Writing Queerness: How Authors are Creating Mirrors and Opening Doorways in Literature
Exploring the power of inclusive storytelling, Joanne Lockwood and guest Nonir Amicitia delve into the importance of representation, self-discovery, and challenging societal norms for a more accepting and inclusive world.
Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I'veinterviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversationabout the subject of inclusion, belonging andgenerally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive.To join me in the future, then, please do drop me a line tojo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.ukthat's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. Youcan catch up with all of the previous shows on itunes, Spotify andthe usual places. So plug in your headphones, graba decaf and let's get going. Todayit's Episode 85 with the titleMirrors and Doorways, and I have theabsolute honour and privilege to welcome Nonir Amicitia.Nonir describes themselves asthe bottom half of a trench coat double act, and I can't waitto find out what that means. When I asked Nonir to describe theirsuperpower, they said juggling. They areable to keep a ridiculous number of balls in the air.I have it on good authority that's more than ten, so definitelya ridiculous amount. Hello, Nonia.Welcome to the show. Joanne, thank you so much for having
Nonir Amicitiaguest
me today. Absolute pleasure. And you've intrigued
Joanne Lockwoodhost
me and I really can't wait to find out some of thewell, what is the tunic of double act? So I can't wait to find outabout that. So, mirrors and doorways. What's thatabout? Yeah, as part of the
Nonir Amicitiaguest
trench coat double act, I co writeunder the author name, O E Tierman,and we write a book series that isa hopeful queer dystopian.And one of our goals with this series isMirrors, to show people whoaren't generally represented in fictionthat they can exist in fun,interesting fiction stories thatdon't centre around a marginalised identityas their main plot point.Because as queer, mentally ill people, we don'tsee ourselves in fiction a lot, in stories thataren't coming out stories or,oh, my gosh, overcoming depression stories orthings of that nature. So we really wanted to providethat mirror for marginalised folkstosee themselves in their communities, in new and different lights.And along those lines is the doorways of we wanted toopen the door to conversation and open thedoor to non marginalised people, to see whatit's like to live with a marginalised identity,and also to open those doors to conversations of,how can we make the world a better place? And doing allof that through fiction and throughdiscussions like these.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Fabulous. Because as a queer personmyself, there's a lot of queer joy andwe get associated with queer negativity rather thaneuphoria and empowerment we feel as well, don'twe? Yeah,
Nonir Amicitiaguest
I have been kind of following queerpublishing for quite a while and we'restarting to get away from coming out stories andtragic stories, but there's still this overwhelming numberof when queer people arerepresented in books. It's a book about theirqueerness and not about thembeing a person experiencingthings, and their queerness is just part of that.And so we wanted to writestories where that was the case where Aiden, ourmain character, is a gay trans maninspired by some of my own experiences.Andthat's a very important part of his identity. And part of the storydoes revolve around him transitioning anddealing with people whodon't respect him, et cetera. But that's not the mainstoryline. The main storyline is he'sleading this group of misfits to try and bringdemocracy back to a corporate owned America.And it was really important to bothOlivia, my co writer, and I, thatwe present these people as real peopleand they're going on adventuresand they're finding love and they're making found family. Andthe fact that they're queer or have variousneurodivergencies is an important part of who theyare, but it's not the entirety of who they are.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
I've seen that. I've observed that in the media. When Italk about the media, I mean films, TV,netflix. I think I was watching Alicein don't know if you've seenthat. It's a bit kind of was it Korean kind ofDeath games for a better way of describing it. And one of the charactersin thatjust so happened to be a queer transwoman, but you didn't realise that untilshe needed to tell you that. But it wasn't herreason for existing. It added an extradimension and depth to her character as a bythe way. And I thought, wow, of course youare. Of course you are. Why wouldn't you be? It was amazing.My wife and I just finished watching a short series onNetflix called Glamorous. It's all about the beautyindustry. And one of the characters there, Marco, yes, it is centred aroundqueerness because all the main characters are queer in a beautyindustry. So being queer is part of thatculture. But in the last 30 secondsof episode ten, the main character, Marco,you see him or her outsideof a clinic with transgender services under thetitle, and that was signified thejourney this person went on as a femme,identifying, if you like, queer man, to going throughthat journey of discovery, to say, I've now understand who I am.I'm trans, and I want to do something about this. And my wife andI were in tears at this point here, because thisevolution of character where trans became this wonderfulevolution of this character. And we thought, wow, that is so powerful.And you look back at the episode and you think, of course they are. Ofcourse they are. But they didn't realise. They didn't dimit it themselves. I thinkwhat you're saying there about someone's transiness, someone's queerness,it enriches their character rather than being the whole purpose of their character. And Ithink we've seen that too much. You look atNiverne Cox and her disclosure documentaryon Netflix around how queer people, trans people, have beenportrayed in the media for years. We're always the butt of the joke, we're alwaysthe exception, we're always the baddie, alwaysthe person, corrupting men, or whatever it may be, however youdescribe it. And I think what you're saying there is it's extremely important for theevolution of queer culture to be see asa person first, and their queerness is just part of their identity.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
It is. I mean, I'm a little biassed becauseI'm a fiction writer, obviously, but Ifirmly believe that change begins inmedia. And whether that'sstorytelling or movies or video gamesor music, whatever media youprefer, the more representation and themore openness that we can providein our media, the easier itis to affect real change in real life.Because A, you've empowered the people whoneed to see themselves, andB, you've giventhe other people things to think about, of,oh, hey, maybe that trans lady I saw on the streetisn't there just to corrupt men like the media has portrayed.Maybe she's just living her life like a normal humanbeing and maybe she deserves rights like everybodyelse. Iknow. Mind blowing, right?Yeah. We even had a trans Barbie, didn't we? And
Joanne Lockwoodhost
the trans Barbie was not transitions were not centred on itwasn't even marked upon.Yeah, it was only if you had a bit of a trans radar sort oftuned in, you go, yeah, wow, fair play. Yousnuck her in there without making a big deal of it. Absolutely amazing. Thank you.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
The Barbie movie did a lot of yeah, aplus movie, not going to lie, but,yeah, just showing marginalised people existingin media is so incredibly important andI feel like it gets, I don't want to say ignored,but kind ofdownplayed a lot. AndI know that traditional publishing is still kind of trying to findits place with that because there's alot of pushback of if we havediverse characters, especially as a protagonist,then we're going to turn off this othergroup of people who, for somereason, don't want to read about people other than themselves.Which I could go on a rant abouthow stupid that is for quite some time,but, yeah,my train of thought just completely derailed. Sorry. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwoodhost
well, the media that the movies, that kindof entertainment media, they've created these stereotypes over theyears about to define what good is and what bad isand what sinister is. And I always use JamesBond as a franchise. Itportrays the white guy, the British white guy,as the hero. Perfectly formed, fit,attractive, all these kind of things. And the baddie oftenhas a foreign accent or a non British accent, often hasa disability, a facial disfigurement or something strange about them,exploding eye or big golfing teeth or something.So we're trying to demonise people based on their physicalcharacteristics. And queer people, outside of some Marveland some other forward thinking franchises, havealways tended to be portrayed as the outliers, as thepeople who are not the good guys. And I think we got to startshowing queer people in their own space for queerpeople exemplifying that we'rejust heroes as well. We are heroes. Yeah. And
Nonir Amicitiaguest
we deserve to be heroes. I think everybody deserves to be a hero oftheir own story, regardless ofidentity or attraction or disabilitystatus or race or religion or anything.Everybody deserves the dignity of being the hero of their ownstory. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Definitely.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
For sure. It's the old adage, isn't it? You can't be what you can't see.So if you don't see the representation, we're going to talk a bit in aminute about mental health dysphoria, presumablyfeeling lost, feeling unseen, those sort of things. So it'sreally, really important to amplify and to show peoplean aspiration a possibility, abelief that they can succeed, isn't it? It is. And
Nonir Amicitiaguest
just acknowledgingthat people exist in all shapes and sizes anddifferences. Because,again, the media tends towards very specificstorytelling tropes and very specificcoding for villains. Oftentimes it'squeer coding and Jewish coding. And as a queerperson of Jewish descent, I'm just like, why? I mean,don't get me wrong, being a villain can be empoweringin certain circumstances, butwhen that's all you see,it's really hard not to internalise that message of,well, society is always going to see me as a bad guy, so what's thepoint? And Ihope that our books as OE Tierman can provide atleast a slightly different well, not slightly, aradically different point of view of,no, you're okay, you're fine, becauseour main group of characters are incredibly diversebetween physical ability and mentalillnesses and gender identities andracial identities, ethnic identities.We have so many different types of characters,all in this organisation of the goodguys.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
What sort of genre do you write about, you say is fiction?Is it modern Romance? Sci-fi.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
Well, this particular series is ahopeful queer dystopian. It's, see,100 and 5200 years ish in the futureand America has been taken over by seven corporationsthat now run everything.I often have to joke that we didn't intend this tobe prophetic because westarted writing in like 2015,2016. As a response to Google
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Musk and his cohortsOracle Allison. Yeah, we nowhave some pretty powerful organisations runningthe world, almost. Yeah.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
So we have to joke that wepromise we didn't write this expecting this to happen.But the series followsthis group of outcasts and this found family that arefighting to bring democracy and general human decencyback and fighting to make the world a betterplace. See, I'm curious now in this
Joanne Lockwoodhost
dystopian future, tell me this is true, that straightpeople have to start coming out now. Is this really good. Ifthis dystopian future, if straight people had to come out andpeople had to come out.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
We didn't want to get too far away from reality.So depending onwhich corporation area you'rein, kind of depends on the moral ornot. Depends on creates the morals andsocial attitudes. So somecorporations don't care at all and someare very CIS, het,normative enforcing prescriptive. Yeah.Because we did want to express the reality that queerpeople are currently living.We just didn't want it to be the hopelessversion of that, if that makes sense.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Yeah. Is it as bad as you see in themedia from the UK side, looking in at theUS? Is queer rights, queer oppression, transrights? I mean, we see many states winding back protectioneven, obviously, Roe versus Wade, abortionrights, but don't say gay. Is it really thatmean as a. Queer versus where you're at in the States?
Nonir Amicitiaguest
But, yeah, it's honestlyfreaking terrifying if I think about it too much.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Yeah. Sorryfor the listeners. We have our cameras on, so I can see your expression. Soyeah, I can see that was a real intake ofbreath there. Okay, gather your thoughts. One of those
Nonir Amicitiaguest
things that I both have to be aware ofbecause I'm in the community and all of my friends are,but also have to ignore for my own mentalhealth. And it's a really weirdline to walk. Yeah, we see a bit of
Joanne Lockwoodhost
it emerging in the UK. We're seeinga real anti trans rhetoric, a transcritical,trans hostile movement developing. It's a minoritywith a loud voice, well funded, well organised, with the earof politicians. And it's worrying thattrans people, mainly trans people, mainly trans women,are being used as political pawns, as footballs, aswedge issues to gain votes. Andit's frightening and that you watchor read Handmaid's Tale and you suddenly realisethat yes, all of a sudden, you could wake up in the morning and someonecan suddenly nullify your existence, your rights, yourmarriage, your property ownership. And you think you see it.As you talk about your dystopian view of theworld when one of yourprevious presidents was in place, you suddenly believe that TheHandmaid's Tale could be a reality. And if this person is reelected,it could still be a reality, couldn't it? Even if he's not,
Nonir Amicitiaguest
it could still be a reality, just based onthe way that the conservative Americancontingent thinks.Yeah. So basically, with the books, wetook all of our own personal fear asqueer folks who were bornfemale or assigned female at birth.We took all of that fear and put it into the books and said,okay, this is where we're at. Howcan we make ourselves feel better? How can we change thisfictional world to be better and lessterrifying for people who are outside of the quote unquotenorm? And thenmaybe if we put it in fiction, we can kind ofhelp nudge the real world in that direction aswell, is kind of the hope,because, yeah, the world we're living in isterrifying if you are not a straight,cisgender white guy with quite a bitof money. Yeah. For my own
Joanne Lockwoodhost
mental health here. I think one of the problems I find is that and Idon't want to use the word or the phrase trans community, meaning that weare organised into some sort of power structure,the trans communities, if you like, are agreement people trying to get over theirlives or the grave communities. Weare sometimes our own worst enemy. We reshareand amplify hate sometimes by going, have you seen this? Have you seenthat? I go onto Facebook, I see more anti trans rhetoric fromtrans people sharing the antitrans rhetoric than I do if Ijust turned on the news. And I think sometimes we've got to be careful aroundour own mental health, that we get a bit obsessedwith the danger and we keep wanting to be like mere cancerdanger, danger, danger, danger, and tell everybody about it. It's that weird line
Nonir Amicitiaguest
of we have to be aware and so we want to make sure thateveryone we know and love is aware, butalso we can't just keep focusing on thedanger and the terror because that's not goodfor any of us. And the queer community.Communities in general havegenerally higher incidences of depressionand anxiety and varying other mentalillnesses, disorders, nerd emergenciesand just floodingsocial media and our discussions with oh, my God, did youhear? So and so is now on the anti gay train. And this is whatthey said and this is what we have to rally against.I understand where it comes from. We're trying to protect each other, but itdoesn't serve us. It just kind of keeps us stuckin that reactive terror loopand I'm not really sure how to get out of it,but I think that we need to work on as awhole, and actually, this isn't just queer folk,but as a whole, marginalised communities. We need towork on finding that balance between keeping each otherinformed and safe and also celebrating eachother and celebrating thefact that we exist and our livesare all sorts of varied and beautiful,even when it's hard.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Yeah. My kind of take on it, I suppose, isI just sing my own song, play my own tune, to quotethat song, which I think Paloma Faith did a version.I keep amplifying who I am. I think if I wasto engage in those negative conversations, there'sno, no, nothing happens. You talk about being a person with aJewish history and background. What's going on in the Middle East iscompletely abhorrent to everybody, but it doesn't help to get into a discussionabout who's right or wrong. I don't want to care if you've got anti transviewpoints or you want to debate the supremacyof sex and biology over identity. I don't care ifyou want to have that conversation, I'm just going to keep doing what I wantto do. I can be the best me, have the best conversations about me,exemplify what I can do as a person. And then if youwant to go and do that in your little space, that's fine. I don't needto engage with you. And I think the more I attenuateand turn the volume down on this other stuff makes my life easierand makes my life more hassle free,that's a privilege. I can do that. I'm quite robust.I have good support network around me. But what we're saying before we wentonline and live was that you mentioned just nowabout mental health concerns around people in thequeer community, whether it's dysphoria, whetherit's the feeling of being under, attacked,erased, marginalised even further. Sohow can we, or you, through your media, throughyour books, through your writing, how can we create spacesfor people to know they're loved for one of the better way of puttingit? At risk of sounding like
Nonir Amicitiaguest
a broken record? Representation helps a lot,especially when we're talking about mentalillness and neurodivergency. There is stillsuch an incredible stigma around it,around asking for help, aroundhaving a diagnosis of anythingand showing charactersstruggling with anxiety and depression and dysphoria.And I feel like we havemore that I'm just not remembering, but showing thatand showing that they're still human, they're stillokay. Again, it's not the entirety of theiridentity and it's okay thatthey ask for help and there are people around them wholove them and who care for them and will help them througha depressive episode or an anxiety attack.And in my own life,being in the writing community has actually beenincredibly helpful for that, because writers also tendto be neurodivergent in various ways.And that's one of the ways that Olivia and I really connected,both as friends and co writers, because we both have struggleswith anxiety and depression and Ihave dysphoria and she hasother biological and mentalillnesses, my illnesses, issues that make heranxiety really bad.And so just kind of bonding ofsociety thinks we're broken, but we're not.And discussing that andcreating those safe spaces both for us asindividuals and for our readers, Ithink that that's kind of where we need tostart. And I think when we're talking aboutacceptance of mental health issues, we're stilljust starting. Partially because psychologyitself is a relatively young field, all things considered,and partially because a lot of itis still influenced by Nazism andvarious other bigotry, bigoted thoughtsthat a lot of people don't recogniseare so ingrained in the studies.So just startingwith representationand acceptance and saying, hey, we exist and we'renot all going to turn out to be serial killers.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
We know the stats. There are more CIS serialkillers than there'll ever be. Queer serial killers.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
Likemost neurodivergent people,like queer people. We just want to survive, we just want to get by.Most of the time, like in America when we're talking about massshootings and things, they're cishit white guysgenerally who have no history of mental illness,but the media will almost always spin itsomehow to point to mental illnessbecause of that stigma. Well, they need
Joanne Lockwoodhost
to they need to label them as divergent insome way. Otherwise if they're a normal person, how can a normal person berationalised to do this? Heinous acts so they have to assign a label tothem to take them out of the normal box, say, well look, they weren'tnormal, it's okay. Normal people are okay. This person has a mental health.This person has a history of this he's neurodivergent,wherever it may be, dramatically. Harms the
Nonir Amicitiaguest
neurodivergent communityand also sweeps under the rug that quoteunquote normal people are just asmessed up as anybody else.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Do you think as queer people ourselves,once you've kind of owned thatlabel, that identity, it's very easy toown other things about yourself. I don't need tohide my I don't know, I wouldn'tclass myself as neurodivergent but I have obsessivebehaviours around certain things and I have heavy disinterest in other thingsso I can be very polarised. Doesn't make me neurodivergentnecessarily, just makes me try to understand. But I can now admit to myself abouta whole load of things that maybe I tried to mask or coverin my old life, if you want to call it that way. Now I justgo it's almost like this channelis supposed to be safe for children and not explicit but the fuck, it switchhits, doesn't it? And sometimes you just go, it doesn't matter, it doesn'tmatter. I don't need to hold that baggage inanymore. Yeah, I think once you realise
Nonir Amicitiaguest
that some part of you is marginalised,the other marginalised parts of you are just like, hey, I'mhere too. And at some pointit's just like, well, society already hatesme for that thing, so I might as well embrace this other thing.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
My lived experience is when I announced to theworld my transiness and told my mum and otherpeople it was kind of if Icould share that secret that I've held at me for 40 52 years of mylife at the time, I can share it. I don't need to have a secretanymore. There's nothing more scary. I mean, you try and blackmailme. What have you got on me that I'm worriedabout? I thinkit's important. One thing you mentioned earlier wassociety sees us as broken in some way, whether we're neurodivergentqueer. And the issue with that is that Iinternalise that. We internalise that.We're told we're broken therefore we are, therefore we believe. Andsometimes that's the root cause of a lot of dysphoria.You must conform to a social construct. You must conform to the norms ofsociety. You don't look track or woman enough, you don'tlook man enough. And WTF what does nonbinaryenough mean, exactly?Yes, you look absolutely fabulous and nonbinaryenough to me on the camera.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
That's one of the struggles that I have, too. It's just like,to a quote unquote normal assistperson, I come across as very feminine presentingbecause I haven't done any sort ofactive masculinization. Also sidenote, the fact that we associate non binarywith masculine appearance is really dumb.But there's still that masculine as default.Ergo, trying to getmore looking masculine ishmeans you're trying to be more central. It doesn'tmake sense. Yes, androgyny
Joanne Lockwoodhost
is inherently more masculine, isn't it? It is, yeah.Small bum, no breasts, very straight looking,cropped hair, whatever. It's a very masculine.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
Generally super thin.If you just Google androgynous orsomething along those lines, you'll come up with a bunch of really skinny,really white people. Andas someone who is not very skinny and hasa large chest, people don't look at me andthink, oh, you can be Androgynous. ButI am non binary. I don't identify with beingmale or female. Some days I'm more one, sometimesI'm more another. And there's not agood way to present that in currentsociety, because literally everything isgendered in a really stupid way.Yeah. We're even telling bits of porcelain that
Joanne Lockwoodhost
their toilets are gendered in some way. It's just a toilet.Who's assigned the agenda? And, like,
Nonir Amicitiaguest
clothing? I've started wearing, quoteunquote, men's jeans, because they're so much easier to fit,because women's fashion isso insanely ridiculous.But again, they're just clothes, there's no need to labelthem. You just want the pockets, don't you? That's what it is. You want deep
Joanne Lockwoodhost
pockets. They don't want to have to try
Nonir Amicitiaguest
on 20 different pairs of jeans that are supposedly the same size tofind one that fits. The one thing I like about women's
Joanne Lockwoodhost
jeans is the Lycra and the stretch.I know men's jeans can have Lycra and stretch as well, but I tend tofind that they fit a little bit better. But, yeah, I know what you mean.It's definitely the pockets. That's fine, we could switchjeans, but it's definitely the pockets. I miss pockets. I do misspockets. Again, women's fashion. WTF
Nonir Amicitiaguest
why not? I often wear dresses.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
I got one on today that has pockets in it. I'm out at a functionor something and I put my hand in my pocket and pull out a tissueor something and everyone around me goes, oh, you got pockets in your dress. Oh,fantastic. Everyone got pockets in it.I just want someone to put my lippy and my tissues. I don't want
Nonir Amicitiaguest
to have to carry a bag. I stuff
Joanne Lockwoodhost
everything in my bra. That's the other problem. You got your mobile phone in there,you got your room key without having. A big chest, is that I've
Nonir Amicitiaguest
got built in pocket.But, yeah, I don't know. The way thatsociety just genders things in general makes no sense tome and it never has. Even before I recognisedthat I was non binary, and non binary waseven a thing I could be even as a kid.I was a very sheltered kid and Iwasn't even exposed to the concept of queerness until highschool, until I was in my teens.But even as a kid, I knew I didn't fit in as a girl ora boy. I was a very tomboy girl or a very girlyboy, andI didn't have words to express that. And I think that that'sa really important part of where we're at as a society now,is we're starting to have words.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
And I think it's important that we allow kids access tothose words and those concepts,because not tosound overdramatic, but it could literally save their livesto be able to say, I'm not the only one who feels this way. There'sa whole term for people who feel this way.And that's one of the things that really irritatesme about the whole we can't exposekids to trans people or to queer peoplerhetoric. Again. We're all just tryingto live our lives. We're not trying to, quote, unquote,convert anybody or anything.We're just trying to tell kids that,hey, we exist and maybe you're one of us and maybeyou're not. Butif they grow up knowing that we exist, they're more likely torespect us and to respect our communities and to be more openminded. Or it is
Joanne Lockwoodhost
an old thought, or see a role modeland see themselves represented in somebody and realise what's goingon in their head isn't broken. They are notbroken, they are real, they are valid.And that's what straight people are worried about because they'reprobably internalising their own feelings.That's generalisation. But, yeah, there are many people out there that are repressing theirown thoughts and sexuality and identity.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
A lot of that is internalised from society and peopledon't really realise how muchwe internalise from those external sources, from the media,from our parents, from our education,and how dangerousand debilitating that can be toeverybody, whether or not you are marginalised.The fact that CIS, het white people are soafraid of the queer communitypartially because of all of those internalisedfears of if I'm queer,what happens if I'm queer? What happens ifI'm not who I think I am? And tothat I say, well, then jump on the train with us, friends,because we all went through that at some point and we're allstill here. But there are some people out there that just
Joanne Lockwoodhost
like or love or feel the need to police people backinto their. Lane or back into their box. You see it withdriving a car. You get certain people who insist that you drive yourcar the way they want to have their car driven, and they'll try and policeyou or point out to you or shout at you at a traffic light orsomething like that. There are people who have this real adherence to rules.That's a neurodiversity or personality trait. But people want to put youback in their box, and if you don't fit in their box, they get reallyfreaked out by and I think that happens a lot of time, I thinkwhen you come out as queer with a I'm going to say theword again, a fuck it attitude to the world. I don't need to live byyour BS anymore. It frightens people because how dothey put you in their box again? You're beingtoo anarchic for them. And
Nonir Amicitiaguest
if they see other people doing that, I feel like there'sgenerally a piece of them that's going, well, why am I notdoing that? Why am I still stuck in this box?And there's that resentment of they're living theirlives authentically. Why am I not living my lifeauthentically?And society doesn't make it easy for anyone to liveauthentically, regardless of identity oranything, because it's all veryconformist for everybody.And I don't think thatpeople who aren't marginalised realise howmuch harmingmarginalised communities also harms them, if that makessense. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwoodhost
it's repressing people, which means you're onlyone step away from being repressed yourself for something.It's policing you into your lane, into your box.If you've got poor mental health, you've got financial difficulties, you've gotrelationship difficulties, it means that you don't feelopen to talk about that and share that, which we were talking about before wejump on air about suicide, about mental health,around feeling alone and not ableto share that. I think what we end up doing is policing people in sucha way that nobody's prepared to open upand talk. Yeah. Which is a problem for
Nonir Amicitiaguest
everybody, because everybody has periods where you'redepressed, everybody has times when you'restruggling financially or you just need someone to say, hey, it'sokay, I see you. I don't care who you are. Everybodyhas those moments andnot acknowledging that ormaking that seem like a weaknessor brokenness or an otherwise badthing harms everybody.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
So you're the bottom half of atrench coat double act, andboth yourself the bottom half and the top half.Olivia, you're both awesome jugglers. Sohow did you manage to learn how tojuggle? Well, two balls, three balls to start with, but how didyou get the ridiculous number? Was that just constant Practise or did you go toa club or something? How did you learn to juggle?
Nonir Amicitiaguest
Well, it's more metaphorical juggling.It's juggling projects andbusinesses and all of those things.And so, yeah, alot of it is just practise, and a lot of it ispassion. I'm passionate about all of these things,so I'm going to do all of them at the same time.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
So there was me thinking it was actual balls in theair. Not going to lie, I wish I could double
Nonir Amicitiaguest
like three for 30 seconds.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Back in the early 90s, thatsounds like a lifetime ago for many people. In fact, it was. My daughter's only31, so back in the early 90s, she was about two or three.I used to work late in projects. I was in It at the time,and my manager at the time was a member of the MagicCircle. I don't know if you have the Magic Circle in the States Magicians Club.Basically. And he used tohave some juggling balls in his desk, and he used to sit there in theevenings while we're waiting for servers to reboot and things like this.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
He always got his balls out and juggled around, and he taught me how tojuggle. And I could do three balls for about30 or 40 seconds. I think the goldenrule is it's not about the throwing it's all around the catching. Soas long as you can catch it, you can throw it wherever you like, aslong as it's about the catching and the rhythm. And so I got threequite successfully, and I've still got some juggling beanbagsin my desk because I keep her in a go. But I've lost thetechnique. I think I need to have a weekend of gettingback into I got the theory, I just need to practise. But, yeah,those skills, everything theory, but. Putting
Nonir Amicitiaguest
the theory into practise, whole other ballgame.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Yeah, lots of desire. I hyper focus onthings. If I can hyper focus on learn to juggle oneweekend, I won't stop until I could do four balls. I will bethere. When I was 15, I think again, I was15 in the late 70s, probably.That's a while ago, isn't it? And I learned to do the Rubik's Cube, andI wouldn't stop until I could do the cube in less than a minute. Inthose days, that was quite a good thing. I know people do it now withfive or 6 seconds and I really can't figure out how they do that. But,
Joanne Lockwoodhost
yeah, 55 seconds was my record on the Rubik's Cube. And I really hyper focusedon this, obsessed with it. I bought all these books and I could learnstrings of letters, because I used to use U and Dand R and L in combinations of those to mean up or down on topof this. So I could memorise 30 or 40 letterssequences, and I'd be able to flick those in and I'd be able to adaptand pull out that combination almost like instant. Now I look at it andgo, I can't remember a phone number these days. Ican't remember a two factor authentication when it comes upwith six digits. And I've got a key into Facebook. I can't remember that numberwithout looking at old age ortrauma. Say again?
Nonir Amicitiaguest
Trauma. Trauma, yeah. Therehave been several studies about trauma, evensmall traumas, affecting members, andwe as a world have gone through quite a few traumas lately, withthe pandemic and everything.So, as a society, no oneI have talked to recently has a good memory anymore.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
I put it down to the smartphone evolution. I don't need to knowanyone's phone number anymore. In the past, I would know1520 people's phone number, and in the early days of mobilephones, I knew their home number, their mobile number and their office number forabout 20 people. NowI know my wife's number, I know my number, I don't know my daughter's number,I don't know my son's. Number, my sister's number. Just hit thebutton. Yeah. I don't calculate things. I didn't do mental arithmeticanymore and I've even stopped googling things. I asked ChatGPT or being AI now, I want it spoon fedto me. I don't even bother looking at search results. Sometimes I just say,I'm wondering about this. I've even used Chat GPTimage techniques now, and I took a picture of some food andsaid, Describe that for me and give me a recipe. There it was.So you can go to restaurants now and get the recipe for food.Wonderful. Well, theones I've used have been pretty good because we went pumpkin picking the other weekand we got some spaghetti squashes, the white ones,and it was a broccolifeta and cheddar gratedcheddar. You scoop out the squash, you mix it alltogether and you put it down. Then you put the oven, you grill it andbake it, and I put it in front of it, in front of me, andI took a photograph and said to Chat GPT, image, please describethis. And he got it perfect. He got the recipe, you got the description,you got everything spot on just for a photo. And it'slike, yes, it's scary accurate. If you haven't tried it I knowwe're completely off topic here. If you haven't tried it, try a bitof Chat GPT four image. Yeah,it's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah.I was in a seminar the other week and someone put a slide upwith some useful information on it. I took a picture of it, fed the slidesinto Chat GPT and said, can you just summarise that and give me somedetails? Produced a little Google Sheet table with all theinformation on this slide with some takeaways on it. It's like,yeah, it's so easy now to use technology,which I'm not saying it's dumbing us down, it's makingus differently intelligent, I guess, is probably a way of describing it.But I think I put that down to why my memory is not good becausemy brain knows it doesn't need to remember anymore. So it doesn't bother.It does other things with that bit of brain power.Not sure what those things are, but it must be doing different things.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
I've unlearned podcasts and talking to people about making the worlda better place.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
That's what it is. That's definitely what it is. So technology has
Nonir Amicitiaguest
automatically made the world a better place because it's allowed you the brain power todo this? It has, yeah. And
Joanne Lockwoodhost
what I will do, I'll share my secret with the listeners hereis I will feed the transcript of this through AI and it will generate shownotes, it will generate everything else. So I haven't even got to sit here for4 hours now rewriting show notes and producing summaries of the episodebecause products out there will do it for me in a better than I evercan. And it allows me to just tweak it and adjust it tohave my tone of voice and I can turn it around in an hourwhat used to take me a half a day. So yeah, productivityfrom my perspective as a solopreneur, if you like. It'samazing. Yeah, absolutely fantastic.Completely off topic, but hey, why not?I often wonder to myself, let me sort of segue intothis. People ask me how difficult it was, it comingout and I always say the hardest person to come out to was myself.Rationalising who I am, what I am, how I am.How did you find that process of discovery? Because you said from an earlyage you didn't fit into the boxes. You didn't know if you're, as Isay, a femme man or a booked woman or afeminine woman. Where do you fit on that? So how did you kind ofevolve that sense of self?
Nonir Amicitiaguest
I feel like it's kind of a constant processbecause I'm always finding new things about myselfjust based on being in a situation that I haven't experiencedbefore or talking to someone new.But I think in general, a lot of it washonestly reading fan fictionbecause that's how I got exposed to a lot of new ideas andidentities and things that I hadn'tbeen exposed to as a kid. Andgoing back to all my earlier discussions about the importance ofseeing ourselves in media,it really gave me terminologyand things to think aboutbetween, I think, reading fan fiction and being in theatre andbeing able to kind of try on these personasand try on okay, today I'mplaying a male role.What does it feel like to embody that on the stageand being able to take that off the stage and think about it andthink about that process and how it feels in my body and howit felt in my brain, for lack of a better term.Really kind of gave me that context and that ability to say, youknow what, I don't think I fit on either end of the spectrum.I fit somewhere in the middle.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Yeah, that's quite powerful, isn't it? You're tryingon an outfit and you realise it doesn't quite fit.It's a bit tight here or a bit tight there, or restrictive. And you think,Actually, no, that's not me. And then you put this one on and go, actually,that's good. That feels good, doesn't it? You know, don't you?
Nonir Amicitiaguest
Yeah. I went through probably six or sevendifferent names before I found Nonirand that felt right. Like my poorfriends. I don't know what nameyou're using today, I'm so sorry.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Does it have a history? Does that name mean something? Is it fromanywhere? Or is it something you just kind of madeup? It's inspired by
Nonir Amicitiaguest
the Icelandic and Norse mythology.I like to say it means strength, because Amicidia means friendship inLatin. So my name thenmeans strong friendship or strong friend,because that's an important part of who I am,being there for my friends, building that community.Yeah.It's okay to make up your own name.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Yeah, I've got a good story about how I got my name.I basically pinched it off of my first crushat school at 13. Not only didI nick her first name, I nicked her surname as well, because I didn't likemy surname, so I stole both of her names. Which is quite ironic formy wife, knowing that I'm named after my first crush. Butthat's a whole nother story. But, yeah, we name our cats, wename our boats, we name our dogs. But how do we get toname ourselves? What name will we choose? And again, that'sa huge decision that people don'trealise because, again, you have to try it on. You have to see if itfits. You have to imagine it being said out loud. And will Irespond to that? It's a huge pressure, isn't it? Yeah.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
And being able to find a safe community and a safe group of friends tohelp you try on new names and newfacades and newpronouns, new connected ways to dress.Just having that safe space to experimentis incredibly invaluable.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
So what you're trying to say there is escape the judgement of the BSof social construct. That's what we're doing.We have to find a safe space where societal pressureand judgement is not allowed in. That's what we're doing.And that's the sad thing, isn't it? We're beingrepressed indirectly, often notdirectly, but indirectly by societal norms.
Nonir Amicitiaguest
Yeah, it gets really weird and wonky if youthink about it too far. It does.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Well, we've been going an hour. I can't believe that already. Wewere chatting away for 20 minutes before that. Nonir, it's beenit's been fantastic. I really love talking to you and I wish we could carryon all day. And if we lived a bit closer, rather than 4000 milesapart, whatever it is, I'm sure we'd pop her out of a Starbucks for acoffee sometime or hang out more. Well, I mean, someday
Nonir Amicitiaguest
we'll have to get Olivia on, so I'm sure we'll chat withyou again. Yes, that'd be great. I'd love to have you both on
Joanne Lockwoodhost
the show at once and be my first double act, if you like. And Iget to see both halves of the trench coat, the top hand, bottom,and maybe we'll explore that more for those who can'timagine. Imagine two children, one standing on the other person's shouldersfor the trench coat and trying to sneak into the cinema. Pretend they're18. That's the image we want you to have there. Sonot it. How do we get hold of you? What's your website, what's your bookscalled? What's your publication? Yeah. The books are called the
Nonir Amicitiaguest
Aces High Jokers Wild series. You can findthe books, all our social media and how to get in touch with us onthe website, which is O E Tearmann.T-E-A-R-M-A-N-N dot com
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Thanks for those of you who want to hunt you down in other ways. SoNonir is nonir and amacitya. How
Nonir Amicitiaguest
do we spell that for theA-M-I-C-I-T-I-A.
Joanne Lockwoodhost
Fabulous. You can also find my
Nonir Amicitiaguest
own solo published books, which are all queer,queer fantasy, romance, mostly short storiesunder E S Argentum,A-R-G-E-N-T-U-M. Becauseagain, I have too many names.But yeah, worst case scenario, find us on OE Tearmann,send us a note and say, hey, I'm interested in talking to Nonir orfinding their books and we can shoot youthe links. I'll make sure all of that's on your
Joanne Lockwoodhost
profile on the hosting platform for this podcast. If anyone wants to look youup. Just follow the links through to your profile and they'll all bethere. I'll make sure they're all tagged and put that sothank you so much. I can't believe that Bites flow so quickly and Ireally appreciate you joining me today, it's been a fabulousconversation. It has. Hopefully having me.Yes, pleasure. And for you, thelisteners, I thank you for tuning inand staying to the end. I really appreciate that.I'm sure you'll all agree there's much to take inspiration from that,especially if you're in or out of the Curecommunity, struggling to be heard, struggling with your ownidentity, struggling with your own poor mental health or whatever it may be, orjust want someone to be able to listen to you. So there's a lot inthere. Please do subscribe I valueyour subscriptions to keep updated on future episodes ofthe Inclusion Bites podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S. Tell yourfriends and tell your colleagues and please share the links. Ihave a number of other exciting and passionate guestslined up over the next few weeks and months. I'm sure you'll be equally asinspired by them as well. Of course, if you're listening in and like to bea guest yourself or have any comments or suggestions on how we can improve,if you think we can, then please send those to myself,jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.And finally, my name is JoanneLockwood, and it's been an absolute pleasure to host this podcastfor you today. Catch you next time.Bye.
Welcome back to The Inclusion Bites Podcast, where we explore the power of representation, acceptance, and inclusivity. I'm your host, Joanne Lockwood, and today's episode is all about "Mirrors and Doorways." Joining us is the incredible Nonir Amicitia, part of a trench coat double act and self-proclaimed metaphorical juggler. Nonir and their co-writer, Olivia, have created a book series called Mirrors that challenges stereotypes, embraces diversity, and empowers marginalized individuals. Through their powerful storytelling, they aim to open doors to conversations about making the world a better place. In this episode, we delve into the importance of representation in media, discuss self-discovery and finding one's identity, and tackle the impact of negative conversations on mental health. Nonir shares their personal journey and gives us a glimpse into their published works that explore queer fantasy romance. As we explore the topics of queer culture, mental health, and the experiences of transgender and nonbinary individuals, it becomes clear that the power of literature and representation cannot be underestimated. We'll also touch on the role of technology in our lives, how it has impacted our productivity, and even use AI to generate show notes and summaries. Grab a cuppa, settle in, and join us as we dive into this inspiring conversation with Nonir Amicitia. Let's continue our journey towards a more inclusive and accepting world. Stay tuned and let's get started!
The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Inclusion Bites, SEE Change Happen Ltd or Joanne Lockwood. This episode is shared for general interest and discussion; we accept no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any statements made.
