Trystan Craigo and Connor Woodward

[00:02] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Okay. It is June 18, 2023 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Lovely weather we're having today. And my name is Trystan Craigo My pronouns are he, him, or they them. And I was born in 1976. I did not start transition until 2016. And I'm here with a fellow singer in the out loud Colorado Springs men's chorus who's got similar stories, and we're going to go ahead and share.

[00:46] CONNER WOODWARD: Okay. My name is Conner or CJ Woodward. I am 62 years old today. Already know the date today. Trystan already told us and where we're at. Trystan is a friend from the chorus and he invited me to come do this interview.

[01:08] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: I guess when moving to Colorado, I grew up, spent my rather biblical 40 years in the desert. I was in Phoenix, Arizona for most of my life, but the heat was getting to me and I knew that we needed to change. So my partner and I moved to Colorado and right around that time, and we get a little bit more into the process as we go along. But I had started finally realizing that not only did I identify as more masculine rather than, you know, female as I was assigned at birth, but that I wanted to do something about it. So I figured new place, new start. And the kind of going joke at the time was, well, this year I'm turning 40 and I'll be looking 30 and sounding like I'm 20. So there's all sorts of different jokes. My partner was very supportive the whole process, so that's quite good. But it's later than a lot of people. You hear a lot of stories about, you know, kids who are 2357, who are insistent. What is it? You know, insistent, persistent and consistent.

[02:34] CONNER WOODWARD: There you go.

[02:35] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: About, you know, being, you know, binarily the gender they were not assigned at birth. But there, I haven't heard a whole lot of stories from people who actually realized later, like during puberty, during their teens, their twenties, once reality hit in a hormonal sense, or who waited a long time to transition. And then in chorus, I met Conner who had also transitioned late. So I'd been meaning to ask, you know, a lot of different things about, you know, what. What took so long so I could see if there's any commonality there.

[03:24] CONNER WOODWARD: Right, exactly. I think the main thing that took me so long to kind of figure out who I really was was filling a lot of roles for other people. So as you grow up in the sixties, of course, you're a kid, you know, and it's, it wasn't as restrictive as, like the fifties, but, you know, the, you are expected to act like a girl, dress like a girl, do the girl things and I went along with it because that's what made other people happy. So being a people pleaser was my main motive in life at that time.

[04:03] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: I get that.

[04:04] CONNER WOODWARD: Oh yeah. And especially, you know, early teens. You figure out you start going through adolescence and that's when the awkwardness started for me as it does with almost everybody I've ever met. But some like you have a target on your back sometimes. Red hair, glasses, buck teeth and all that. Very shy and quiet and everybody picks on you and you don't fit anywhere basically. Yeah, not even with the other girls. So I was very isolated at that time and then finally in my later teens met someone who thought I was pretty cool and wanted to be my boyfriend. So I thought oh I'm in love with being in love. You know I liked the feeling of someone liking me for me even though I didn't really know who I was yet. Yeah, I don't think anybody does at that age. 1617.

[05:07] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Oh I thought I did. I thought I knew everything about everything.

[05:11] CONNER WOODWARD: We all think we know everything at.

[05:13] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: That age, I swear.

[05:14] CONNER WOODWARD: Oh yeah. Yep. So we actually got married when I was 18 which was way too young but that's what we did because we were in love and he joined the armed forces and we moved all over the place and we actually had kids, three kids and that's who I was at that time. I filled all those roles, you know, the wife, mother, you know, caretaker, teacher, all of those things you do as a parent.

[05:49] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: That's so funny because I'm sitting here listening to you and there's a couple different obvious differences but this is aligning a lot, lot closer than I thought it would. You know, kid in the eighties rather than in the sixties but yeah, the whole, you know, red hair, crooked teeth or braces, glasses. Although I did not have the benefit of being the quiet one. I was very out there. All of my emotions were turned up to eleven and I was, I was noisy and I wanted all the attention and a lot of it ended up being pretty negative. So I started learning to be a people pleaser because I knew if I did what people wanted then the attention was usually better.

[06:45] CONNER WOODWARD: It was positive. Yeah.

[06:46] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Although when you're in school kids are cruel anyway so a lot of the time, a lot of that effort went for naught. I would spend so much time trying to please others and then it would fall flat. So of course like you high school met somebody, he went into the marines so we ended up getting separated. Um, so because I wasn't getting married out of high school, because my parents would never have dealt with that, you know, beyond helicopter parents is very much, you will be what we're expecting you to be, parents. And so I ended up, once I got into college and realized kind of what I wanted to do with myself, I, you know, I'd been to music. I wanted to start trying to, you know, write my own music, record, that sort of thing. And they were very restrictive about when I should be home and how much of a burden I wasn't going to be to other people, even though I wasn't. And I ended up leaving at 19. My, another very close friend of mine, who he turned out to be a lot closer than a friend after this, said, you know, well, you're here. You can crash on the couch if you want, but, you know, or I'll drive you home, but decide before you call your parents. And that's probably the wisest and perhaps the only words of wisdom he spoke. So I decided that I was going to just crash on the couch, walk across the street to school, and then talk to my parents the next day so I could actually have some distance and some set some boundaries. And their reaction to me setting a boundary was, get home now if you want a family.

[08:51] CONNER WOODWARD: Oh, wow.

[08:52] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: So that's how I left home. And because I was 19 and I didn't want to be a statistic, we set the date to get married until after I was 20. So I don't know if it counts, because by the time the wedding was rolling around, I had had uncertainties, but, you know, we had this whole plan, and everything was going on, and I had to do what was expected. So, of course, I followed through. So waiting until I was 20, it really was about not being a statistic rather than not, you know, actually trying to do something responsible.

[09:27] CONNER WOODWARD: Right.

[09:28] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: We didn't end up actually having any children, which I'm kind of grateful for. A few years later, I ended up meeting my partner, who was in kind of a similar situation with kind of a bad relationship. So we didn't want to necessarily just ditch our relationships for each other. So we took some time apart to fix our situation, leave our respective others, and then we've been together for many, many years now. But part of college, I think, is that the Internet was starting to come around. And so once I got into college, there was this forum called the IRC, which is kind of like a chat room thing, Internet relay chat is what it was. And so everybody in college would sit around at the same table and talk to each other over the computers at a face to face, because that's what it was like at the time. The college culture was very big on that, and I was really into a lot of the retro bands like Rush and Sticks and Journey and Elo and all that sort of stuff. So I had just gotten into the Kilroy was here album, so I went by the name Kilroyde, and everybody assumed I was a guy, and I liked it. I started sitting in other seats across the high tech center, in the other buildings, anything so that I wasn't at the same table, so no one would figure out who I was. That's the point. It got to, because I liked. I got. I got a kick out of it, or so I thought. I got a kick out of this. This is cool. Yeah, sure. But it wasn't so much college. I think where the dysphoria really started was late grade school, junior high.

[11:46] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah.

[11:47] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: I didn't have the words for it then, but, like, as a kid, you can be blissfully androgynous, especially in the eighties when there's all this feminism and women power and everything. You know, growing up, I had Barbie in my little pony, but I also had, like, hot wheels and a big wheel bike I could roar around on, like, a motorcycle. So, you know, I kind of had it both ways, right? But once I started developing, it's like, I, of course, because the energy of the universe has a great sense of humor. I developed fairly quickly and fairly early and have always been somewhat endowed in that respect. And when that started happening, you know, my mother's like, oh, fine, we got to take you bra shopping. And I would not let her see me. Seeing myself in the mirror looked weird. It was weird, it was wrong. And I thought, well, this is just puberty. I've never looked like this. This is what I'm supposed to look like. It's supposed to be this way. And I just could not get over the fact that my reflection in the mirror was kind of like. Like a film blurring out of focus, just gradually out of focus. And I was looking less and less like me, but I couldn't figure out why. I had no idea what was wrong.

[13:18] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, dysphoria hits in weird ways. I don't think it even occurred to me, really, until after a long time after my kids were adults. They were all adults by then. And I had been divorced for many years and had met someone else, woman who I thought, oh, now I'm in a lesbian relationship. That's cool. I'm part of the LGBT, but then you don't hear too much about the tea because people just didn't really talk about it then.

[13:50] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah.

[13:51] CONNER WOODWARD: You know, it wasn't a big conversation starter, and it was similar to me, though. I would look in the mirror as I aged, and I'm like, this doesn't look right. It never has really looked right anyway. I never liked mirrors anyway, but it just kind of took me a while. But it gradually came into focus that I started looking on YouTube at videos about transgender men, and I'm like, wow, are they reading my life story? What's going on here? And they hit all the points of, this is how I felt when I was this age. And they go through the list, and I'm like, wow, it's like they watched my movie of my life and just spoke to it. It's really weird. And then it just kind of dawned on me, okay, I got to be trans. This is. This is how I am.

[14:49] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah. The word gender is related to the word genre. So, I mean, I spent a lot of time looking at the binary.

[14:58] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah.

[14:58] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: And looking at cis men, and I knew I wasn't like that.

[15:03] CONNER WOODWARD: No.

[15:04] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Looking at cis women. And I really knew I wasn't like that.

[15:08] CONNER WOODWARD: Right, exactly.

[15:09] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: You know, ma'am, I hated, but sir would feel weird.

[15:15] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah.

[15:16] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Miss I didn't like at all. Mister felt awfully formal. You know, it's just like everything felt so restrictive.

[15:23] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, it is.

[15:24] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: But I started realizing more and more like I was playing games online, and my avatars would be the male avatars, just having them or the straighter frame, the square shoulders, just the way they moved, the way they acted, the voices they talked in. I mean, back when I was a big theater nerd, yeah. All the roles I wanted to play, save maybe two, were the guys roles. And it just didn't occur to me that, you know, it doesn't matter if we do these shows because I'm never going to get cast in that role. You know, they don't want a soprano for Jean Valjean. They don't want an alto.

[16:01] CONNER WOODWARD: Right.

[16:01] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: You know, I wasn't a soprano. I was actually a tenor by the time I was in junior high. But, you know, um. But, yeah, it got to the point where, um, I started seeking out actual trans people. And then I, you know, it was a support group with a whole bunch of other trans guys, and I looked around and I had this overwhelming feeling of, that's what gender is.

[16:34] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, exactly.

[16:35] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: That's what genre is. This is a bunch of people like me, I've never seen this before. So once I actually met other trans guys, I'm like, that's what I am.

[16:53] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You just see that. It's almost like looking in the mirror, but you're seeing the other person. It's like, oh, exactly. It's exactly how I feel. Yeah, but, yeah, I know how you. How you feel about sir and ma'am. I'm like, really? We. Why do we have to genderize every conversation?

[17:12] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Oh, I know.

[17:14] CONNER WOODWARD: Especially in the retail world. Don't call me sir, please. And I still get ma'am sometimes.

[17:20] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah.

[17:21] CONNER WOODWARD: Even looking like this, I still get ma'am sometimes.

[17:23] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: I'm like, really?

[17:25] CONNER WOODWARD: Really? Or my partner and I will be in a. In a store together. Oh, ladies, how are you doing today? And I just take my hat off and I look at them. I'm like, hello. Yeah, I am not a lady. I know, but, you know, that's the way the world is right now. It's. And has been for a long time now.

[17:45] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: You mentioned I being online and reading different things and hearing different stories. Are there any, like, funny stories that you heard that you're like, oh, my gosh, that totally happened to me. Anything kind of amusing?

[18:01] CONNER WOODWARD: Not that I can recall, except being in situations where you get misgendered and it's really obvious to everyone else except the person misgendering you. And that's pretty funny, but I can't think of anything specific.

[18:14] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Exactly. You're doing the one thing that I thought was really bizarre, because I. This is the other thing that I had happened throughout my life is I'd had a number of different friends. All my friends are kind of nerdy, and we have these intense conversations. So the friendships I do have tend to be close friendships. And I have had a one gay man and three different straight women either say that they were attracted to me or that they didn't know why they found me attractive or, you know, like, the exception to the rule. Or if you were this, I would totally. That, you know.

[19:02] CONNER WOODWARD: Exactly.

[19:03] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: And so I'm in this car with a couple of people from the support group because we're going to this event up in another location, and there's like four or five of us in the car, and I happen to mention this, and three other voices go, oh, my God. Yeah, me too. Like, apparently there's something about trans people, even pre transition, without being aware of it. Wherever even people who are cis and heterosexual can pick up that vibe of, you are somebody I could be attracted to. And I don't know why because you look like you're this, but I can't help but thinking of you as that.

[19:48] CONNER WOODWARD: Right.

[19:48] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: You know, and I think part of.

[19:50] CONNER WOODWARD: It is that we have. We feel a little more freedom to express who we actually are.

[19:57] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah.

[19:57] CONNER WOODWARD: And that we're not trying to fill somebody else's idea of who we are.

[20:01] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah.

[20:01] CONNER WOODWARD: And to me, that's very attractive. Just the personality part, not necessarily just the physical nature of how you act or move, but it's just that freedom that people don't feel themselves is very attractive. So that's how I feel.

[20:19] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah. And even after transition, I've spoken with other people who have found this unique attractiveness in men who used to be socialized as women. And I'm like, well, there are a number of cis het men out there that don't know how to behave around other human beings.

[20:45] CONNER WOODWARD: That is so true.

[20:46] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: And when you've had the shoe on the other foot, when you've been the target of that bad behavior, you're like, well, if I was a man, I would behave differently.

[20:57] CONNER WOODWARD: Right, exactly.

[20:58] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: And then when you get this opportunity, it's like, I'm going to be the kind of man I wish I'd grown up with.

[21:03] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, exactly. Yep. We've lived in both. Can tell. We've lived in both roles.

[21:08] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Oh, yes.

[21:09] CONNER WOODWARD: And we've seen the world, how the world reacts to a female. We've experienced that, and now we're seeing part of what it feels like to be reacted toward as a male.

[21:19] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah.

[21:20] CONNER WOODWARD: And how we act is a combination of both.

[21:23] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Oh, yeah.

[21:24] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah. You have to remember all the things that you've lived through as a female and know that, you know, someone's saying something rude to this woman, and it happens to be a straight cis guy.

[21:36] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah.

[21:37] CONNER WOODWARD: And you just want to punch him. I was like, oh, yeah. Do you even know what you're doing here?

[21:41] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Oh, yeah. Or be in tech support with my old voice.

[21:44] CONNER WOODWARD: Oh.

[21:44] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: There's been, like, two or three different people who would say, you know, can I get a man on the phone? You know, no offense, but it's like, yeah, anytime it says, no offense, but it's like, yeah, you're gonna say something offensive.

[21:57] CONNER WOODWARD: Here it comes.

[21:58] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: You know, once I got on t and people started just assuming he instead of she.

[22:04] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah.

[22:08] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: My. Whether I knew what I was doing as far as tech support didn't get questioned.

[22:14] CONNER WOODWARD: Right. Exactly.

[22:15] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: It was really creepy.

[22:18] CONNER WOODWARD: It's very different. Yeah. I've been.

[22:19] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: How people treat you differently.

[22:21] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, they do.

[22:22] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Is so creepy. And, I mean, there's a. There's a book that I read on recommendation of this. This trans woman that I know. She's brilliant. And she recommended this book to me called Whipping Girl.

[22:38] CONNER WOODWARD: Hmm.

[22:39] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: And I would say anyone in the community should read it. And anyone who's curious about the community or anyone who is studying gender roles or femininity should read this book. Because what it all boils down to, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, everything boils down to the way women are treated and femininity is treated as secondary. Yes, because gay men are demonized for being effeminate. Trans women are the ones who tend to be bullied and harassed. I mean, trans men, yes, but trans women are the ones who are killed at far higher race.

[23:20] CONNER WOODWARD: Right, exactly.

[23:21] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Because the idea that. Well, of course a woman would want to be a man in this world, but why would a man give up all that privilege? There must be something wrong with you. And, I mean, the whole thing all boils down to how we view femininity, and it's just horrible. I wasn't meaning to get onto that ring.

[23:45] CONNER WOODWARD: It was important, though.

[23:47] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah. But, yeah, I guess the reason that I was so surprised is that you hear all these. All these wonderful stories. The other people in our choir who are transitioning so early. I'm like, oh, I wish. But when I was younger, now you've still got a different decade on me. When I was younger, though, it was the eighties, I had heard about having a sex change, which is what they called it. And as I researched later, had I expressed any kind of interest in that sort of thing back in the eighties and nineties, the rules were effectively, you had to be, you know, in therapy for two years, living as your assigned gender without anything to help you. No drugs, no surgery, just you and clothes.

[24:48] CONNER WOODWARD: Crazy.

[24:49] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Then you had to, you know, have your therapist sign off on it. You had to want all the surgeries. You had to want the hormones. You had to go stealth, and you had to come out of it straight. And the idea was they encouraged you to not be around other people who had transitioned because that would increase the world's chances of figuring you out.

[25:19] CONNER WOODWARD: Right?

[25:20] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: So it is best to you pack up and move to another town if you're gonna do this. So then this is what sex change was when I. I was younger and would have had access. I'm not sure. What was it like in the sixties?

[25:33] CONNER WOODWARD: In the sixties, totally unaware of. I mean, a lot of I was unaware of trans people in general. They just didn't talk about them. It was transsexuals back then, you know, and I think for me, the sixties was a little freer in that, you know, the flower children and I tie dyed t shirts and love beads, and both male and female wore all that stuff, big old bell bottoms, and, you know, and that wasn't. It wasn't. At least where I grew up, it wasn't that strict. My parents weren't that, like, you have to do this in order to be acceptable or whatever. And both my brother and I were just very free to be who we were, which was a blessing. And I think I'm glad that I did not transition then, because it was so much easier now. I didn't start transitioning till 2015, so I had to see a therapist for two months or whatever it was then, and get a letter to get the hormones, and then you were on your own. You could do whatever you wanted to after that.

[26:43] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah. Because there's so many different options for surgery. But my first thought, and I've had to kind of grow into things where I'd be considering. I'm considering top surgery at the moment, but at the time, I'm like, if I could just get a binder and hormones just enough to change my voice, because my voice was my top point of dysphoria.

[27:11] CONNER WOODWARD: Same for me.

[27:12] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Back in the eighties, my parents got me this boom box, and I wanted to know if I could actually record stuff other than what's on the radio. So I put a cassette tape in, and I started it. This is a true story. And I just think I must be nuts. And I said, testing, one, two, testing. Because that's what you say, of course. And so I rewound this tape, and I pushed play, and I heard those words, but somebody else was saying that.

[27:47] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah. Hearing your own voice from another perspective is very strange.

[27:50] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: It is very strange. And even now, I hear my voice from another perspective, but I can recognize it as mine, right. Back then, my voice sounded like somebody had put it through a modulator. It's like fairly gender neutral. Low voice goes in high school, cheerleader comes out, oh, no. And I'm like, my voice can't be that high. I don't sound like that.

[28:21] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah.

[28:21] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Oh, God, do I sound like that? And. Oh. Oh, it was. It was horrifying.

[28:28] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah. I was a soprano back then, so I feel you.

[28:32] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah.

[28:33] CONNER WOODWARD: Very high voice.

[28:34] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah.

[28:35] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah. And our family is very musical, so we sang a lot. I don't like having it recorded. I don't want to record it.

[28:41] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: 6Th grade, I was a soprano, 7th grade, they put me in alto, and by the time I graduated 8th grade, I was singing an octave below the sopranos.

[28:52] CONNER WOODWARD: Oh, yeah.

[28:53] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: So I was in the tenor range, and I alternated throughout high school between alto and tenor. And there was one point in time because there were a couple, you know, high school in the early nineties was very much, you know, guys didn't want to, you know, no homo. So we couldn't get a lot of guys in choir.

[29:15] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, that's true.

[29:16] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: So there were a number of women who sang tenor.

[29:21] CONNER WOODWARD: Right.

[29:22] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: And there was one day that we were having this conversation because we were in the back trying to find dresses and everything. And every single year, the vocal ensemble, which is the more advanced group that I wound up being part of, would say, you know, hey, the guys just get to pick out tuxes from back here. We sing tenor. Let's wear tuxes. I'm like, yes, yes. And I wanted it so bad, but then the instructor's like, no, we're not doing that. It's like, okay. I'm like, but. But you're just gonna give up on this? You know, it was high school. I wasn't gonna push for something other people were willing to go up, but I'm like, oh, if only.

[30:05] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, wearing a tux would be amazing. Yeah, wearing a tie is pretty fun. Now.

[30:10] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Wearing a tux is really stiff. Yeah, I wore it. Oh, I loved how it looked.

[30:20] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, yeah.

[30:20] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: There's a reason you only wear it for formal events.

[30:22] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, exactly.

[30:23] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: They do not have a lot of give. We rented tuxes this one time because I used to work for Godaddy and they had these huge, huge Christmas parties at the ballpark. And so this one year, we were doing all right financially with what I was bringing in, and we were going to the thing and let's go ahead and save up a little extra. We've never had our pictures taken in our whole relationship. Let's go ahead and rent tuxes and we'll get pictures beforehand, then we'll go to the party. And we did that.

[31:05] CONNER WOODWARD: Cool.

[31:06] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: So that was really exciting. Yeah. And that was very, very nice. But, yeah, since moving to Colorado, things have been really, really good. The choir has been amazingly helpful because they accepted me immediately, and I knew I wasn't very far into my transition, but they were fine with that. And then, of course, we met Miriam. And as a side note, I've had to come out as bisexual and I've had to come out as trans. But I think the hardest thing for me to deal with was telling other people that I'm polyamorous because you get the whole, but you're cheating, you're giving the gays a bad name, you're being a slut. All this other crap. But, yeah, no, but we met our girlfriend here, and she's been wonderful because she's non neurotypical. And my partner got identified as being on the spectrum as well. And she has just been such a wonderful translator and has just fit like a. Like the missing piece of a puzzle in our relationship. So the three of us are very happy here, and I guess we'll just have to see, you know, if things begin to get better as far as being able to afford surgery or, you know, what, what happens down the line. Yes, the politics lately has been getting.

[32:46] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, it's been getting really touchy. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to that too. Doing the surgery and all that.

[32:53] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: Yeah. So the bathroom bills are just bad. I mean, they're lesbian women are getting kicked out of the women's room for not looking feminine enough. Good lord. I mean, these bills are just. I mean, people can't even present as their authentic selves, you know, whether they're more butch or whether they're tomboys or whether they're just kind of metro.

[33:15] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah.

[33:16] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: You know, it's like, it's enforcing a very strong gender binary in dress code.

[33:23] CONNER WOODWARD: Right.

[33:23] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: To be policing bathrooms.

[33:25] CONNER WOODWARD: It's feeling like fifties all over again. Really.

[33:29] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: It really is. I'm hoping things will start going in the other direction. I hope conversations like this can help mark the passage of time as things are influx going. We're making so much progress, but we're taking two steps forward and two steps back at the same time.

[33:46] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah.

[33:47] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: So hopefully, yeah, hopefully when somebody is listening to this down the road, they'll be, wow, things were rough back then. I'm glad things are better now.

[33:56] CONNER WOODWARD: Yes, we can hope they're saying that for sure.

[34:00] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: But that's why we're in the choir, so that we can promote that sense of equality and fellowship and song.

[34:08] CONNER WOODWARD: So, yeah, it's really encouraging, for sure.

[34:12] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: And it's part of the reason I'm really glad you were here to help me do this today.

[34:16] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, it's been good. It's been a good conversation.

[34:19] TRYSTAN CRAIGO: It has. So again, thank you. And thank you for StoryCorps hosting this, definitely, because this is a really great idea, and hopefully this will be heard by ears that need to hear it.

[34:36] CONNER WOODWARD: Yeah, definitely.