can possibly be and still my child has a hard time coming out to me that tells you

[01:01:26] right there how hard it is even outside actually own your own thing outside of the church in an

[01:01:32] accepting environment it's still a hard thing to to admit to yourself that i'm not like the other kids

[01:01:38] like the majority of the people i guess um right yeah and for you know much less for somebody you

[01:01:46] know much more so for somebody who grew up in a fundamentalist background who was taught that boys

[01:01:53] will be boys and girls will be girls and if you are uh if you're gay you're you're an abomination

[01:02:02] if you're transgender well you're just worthy of you're not even worthy of that you know we're

[01:02:09] we're apparently the worst people in the world right now and uh especially in the church they you know i

[01:02:14] get to hear preached about cross-dressers and transgenderism and and uh you know how homosexuals

[01:02:22] shall not see the the kingdom of god and even just just the quote-unquote normal stuff like people who

[01:02:28] have sex outside of marriage people who have human desires alcoholics you know all that's harder when

[01:02:35] you put the layer of religion on top solidified by uh the indoctrination of some of these schools that we

[01:02:43] have to go to yeah i think i would have gotten out of the church a lot faster if i had just gone

[01:02:50] straight from my parents house into like a secular school maybe unless you got hooked up with one of

[01:02:56] those christian orgs like inner varsity or oh the campus crusade for guys people oh gosh i heard about

[01:03:03] that after school because obviously we didn't need one there but yeah but but yeah gosh no but i feel

[01:03:10] like if i had been in a more secular environment i might have and i can't say that that's true but i

[01:03:16] definitely did its part it did its part in cementing a lot of the beliefs and making me feel like i was

[01:03:23] in the bubble well you've i know you've gotten to a place where you now are helping people you have

[01:03:30] like a group that you brought me in to talk to on zoom from with people who share some of your

[01:03:38] experiences and you seem to be like the person sort of helping them work things out can you talk about

[01:03:43] that yeah i do i i run a group on monday nights it's very informal group of uh some people are

[01:03:52] friends that i've known from my college days uh we we talk about that sometimes some people are

[01:03:59] just people i've known through various recovery groups and others are my tiktok followers um

[01:04:04] who i've you know i've talked about my struggles on tiktok and i um you know i've had they followed

[01:04:13] me and they've they've asked for access and i've given that that to them we meet on monday nights

[01:04:19] uh usually start about nine o'clock and then we usually log off when the hell ever

[01:04:24] um whenever everybody is basically just falling asleep because we we can sit there and literally talk

[01:04:29] about this stuff for hours and never exhaust every bit of trauma so you know some nights we just have

[01:04:36] three or four some nights we've had you know seven or eight and uh they're all from they're from like

[01:04:42] old friends from college old uh you know friends i've met from support groups and tiktok followers um

[01:04:49] and our only common thing really just has to be that we've been traumatized by religion

[01:04:55] and uh it's the more we talk the more i realize we have so many shared experiences

[01:05:04] because when you're going through it the you know originally it always feels like you're the only one

[01:05:09] i always felt like i was the only queer person i was only one pretending to be a girl

[01:05:15] pretending to be a girl i was the only uh one that was having these feelings that was struggling with

[01:05:23] my sexuality and struggling with being sexual and here i come to realize these many years later oh they

[01:05:30] were all doing the same thing they were all having the same struggle and they were all sitting there

[01:05:35] in the pew next to me looking at the preacher being like and this doesn't sound right you know like

[01:05:42] just getting that affirmation even if it's later on in life has been therapeutic in and of itself

[01:05:50] and realizing that i'm not irrevocably fucked in the head is is also nice knowing that

[01:05:59] that my struggles were other people's struggles too i wasn't unique and i wasn't broken i was just

[01:06:05] being me yeah and they don't have to be struggles it's very helpful it can just be life

[01:06:11] right and it and it also helps me help uh other people who are just starting to have

[01:06:17] the same thoughts that i was because we have people in the group who are you know 10 15 years younger

[01:06:25] than myself and they're just they've just realized that the church was oppressing them

[01:06:31] um or they've they've started just started to make sense and we can i can help them connect the dots it's

[01:06:39] really it's it's helpful for me and i i participate in a lot of online groups i am in online aaa i run at

[01:06:49] least one recovery meeting i'm part of the group that runs a recovery meeting on wednesday nights uh called

[01:06:56] acceptance is the answer it's a more ecumenical version of alcoholics anonymous where we don't

[01:07:03] necessarily have to believe in that higher power but some people do yeah and then i'm in a completely

[01:07:12] atheist women's group on fridays that i that you know we deal with addiction and recovery as well

[01:07:17] so i spend a lot of time these days um trying to trying to be part of these groups to help myself

[01:07:27] as well as to help others and uh my tiktok is also part of that too um i'm on tiktok at uh it's at

[01:07:36] sheila chapelle that's two p's and two l's anything you want uh people to find you awesome yeah so i'm

[01:07:43] i'm there and i i started with like a couple of good just a couple of followers and then i started

[01:07:52] documenting my transition and i figured nobody would watch it and i thought well this will just

[01:08:00] be for me it'll be like a video scrapbook and then suddenly people started watching and suddenly

[01:08:05] there was a hundred people watching it suddenly there's a thousand people watching it and suddenly

[01:08:09] there now there's 13.2 000 right now people following me on tiktok and uh that was an unexpected

[01:08:20] platform um it's not the biggest platform in the world but for me it's huge that's awesome and for me

[01:08:27] to get out there and be able to talk about the experience of being transgender being ex-religious being

[01:08:33] um you know just being me and having people tell me that they've seen my videos they've

[01:08:44] they they they've touched their lives in some sort of way it's given them strength to raise their

[01:08:51] transgender child or to accept uh their self there's themselves as a as a trans person or

[01:08:59] you know just just things like that it it it makes it all very very rewarding to me and it's unexpectedly

[01:09:08] so because i look at it like this my my father and mother groomed me to be a preacher

[01:09:14] they groomed me to be a leader in the church and so

[01:09:22] by that i've actually been prepared to be a leader just not in the way they thought i was gonna be

[01:09:30] and i think my my mother used to tell me when i was posting back in the days of blogging uh i was

[01:09:37] posting blogs i know i know you've got one but i'm talking about the blog spot days like the yeah the the

[01:09:44] web 1.0 blogging um used to tell me the things that you're writing are just stupid they're they're

[01:09:53] for ridiculous people and i'd be and she's like you need to be like your father preach the word my

[01:09:59] father might have preached to 30 or 40 people a week and they were usually the same people and now i

[01:10:05] think now that i speak to thousands of people yeah you got your own every day

[01:10:13] i've got my own mega church i've got people who people who follow me that i don't even know who

[01:10:17] they are and it's like you know but it's it's it's reaching out to people and i've got a video on

[01:10:24] tiktok out there with a million views now you know and it's it's just like well i guess i was born to be

[01:10:31] a pastor but a whole different way and so so i do it you know i teach and i i curate uh these groups and

[01:10:41] and facilitate them and i just try to keep a culture of healing about me um as much as i can

[01:10:49] because the damage was done and it's done to other people and i want to be part of that healing rather

[01:10:55] than part of the problem like i was before yeah that's beautiful yeah um yeah well thank you sheila

[01:11:03] for coming on doing time on chapel probation i really appreciate you telling telling your story and being so

[01:11:08] vulnerable and i i think a lot of people who who aren't even trans or or even um in any way outside

[01:11:19] of the bubbles that they're in will will find a lot of meaning in in your story and your observations so

[01:11:25] thank you i hope so and when this comes out i'm gonna post it on the freed hardman facebook

[01:11:30] okay oh yeah they're gonna love that you're gonna have to send me the spelling of the school too

[01:11:35] i will i uh definitely so yeah i i know a lot of times when stuff about our school comes out we'll

[01:11:43] we'll get uh i'll get like messages from other people in various recovery groups like hey listen

[01:11:49] to this did you hear this yeah yeah let's let's uh i'm looking for the word the bad word for sure so

[01:11:56] anyway thanks again and i will talk to you soon well thank you for having me i appreciate it this

[01:12:01] has been great i'm so glad to have met sheila like i said it was just chance someone connected us on a

[01:12:13] thread uh on facebook no less because her story tells us a lot of things um i'm struck most i think

[01:12:23] by her point about how trying to be a real human with real human thoughts and feelings and desires

[01:12:29] inside of high control christianity creates deception and lying not just in church settings

[01:12:37] but in life all throughout your life and sheila experienced this shitty christianity as a white boy

[01:12:46] and a white man so even without the oppressive misogyny and racism common in these systems

[01:12:52] she was still harmed wanting to enjoy life as a full-fledged human is a sin in this system

[01:13:03] and that's enough to damage a person's psyche and create unhealthy behaviors now add to all that the

[01:13:12] fact that sheila was suppressing her gender identity and expression and it must have been absolute hell

[01:13:21] i know i sound like a psychological or medical medical podcaster right now um but that's what i'm

[01:13:28] thinking i'm also thinking that sheila is another courageous human who decided she needed to take drastic steps

[01:13:36] to have the life she wanted and needed it hurts to cut family out of your life

[01:13:43] it's sadly necessary sometimes but it still hurts same goes for friends and if you don't have community

[01:13:55] to unpack all the harm done by your religious past or present find the sheilas out there find sheila

[01:14:03] um there will be a link to her info in the show notes for sure but also look for the people in your

[01:14:10] neighborhood in your neck of the woods you are not alone in this it's happening everywhere according to

[01:14:22] the the research churches are shrinking i love when tori williams douglas says hemorrhaging millennials

[01:14:30] um and thank buddha and those people all have stories to tell traumas to unpack

[01:14:41] and they need people they need you maybe just as important i hope you find people to go booggin

[01:14:52] with or do you just say booggin i have to ask sheila

[01:14:57] go do some booggin yeah you have my permission so thanks again to sheila sheila chapelle

[01:15:07] for coming on doing time on chapel probation um i i took part in one of her online monday night

[01:15:15] hangs and oh man the people are so great and so honest and and i don't know just purposeful

[01:15:23] in trying to find healing for all the shit that they went through as as non-binary people as queer

[01:15:31] people as people of color as women the whole thing and to any of you who have these small communities

[01:15:39] small groups yeah i i see you i i hope you're all doing well and finding each other and finding ways

[01:15:47] forward out of all of this mess so thanks for listening to another episode of chapel probation

[01:15:56] we're still plugging along we'll be back next week with another episode in fact in fact

[01:16:03] we'll have the first episode of the horny chapel it should be ready to go have a great week