The Memory Generation
Episode 14: Dubbs Weinblatt
INTRO
Rachael Cerrotti: Hey Everyone, I’m Rachael Cerrotti. Welcome to The Memory Generation – a podcast about the memories we inherit and the stories that are passed from one generation to the next. Today we are talking with Dubbs Weinblatt.
Dubbs is the founder of Thank You For Coming Out which is an improv show, podcast and soon-to-be book that aims to create a space of belonging for the queer community by uplifting and celebrating stories of coming out and coming into oneself. They are also the co-founder of Craft Your Truth which is an organization that encourages LGBTQ folks to use performance art to connect with the communities around them.
In this conversation we explore memory through a contemporary queer experience. Dubbs reflects on their experience coming out first as a lesbian at the age of 20 and then as a trans person when they were 29. We talk about Dubbs wrestling with their Jewish identity, the closing off of oneself to family history during times of pain and how loved ones may struggle with witnessing the growth that happens during self discovery.
We recorded this conversation on October 3rd, 2022 through Zoom. I was in Portland, Maine and Dubbs was at their home in Brooklyn, New York.
INTERVIEW
Rachael Cerrotti: Thanks so much for joining me today.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to see you and to be in conversation with you.
Rachael Cerrotti: Same. So you live in New York City, in Brooklyn, and much of your professional life and your personal life is digging into the memories of the coming out experience and creating spaces for individuals to retell their own stories. But before we get into that work, I want to hear about your own life. Where did you grow up and what type of family were you raised in?
Dubbs Weinblatt: I grew up in Columbus, Ohio in the mid eighties and nineties. We went to a reformed synagogue and I went to Hebrew school. I had a bat mitzvah, even though I certainly did not want one and we can talk about that at some point. But from the very minute that I had consciousness, I knew that I was different than everyone around me. I didn't have the words to explain what that difference was or who I was in comparison to other people. Hindsight tells me it's because I hold all of these different queer identities. But at that point in time, especially in Columbus, Ohio, there were no out queer people. There was not a lot of diversity. And so from a really young age, I kept everything really close to my heart, to my chest, tried as much as I could not to deviate away too much from, quote-unquote, the norm because I didn't want to get made fun of. I didn't want to face bullying, even though I still did. So, growing up for me is kind of this like both-and of like I did have a lot of fun when I was a kid and I also was like in deep pain. And so why I do the work now is because I am on the other side of feeling shame and fear and sadness around who I am and I want to hold space for other people to be able to share who they are in a community that's going to love and support them.
Rachael Cerrotti: When you think back to that time in your life, is there a memory of yours you feel as though shaped who you are today?
Dubbs Weinblatt: I have two. Can I share them?
Rachael Cerrotti: Absolutely.
Dubbs Weinblatt: So the first one is one of my first memories ever was at preschool and I was playing, love playing pretend. I still do. I'm an improviser. But I was playing with two of my classmates - boys - and we were sitting in those little chairs, you know, that we would sit in because we were two and three, but like we were like straddling them, pretending they were motorcycles. And I remember the teacher saying to me, ‘little girls don't sit that way.’ And feeling this like rush of shame and embarrassment and confusion. I must have just been stunned because I just sat there and she said it again to me. And I just was so upset and so hurt and so, you know, confused, like, why can they sit this way? Why can't I sit this way? Why does she think that I'm a girl? Like all of this, like, really kind of, like, deep stuff for a three year old, but that's like the first memory that I have and it really shaped how I moved through the world. I was so hurt by that and embarrassed by that and felt so much shame that I never wanted to feel that way again. When I describe this, it's like I took a note card and I wrote like, don't ever do something that's going to make you feel this way again and filed that away. And then that kind of shaped how I moved through the world henceforth and tried to not deviate from what society wanted me to do.
Rachael Cerrotti: When you say that you filed that away –
Dubbs Weinblatt: Mmhmm
Rachael Cerrotti: Is that something that you were always aware was filed away or something that kind of reemerged? I'm imagining like, a book in the back of the library that you kind of forget is there and then suddenly becomes the most important book of all. Or was it something that was front and center throughout your teenagehood and growing up and all of that?
Dubbs Weinblatt: It's a great question. I think that note card was just like any time a moment like that happened, it would be filed with that note card. And so I don't know that I was necessarily recalling those specific incidences, but I would remember the feeling and I would remember the essence of those notecards. And that's kind of what drove me. And then as I've been - in my podcast, like having many of these conversations around coming out and coming into one's self, these memories become unearthed. Like you said, it's like I pull the drawer of this memory filing cabinet and then I'm able to recall these specific memories that I couldn't before. But I knew they were there and they were impacting me. And the other memory was with my papa. We didn't really get close until my grandma died. And I think he kind of had a - a life shifting moment for him of like I need to be a better grandpa. And so that's when we started spending a lot of time together and whenever we would go shopping, I would always go into the boys section and like pick out clothes in that section. And it never occurred to me in the moment, but thinking back is when it all becomes crystal clear, which is he never said, you can't shop on that side. He never made me feel bad about it. He never questioned it. He just let me be. And that's so significant. It was such a big deal. And I don't think I - I did not know that at the time how big of a deal is. But thinking back now, it's like any other time I would shop with anybody else, I had to shop on the girls side. And that caused so much anxiety and dysphoria, which is when someone feels anxiety or depression because there's a disconnect between one's assigned gender at birth, assigned sex at birth and also like gender presentation and how the world views them - us - me. And so having an experience where dysphoria is not there is actually like just baseline for what it should be to exist. And so it just was like normal. It didn't feel out of the ordinary because it just was like what it should be.
Rachael Cerrotti: Mmhmm
Dubbs Weinblatt: It wasn't full of anxiety. I don’t know if that makes sense, but –
Rachael Cerrotti: It totally makes sense that when somebody doesn't make something a thing, it's not a thing.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Right. Exactly.
Rachael Cerrotti: It just is.
Dubbs Weinblatt: It just is.
Rachael Cerrotti: It just is.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Right. So thinking back about that was always really special to me of how he always created that space for me and then gave me the opportunity to buy clothes that felt more affirming for me. And then I actually never came out to him. He died the year after I graduated from college. So I never came out to him because I was too scared. I didn't know how he would react. And once he died, I had a conversation with my mom about it. She was like, honey, he knew. Like of course he knew. And I just felt so bad. I just felt like, why didn't I give him the benefit of the doubt? Why didn't I trust that he - and he never approached me about it. I think he wanted me to be the one to talk about it first. So I always feel a little bit of regret with that. So I think that's also kind of shaped how I interact with people and I don't want to keep things from folks. I don't like feeling regret. And that's a big regret.
Rachael Cerrotti: Were you close with him otherwise in terms of conversation, like did you talk to him about his own life and where he was from? Was family history and that type of personal conversation a present part of your relationship with him?
Dubbs Weinblatt: It wasn't. We never talked about that stuff. I never had an interest in that. Until I was in my late twenties, I was kind of just on survival mode, which was do the bare minimum to survive. And, I also had a drinking problem. And so I was always like under the influence. Not always, but usually. Because being present in the world was too painful. And so I numbed to escape. And part of that escape was, don't try too hard in anything. And so I never wanted to learn about my family history because I didn't think it mattered. I didn't want to engage which I also - is a regret. And my brother is someone who loved talking about that stuff with my grandparents. And so I actually texted my family yesterday and started asking him a million questions and then of course he sent me a Google folder with multiple folders of all this, like family history stuff. So I need to go through that.
Rachael Cerrotti: We always say in like the world of family history that there's always one person in the family who kind of has the instinct to collect and then they become a great resource for everybody else when they're when their interest starts to peak or where when there's space for that curiosity to take hold.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Mmhmm. Yeah.
Rachael Cerrotti: So, jumping ahead a little bit in your life to your own coming out. You came out when you were 20. First as a lesbian and then you came out when you were 29 as a trans person. But as you told me you didn't actually have that language then. So can you share a bit of that experience with us and maybe weave in that idea of language and kind of how it coats that memory for you?
Dubbs Weinblatt: Sure. So I came out as gay, as a lesbian at 20 and I thought after coming out, the pain that I was feeling, the anxiety, the disconnect between myself and the world would kind of go away because it's like, okay I'm finally, like, owning the thing that I've been hiding my entire life. And that just wasn't the case. Part of what was going on - well, all of what was going on was I was actually more grappling with my gender identity than my sexual orientation. The word lesbian actually never fit for me. It never felt right. And, you know, again hindsight is, oh, it's because I'm not a woman. And so using a word that typically women use didn't make sense for me. And so I still was struggling for the next decade trying to figure out who I am. And so when I was 29 years old, my best friend Dolce and I, we went to a Lipstick Lesbian Awareness Party on the Lower East Side in New York City. And for those of you who don't know, a lipstick lesbian is a woman, a lesbian who presents more femme. And so this was a party celebrating femme lesbians and their queerness. I went because a high school friend was playing the music for this party, not that I've ever identified as a lipstick lesbian. But so I go into this space and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but I had this, like, glass shattering aha moment where it just made sense. It's like, oh. I'm not a lesbian because I'm not a woman. it just was bonkers. I was like, oooh, but I still didn't have the language. This was when I was 29. So at that point in time, eight years ago, we as a society weren't really having conversations like we're having today around gender identity. And so there were such limited language and understanding and representation. And so something I don't remember is if I knew what nonbinary or gender queer was and then it clicked for me that that's who I am, or if I just knew that's who I was and then I found the language later. I can't remember. I don't know. I've even tried to go back through my Facebook to like, see if I posted it. I just - I don't know. If I had to guess, I didn't know the language first because I was still in that point in my life where I didn't do anything extra. And so it never would have occurred to me to, like, research it, if that makes sense. I knew what transness was. I knew who like what trans men - like I know what that meant. And I knew what trans women meant. But when I would think about am I a trans man, I always was like, I'm not. I'm not that. So that's why I always got confused. And even if I was at that point in society and time, it was for me, too scary to even think about. Was not even an option for me. I stuffed that down so far. And I was like, I'm just not going to live who I am because it's too much. So I turn to Dolce and I say, I'm not a woman. And I hate my name. So the name that I was using at the time is not Dubbs. A word to describe a previous name can be dead name. It can be given name. It could be legal name. So then I just started exploring what that meant for me. And I got into therapy and went into therapy twice a week and just started to unravel and peel the onion of like, what is happening here? What is going on? Who am I? Who do I need to be?
Rachael Cerrotti: Sounds like there was like a revolution inside of yourself. Like from yourself, for yourself. And I'm curious if that idea of coming into yourself moment, does that change completely the way you think of all of your life before?
Dubbs Weinblatt: I don't know if I would use the word change, but it brings into focus. It helps explain my entire life leading up to that moment. And I love the idea of calling it a revolution for myself, with myself, of myself. I forget exactly what you said but it was cool. You know, just like thinking back on all of those moments of. Look, I did not go to sleep away camp because I didn't want to be in the girl's bunk, but I didn't know that then. Thinking back, it's like, that's exactly why I didn't want to go to sleep away camp, you know, so it's like coming into myself in this way. It helped give me answers that I didn't know I was looking for about myself.
Rachael Cerrotti: And you had mentioned earlier your bat mitzvah. How does that play into all of it?
Dubbs Weinblatt: You know, bat mitzvah is a moment in time when a girl becomes a woman in the Jewish faith and Jewish tradition. And I didn't want that. I didn't want to become a woman. But I didn't have, again, like the language, the understanding, the safety or security or the comfort to even say, like, I don't want this for these reasons. I definitely said to my parents over and over and over, I don't want to have a bat mitzvah. But I couldn't give them a reason. And I couldn't even think of one to make up. I was like, I don't want to wear a dress which is definitely something that I said. But that was not a solid enough reason to not have a bat mitzvah. And so it was really, really devastating for me to have to go through this rite of passage, this ritual that I just deeply did not want to do. I feel like Judaism has betrayed me a lot through my youth. And that was a big moment of just being like, why do I have to do this? This is miserable. Why doesn’t anyone see why I don't want to do this?
Rachael Cerrotti: Do you feel like it still betrays you?
Dubbs Weinblatt: My instinct was to say not always, but I think sometimes. Yeah, once I understood myself to be a trans person. agender genderqueer, nonbinary, not a man, not a woman person. I was like, okay, now I'm going to like stop feeling the anxiety and the like, stress because now I've figured out the big piece, But I still felt a part of me missing. And it turns out it was my Jewish identity because I had stuffed that down for a decade because I was - there was no to my knowledge, safe space for queer Jewish people. Now I learned that there was. But again, I was one of those people who didn't care to dig any further. I was like, there just must not be. And so once I realized that I was still missing my Jewish identity and then I saw a job opening at Keshet, which is a queer Jewish organization, I was like, I have to work there. I have to. And so I was able to get a job there and I started my healing process with Judaism. And like being in intentionally queer Jewish spaces with other queer Jews. Where my queerness wasn't anything different than my Jewishness, if that makes sense. Again, I was just like, when you don't make a thing a thing, it's not a thing.
Rachael Cerrotti: Mmhmm.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Which is - I'm paraphrasing what you said.
Rachael Cerrotti: Yeah.
Dubbs Weinblatt: But essentially –
Rachael Cerrotti: Totally.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Right. So that's what that was for me, starting to see myself reflected in the Jewish tradition in Jewish spaces. Being able to talk with and just meet so many other queer Jews and learn that there are other ways to interact with Judaism than how I had been previously doing it. And so do I still feel like Judaism betrays me? Uhh, yeah, because there's still so much work to be done within Jewish spaces around equity and justice, around queerness. And so do I feel disappointed sometimes? Yeah, absolutely. But it's, you know, that's life.
Rachael Cerrotti: And so you are doing this work in all spaces of your life and you have the show, Thank you for coming out, which is one of the longest running queer improv shows.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Mmhmm.
Rachael Cerrotti: In New York City? Or in the country?
Dubbs Weinblatt: I don't know. I don't know.
Rachael Cerrotti: All over? Somewhere?
Dubbs Weinblatt: Sure.
Rachael Cerrotti: Can you tell us a bit about the show and the space that you're helping curate for other queer people?
Dubbs Weinblatt Yeah. So I'm an improviser. I alluded to or I didn’t allude to it, I said it - explicitly. And so I was affiliated with a theater in New York City called The Magnet Theater. And there was like one LGBTQ show that they had that played monthly and that show retired. And so Pride of 2015 was approaching and there was no queer show coming up at the magnet. And so I reached out and I just inquired about it and they were like, Well, do you want to produce something? And I said, I've never produced a show before, but sure. And so it’s just like that yes-and mentality of okay, sure. And so I had done - I'd also used to do stand up and I had a joke about, you know, thanking the audience for coming out. And then I said, thank you for coming out. And then I don’t need to rehash the whole bit. But essentially the punchline is, no one ever thanked me when I came out. It got a big laugh in the room. But that's - And that helped kind of crystallize the format of the show, which is having someone share a coming out story or coming into self story and then a group of queer improvisers using the details from that story to do improv. And so like bringing to life the story through improv. And so the theater gave me a Monday night at 10:30 slot, which is, in my opinion, the worst time in the world. Monday at 10:30? Are you kidding? So, the show sold out. And I was like, Is this because it's pride and people just want to see a show or are we onto something? So we tried it again in August and it sold out again and it kept selling out or near selling out. And so I was like, okay, this is a space that the community is craving. And so I just kept producing it and eventually had to go to two different theaters. Then we were in festivals and then was approached for the podcast and I was like, well, I've never hosted a podcast before, but sure.
Rachael Cerrotti: Yes, and.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Yup, exactly. But what I think is so special about the live improv show in particular is usually when you see improv and something queer is in the improv set. The queerness is the joke. Like queerness is being made fun of but because this is a space where everybody is queer, the queerness is never the joke. It's never the punchline. It's the superpower. It's the -
Rachael Cerrotti: Could you call it like a binding agent? Like it's the reason you're all together?
Dubbs Weinblatt: I love that. A binding agent. Yeah. Thank you.
Rachael Cerrotti: Yeah. You’re welcome.
Dubbs Weinblatt: And so - it's really special to know that - because some of the stories we hear are joyful. Some of them are painful. Some of them are a mixture. And it can feel - it's scary enough to get up in front of a room of people and share, you know, this memory of coming out, this moment. You have to trust that they're going to take care of you in your story and in the probably 100 plus more shows that I've produced, that I've seen of Thank You For Coming Out. 100% of the time that story is taken care of in a respectful and kind way. I've never had to call a scene. I've never had to. There was maybe one time in one scene it got a little dicey, and then they just ended it and it was over. But it's just - it's really special to be able to hold that kind of safe space for folks to explore queerness.
Rachael Cerrotti: I imagine that for at least some of those people, those stories of coming out can hold some trauma and can be some really difficult memories. And I'm trying to imagine like some of the difficult experiences in my life and one speaking them publicly, but then passing them off to somebody else in front of an audience feels incredibly vulnerable. And one of the questions it brings up is like how that impacts your memory, how that messes with your memory, how it affirms your memory. It could be positive. It could be negative. Does it like add on to the memory in some way?
Dubbs Weinblatt: I’ve told my story a few times so I can speak firsthand. And also just in speaking to many of my storytellers throughout the years, is that especially for the folks who had maybe a little bit more painful experiences, watching a group of people not make fun of the experience, but like pull what one might think of as a throwaway detail and like play with that to the point of laughter where it helps to reimagine or like think about the story from a different perspective or think about it in a different way outside of pain. And so, so many folks have used the word healing when describing the experience of being able to laugh through something that was so painful and to bear witness to this joy, you know, of something that was so painful.
Rachael Cerrotti: Mmhmm
Dubbs Weinblatt: In my mind, I have all these different scenes running through, but I'll just - and retelling improv to someone who was not there is probably the worst thing in the world. But I just want to give, like, a very small example to try to explain what I mean.
Rachael Cerrotti: Please
Dubbs Weinblatt: So I had a storyteller share a story about how she came out to her mom in the kitchen. She was like in the kitchen was so small and it just - it felt like it was getting smaller and like then kept telling the story, right? That was seemingly a throwaway detail. But then the improvisers built this beautiful scene about this whole house that was like extremely small and like more people kept coming into the house. And so hopefully that helps to illustrate like it wasn't about feeling pain in this small kitchen, it was about taking the small kitchen and turning that into something joyful.
Rachael Cerrotti: In my head, I'm like painting a fairy tale scene of, like, a small little house in the woods somewhere.
Dubbs Weinblatt: That’s Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Rachael Cerrotti: In listening to your podcasts, one of the lines that you use in a conversation in one of the episodes is that you say that laughter is the lubricant of the mind.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Yes
Rachael Cerrotti: I hope I'm quoting you correctly, but I thought that was brilliant. It's affirming.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Yeah, it is. I do want to say, I borrowed laughter as a lubricant of the mind from a teacher of mine. Do Choquette, so I won't take credit for it. But it is brilliant. It is very brilliant.
Rachael Cerrotti: I want to ask a question about names and memory.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Sure
Rachael Cerrotti: And you touched on this a little bit, that there's a few different ways in which people might refer to the names that they had before transitioning or reaffirming their gender identity. And so you mentioned that sometimes that's dead name. Sometimes they refer to it as their given name or their name at birth. And I'm wondering if you could share, like, how these names are woven into telling stories of quote unquote, past self. And I'm not sure past self is the right word there, so please correct me. But like, how do you readjust those stories of the past to fit the present when someone's identity has changed like that?
Dubbs Weinblatt: I'll speak for myself and I'll speak for some people. This does not apply to all folks. But generally speaking - when speaking about times in the past, I just use my present name. So I use Dubbs. I will never use my dead name, my given name. There are some trans people who don't mind and actually like to use that name because it helps differentiate a certain time in their life between then and now. But for me, I prefer not to share that. And if you Google it, you can find it very easily. So it's like, you know, I just - I don't want to speak it, but it exists publicly. And so when I see that name, for me, it brings up sadness and pain. I just was thinking about how painful it was to grow up and not be seen for who I am as a person, and not even having the tools to advocate for who I am as a person and so don't love seeing it. I actually - I had thyroid cancer last summer and I had to have surgery and in that moment, I was feeling like extreme stress and anxiety. And my sister came in from Chicago to be with me for my surgery and I was filling out forms and I accidentally wrote my dead name a few times and I started like flipping out that I did that and like, my sister was like, it's okay, you're under stress. Like, don't worry. I’m not sure why bringing that up, but I think it's like because of this like trauma in there, there's stuff coming up, stuff happening where it's almost like I reverted back to a painful time and I just like I couldn't figure it out.
Rachael Cerrotti: It's interesting the way our minds work like that, that certain things just especially under stress, just compartmentalize in strange ways.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Yeah. It was very weird. Very, very weird for me.
Rachael Cerrrotti: I feel like in some element of this conversation, grief has to exist somewhere. And I'm wondering if that feels true for you.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Yeah, I think in kind-of two ways. The first one is for me. I feel a lot of grief around not starting testosterone until I was 35 and so missing out on, quote-unquote, these prime years of youth. Being perceived as and living more fully as myself. So it's like ehh, like I'm already almost 40, my hair is starting to go. It's like I could have had so many more years of, like, full head of hair, you know what I mean? those kinds of things where it's like, I grieve that and I grieve that I wasn't able to show up for myself. But then I have the same conversation which is I was doing the best I could with what I had. And like I said from in the beginning, like I was in survival mode and I was still in survival mode until essentially I got sober and started testosterone where I was just like hanging on by a thread, but I didn't realize I was until I wasn't anymore. Just thinking back on my past. It's so painful cause I just feel so sad for that kid not being able to be true to who they are. So there's a lot of grief there.
Rachael Cerrotti: When you say that kid is it almost like a disassociation from yourself now?
Dubbs Weinblatt: It's not actually. I just am so proud of that kid for, like, pushing through even though it was so painful every minute of every day. To, like, keep hanging on. But for what? Like, I didn't know what was there. I never thought about the future. Cared about the future, which then played into not caring about the past. It was so hard to be present that I would escape into my brain, but never to the future and never to the past. I don't even know where I was. So I was dissociated in the moment. But when I think back, I don't feel dissociated from that person. I just feel sad for them. And then the other conversation around grief is - I hear a lot from family members of trans folks the idea of I'm grieving the daughter that I lost, like my parents would say that. Or I hear lots of people saying that. And I remember feeling really uncomfortable with that. Like you're grieving the daughter you lost. But I never really had the words to describe why I was uncomfortable by that. So I just let my parents have it, you know. And upon further review and talking to other people in the community and reading about it, it's like I was never a daughter, right? Like you called me your daughter, but I was never a daughter. And to grieve something really that never existed, right? I was never a daughter. And it's like, shouldn't we be instead of grieving this, quote-unquote loss, shouldn't we be celebrating a new, healthy connected human who, like, finally knows who they are? And I think it's like not about losing something. It's about gaining and about celebrating truth and authenticity.
Rachael Cerrotti: It's a powerful reframing
Dubbs Weinblatt: Yeah, it's hard to think about some of the conversations that I've had with family members and friends around the shift in who I am as a person.
Rachael Cerrotti: Dubbs, it's been really nice to talk to you today and as we round out this conversation, I want to usher us into the future. Queer people and trans people are living in a world, at least in some spaces. And I want to be very clear that it's only in some spaces where there is more visibility around queerness than ever before. And so there's a really different story happening now than 20 years ago in the early aughts or in the 1980s, which, as a millennial will always be 20 years ago to me.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Totally. Same.
Rachael Cerrotti: Like - but I'm wondering, being that you are somebody who is very actively contributing to collecting stories about queerness right now, how do you think that the story of today for this community is going to be told to future generations?
Dubbs Weinblatt: I think particularly this moment in time is going to be one of those like really inviting folks to use their both-and muscles where it's like not only do we have like the most access to healthcare we've ever had and the most visibility and representation and laws on the books and abilities to affirm who we are as a person. Like I was able to get on my gender marker on my license - X, right. So non-binary. So we have all of this access and it is still one of the most dangerous times. It almost feels like we're regressing. And so I think looking back on this particular moment, it's going to be confusing, it might even be confusing of, like, how are we so far advanced in some ways and so regressed in some ways. Which is why I think having these conversations around queer identity and why I think my podcasts and other queer podcasts and books that are being written are so important because it is recording a snapshot in time of what queerness is like now and how people are living firsthand and experiencing what it is to be queer. And part of what I love about my podcast, not to toot my own horn, but it's like we're talking both about the past of you know, someone sharing a coming out, coming into self story and what that was like then in that particular point in time. And then we cut to present day of, like, where are we now and how have things shifted? How are things different? How have they changed from then? I always think this now it's like we're living history. I’m living this history of pushing the agenda forward on LGBTQ justice and equity. And it's a wild time to be, to be, to be here.
Rachael Cerrotti: I wanna ask you one more question that's just popping into my head.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Yeah.
Rachael Cerrotti: You're part of a generation that is collecting stories for future generations. So as an active participant of, say The Memory Generation, I'm curious if any stories that have come to you have changed the way that you've understood your own coming out experience. And I'm using the word coming out there very broadly in the sense of just like who you are, how you walk through the world today in this identity that is yours and beautifully yours. I'm curious, like, what stories have come into your orbit that have somehow impacted you from these other storytellers?
Dubbs Weinblatt: Such a beautiful question. One of the many reasons why I love doing the podcast is to educate and to bring people in in a safe and accessible way, And so something about me is I have a very terrible memory and I think it's because for so long I actively tried not to remember anything. And so it is hard for me to recall things just to be truthful. But what I can say is the profound impact of being in space with other queer people and hearing their stories. And even if it's someone who's part of the LGBTQ community who holds completely different identities than I do, feeling so connected to them because there's something so human about the experience of wanting to own who we are as people and being seen for the people who we are. And I think anyone, regardless of if you're part of the LGBTQ community or not, can relate to that. When I am in a Thank You For Coming Out space. It is a moment of belonging. It's never about trying to be someone I'm not. And I have heard from other people that it's a similar experience of this is a space of belonging and that has profoundly changed who I am as a person because I now see that this can exist. These kinds of spaces can exist. They do exist. And how do I, as an educator, as an activist, find the how. And replicate that in other spaces. And it's something that I'm actively trying to figure out.
Rachael Cerrotti: Well, thank you. I look forward to following your work and staying engaged in the conversation, in the ways that I know how, in the ways that I can. I really appreciate you and I'm really glad that we know each other.
Dubbs Weinblatt: Same. I feel the same way. So happy to connect with you in all the different ways.
OUTRO
Rachael Cerrotti: Thank you to Dubbs for joining me today. You can check out their podcast by searching “Thank You For Coming Out.”
The Memory Generation was created in partnership with USC Shoah Foundation which is home to more than 55,000 testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide. You can learn more about their work and the Visual History Archive at sfi.usc.edu.
You can find additional links, book lists, testimony clips and all types of other resources and stories on our website: memorygenerationpodcast.com. Our editor is Lene Bech Sillesen. Our executive producer and co-creator of this show is Stephen Smith. The music is from Kodomo.
I’m Rachael Cerrotti. Thanks for being with us.