EPISODE 6 - Lindz Amer
Lindz Amer:
I think storytelling has just been a huge part of my life from a very young age and I think a lot of what I struggled with in my coming into myself and figuring out who I was is because I'm not reflected in any of that content.
Tyler Greene:
Hi there. Welcome to This Is My Family, a podcast about building a life with the people you love. I'm your host, Tyler Greene, and I am so glad that you're here. On today's show, we've got Lindz Amer. They are the founder of Queer Kid Stuff, which is a web series focused on spreading joy and educating people of all ages, but especially young kids, about LGBTQ+ and social justice topics. But first, for those who are new to our show, welcome. I created this podcast as an exploration and celebration of the beautifully messy ways we make our families and honestly, the ways that those families end up making us.
If you listen to Episode One, you'll get a sense of my story, of my husband and our son Sam and how we brought him into the world. We also, in subsequent episodes, talk to a drag queen, a public radio podcast host, a meditation teacher, and just last week, a Tony Award-winning educator. I really hope that you leave these episodes learning something new and ultimately, during these really disconnected times, feeling more connected to the people around you.
So again, welcome to the new folks and thanks for sticking around to our existing fans.
Lindz Amer:
Hey there, friends. Welcome back to Queer Kid Stuff. I'm Lindsey.
Teddy:
And I'm Teddy.
Lindz Amer:
And we're back with more brand new episodes for Season Three. Today we're going to talk about gender and gender expression.
Speaker 5:
[crosstalk 00:01:54] happy. Queer Kid Stuff. You are enough. You're at Queer Kid Stuff.
Tyler Greene:
That's a little taste of today's guest's work on the web series Queer Kid Stuff. It earned Lindz a spot on the TED stage for a talk that has been watched more than two million times.
Lindz Amer:
Opening a performance with lyrics like, "It's okay to be gay" for a room full of adults is one thing, but it's entirely different for a room full of kindergartners. What you just heard is the theme song for my web series, Queer Kid Stuff, where I make LGBTQ+ and social justice videos for all ages. And when I say all ages, I mean literal babies to your great-great grandma.
Tyler Greene:
My friendship with Lindz really started three or four months ago at a period of the pandemic I'm calling my LinkedIn Networking Phase, where I was looking for people who were doing something similar to me, whether it's a podcast thing or a theater or queer stuff, and seeing if they'd meet for 15 minutes or whatever and find out about what they're doing or if there's a way that we could work together. So, Lindz and I ended up Zooming and I instantly knew that I met a kindred spirit, somebody who really focused their life's work on kindness and education and who was really committed to social justice.
Tyler Greene:
So, we hung up the Zoom and didn't talk for a month or two months. And I started making this show in a serious way, and one weekend my son was sitting on the couch watching TV. Now, short sidebar. For those of you who say that you don't let your children watch TV, you're liars. I'm just kidding. If you... If you... If you don't let your children watch TV, bless you, because for me, I don't know how we would do it without some form of temporary distraction while I could do the dishes or do something else other than pick up my son or put my son down or change his diaper or play a game or whatever.
Long story long, he only watches one of two shows, Coco Lemon and Little Baby Bum. Everything else we watch, he immediately comes to us, wants to play. Those two shows, he watches. And while both of those shows are somewhat racially diverse, most of the families are mom, dad, kid, dog. And I found myself being really frustrated by that and I immediately thought of Lindz. They say my frustration isn't uncommon among parents looking for more LGBTQ+ friendly content for their kids. In fact, they started making Queer Kid Stuff videos with a simple goal in mind. Make videos that would have helped them, inspired them and made life a little brighter as a confused queer kid.
Lindz Amer:
I'm a nineties kid and I grew up in the middle of the Disney renaissance, right?
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
And the beginnings of Pixar. And I just... I loved stories. I grew up in downtown Manhattan and I... My parents took me to... I was very privileged and was taken to a lot of theater as a kid. My parents are both huge theater nerds. Yeah. I think storytelling has just been a huge part of my life from a very young age and I think a lot of what I struggled with in my coming into myself and figuring out who I was is because I'm not reflected in any of that content and I still really am not and I mean as an adult, and there's a lot more queer representation in media nowadays.
But I mean, it's not in the kind of universal stories that I grew up on and love and have... I have a real nostalgic yearning for, to see myself in those stories and it never really happened and when I kind of came up, when I started kind of pursuing that in my own work and wanting to do that for myself, for the younger version of me, I found that it just... It didn't exist and it was a gap I had to fill and that's kind of been... I don't know. I think it's... It's always silly to say it feels like a calling or a purpose, but it really does. That's what I want to do. I want to make stories about people who look like me, who feel like me and for people who share my sensibility about how gender and sexuality and identity work.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
And I want to help kids grow up understanding that and feeling reflected and validated by the stories around them. So, working on it.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think from a queer parent perspective, there is a sadness because it's sort of like he just... He sees mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy. It's like...
Lindz Amer:
Yeah.
Tyler Greene:
Okay. But like... And then, the daddy-daddy one, it's like, it's good but it's not the... Doesn't have the production values of Coco Lemon, so it's like... Not that we need production values, necessarily. But I think... I don't know. It's just... There is... There is... Sadness was what I felt, a little bit.
Lindz Amer:
Yeah.
Tyler Greene:
As we were talking about even your own relationship.
Lindz Amer:
Yeah. I come from a pretty unconventional family structure and even though everyone... All of my parents are straight, it was still unconventional and I was only ever seeing nuclear families and that was... That was hard in a very different way. The next level of figuring out who I was as a queer person within this kind of non-normative structure just made it really complicated to figure things out because it was all just really muddy and complicated.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
Yeah.
Tyler Greene:
So, let's talk about the YouTube show specifically, which I think is perhaps now inextricably linked to this TED Talk that has had millions of views.
Lindz Amer:
Yeah.
Tyler Greene:
Is awesome and made me cry every five or six times I've watched it now. It's very beautiful.
Lindz Amer:
Thanks.
Tyler Greene:
And so, I think it's just important for the listeners to set the scene with what is the show.
Lindz Amer:
So, Queer Kid Stuff, it's my YouTube web series that I started in 2016. I do LGBTQ+ edu-tainment, I would say, where it's very kind of simple. Me and my co-host, which is my puppeted stuffed teddy bear, which is actually my teddy bear from my childhood.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
And we kind of tackle, in short form videos, questions like, "What does gay mean? What is gender?" Really going into kind of different facets of identity, social justice, what it means to be an activist, what it means to be an ally. We talk about consent. And we do all of this through a really kind of accessible and approachable format for young kids, so really looking at pretty much a preschool age. When I was writing the episodes, I would write for ages about three to seven, and I wanted to do that for a lot of different reasons. But it really came out of my background in theater [inaudible 00:09:08] audiences. I studied at Northwestern University and they have a really strong children's theater program and I just really fell in love with it, talking about kind of growing up in Disney renaissance and Pixar and also loving theater as a kid, that felt like a space where those two interests kind of met.
Lindz Amer:
And I was also... Was an undergrad. I was coming into my queerness. I had my first girlfriend, was starting to understand my sexuality and own that a little bit more outside of kind of being an angsty teenager.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
And I kind of wondered why I couldn't put these two things together, why my queerness had to be so separate from the artistry that I loved and was really studying in depth. But I started kind of putting these two things together and trying to figure out like, "Okay. What does a path look like for me to be able to make queer storytelling, queer media, queer theater for kids?" I just kind of did a Google search one day for like... I stepped into a kid's shoes and was like, "Okay. A kid hears the word gay for the first time. What do they do?" In the age of the internet, they maybe will Google that word, and the only things that came up were a couple of resources for parents and educators and a very bland dictionary.com definition that also included the derogatory kind of slur definition of the word. And there was nothing aimed at kids. There was nothing for young people in that Google search, even... I mean, mostly just looking at the first page. I mean, I'm sure if you dig a little, it would have had other stuff, but...
Tyler Greene:
Some SoundCloud links.
Lindz Amer:
Exact... Exactly. But there wasn't really anything that was specifically aimed at this age group. I started watching a lot of LGBT YouTubers and I realized that kids were on YouTube. Kids were finding YouTube videos on their own, without parent supervision, which has its pros and cons, obviously. And kids were there. There was a whole space for kids content on YouTube and I thought, "Okay. Maybe this is the place where I do this and I fill this gap that I found in the Google search and I use my expertise as a theater-maker, as a creator and use my experience and my identity to bring kind of a Mr. Rogers vibe to these topics." And I did that.
Tyler Greene:
You did that.
Lindz Amer:
And we pro... Yeah. I did that. And now what's kind of cool is that the videos actually turn up in the Google search for... If you search "What does gay mean?".
Tyler Greene:
Mission accomplished.
Lindz Amer:
Yeah. Right? I think so. And we produced four full seasons of those videos, so I think what's really cool now is we're looking at refocusing, moving into kind of this new year and taking a lot of the content that we've done already and really curating it for families to build out a little bit more of an accessible curriculum that's aimed at preschool ages and has a queer-centered focus while we're also talking about intersectionality and social justice as a whole. So, really trying to shepherd... Instead of having to build all of this stuff up, now we're kind of moving into a space where we can shepherd and support people who want to go on that journey.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
So, yeah. I'm really excited about the kind of new space that we're going to start taking up.
Tyler Greene:
I mean, you've done this, but how would you approach explaining what non-binary is to somebody, specifically through this show?
Lindz Amer:
In my approach to kind of these seemingly complex ideas that we're talking about is... I really like to base it on this phrase that I learned from a mentor of mine. Actually, I think we're mutual... We have a... I think he's a mutual friend. Philip Dawkins, who is a...
Tyler Greene:
Oh, yes.
Lindz Amer:
An incredible queer playwright, mostly out of Chicago. And he was a teacher of mine at Northwestern and he said to write for children from under the doorknob. So, it's really about getting low to the ground and looking up at the world through a child's perspective. So, what does that mean? That means kids are entering a space without context, without the adult baggage of personal experience of how gender functions in the world, how sexuality functions in the world, around how they relate to each other, the conflicts and the camaraderie around that.
So, how do we approach an idea that feels complex to us as grownups in a way that feels approachable to kids is we shed that baggage and we look at, "Okay. What is actually...? What is really the core idea we're talking about?" And so, when you're talking about... So, let's take the word non-binary. What is non-binary? The first building block we need to get there is gender, an understanding of what gender is at its core. And the way I talk about gender is that it's about how we feel internally about ourselves and how we express ourselves to the world. So, it's... Gender is not something that is concrete. It's something that's... If you really kind of turn into yourself and think about, "Okay, what... How do I feel about gender?" Not what you're told about what your gender is by a doctor, by your parents, by society. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about how you feel internally about your gender.
And then we also turn out externally and we express that to the world, and that can be through our clothes, our hair, our mannerisms, even and in particular, our pronouns. So, what I talk about with kids is pronoun is a word we use when we're not using someone's name and we want to indicate their gender. So, usually you'll see pronouns like he and him. You'll see pronouns like he and her. But there are also pronouns, they and them. Some people use they and them pronouns, and people who are they and them, who use they and them pronouns, feel usually an in-between ness or an outside-ness of these two genders that we're given when we're starting to understand gender. So, those two genders are boy and girl, typically. But someone who uses they and them pronouns maybe feels in between those two genders, maybe feels outside of those two genders, and that's someone who is non-binary. There you go.
Tyler Greene:
There it is.
Lindz Amer:
But really, it's about... It's about coming at it without context.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
But it's also about building these blocks, these foundations.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
Because especially... You don't have to do this as much with kids, but in particular with grownups, when you're talking about this stuff, it's because we do come at it with baggage and we do come at it with context.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
You have to unlearn how we understand how gender functions in society, which... Gender is so intrinsic to how we function in all aspects of society.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
And that's why it can be really hard when you see a word like non-binary and you're so used to looking at the world as boy and girl. You can see that word and be like, "I don't understand it."
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
And I think that that is a pretty typical reaction from an adult, especially older adults, because you have... You know, the more experience you have, the more concrete those definitions are for you and the more concrete your understanding of how the world functions is [inaudible 00:16:24] in the context of gender. So, we have to unlearn a lot of that and re-formulate our conception of how gender functions. So, looking at not just the binary of boy and girl. We're adding in what it means to be non-binary and trans and all of these other things, and we start to look at gender as a spectrum rather than a binary, and usually I use pronouns as just kind of like the in to that because that's something that's very universally understandable with... We use pronouns in pretty much every [inaudible 00:16:54]. I'm not a linguistics expert, [inaudible 00:16:57], so don't quote me on this.
Tyler Greene:
No, this is... No. Super-helpful. It struck me this morning. We referred to my son as he and I have a friend who refers to their daughter as they, and then I was hearing something about gender identity being formed around the age of four.
Lindz Amer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Tyler Greene:
So then I felt all kinds of feelings about my learning and what unlearning I need to do and...
Lindz Amer:
A lot of this is a first generation of parents who are kind of figuring this out and looking at gender in a new way. I mean, I think that we can look to history and societies that didn't think about gender in a binary way. But this is kind of like the first generational space where we're looking at this in modern society and I don't think there's a right way yet.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
I think that we're all still kind of experimenting. But my favorites that I... Because I'm... I'm in a lot of parenting circles and I kind of... Because of the work that I do, obviously, I'm pretty tapped into it for the most part, while not being a parent myself yet. And the ones that I really enjoy are... Sometimes I'll ask for kids' pronouns and parents will say... Kids that are quite young, usually under four, usually like infants to three years old, they'll say that their pronouns are TBA, which I think is funny.
Tyler Greene:
Aww.
Lindz Amer:
Which I think is hilarious. I also see parents going along with the assigned birth of a child but with the caveat that my daughter's pronouns are she/her until we know otherwise.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
And she can pre-determine that.
Tyler Greene:
Right.
Lindz Amer:
On her own, after we have conversations with her and give her the space to explore and change her pronouns or explore her gender as she wants to, as she grows and starts to self-identify.
Tyler Greene:
Still ahead, I talk with Lindz about their coming out experience and how even for kids raised in the queer holy land of Broadway, coming out is never easy.
If you're enjoying this conversation, don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify or add us on any of the other great podcast apps.
More Lindz, just ahead.
Speaker 6:
There are everyday actions to help prevent the spread of respiratory diseases. Wash your hands. Avoid close contact with people who are sick. Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Stay home when you are sick. Cover your cough or sneeze. Clean and disinfect frequently-touched objects with household cleaning spray. For more information, visit cdc.gov/covid19.
Speaker 7:
Furnished by the National Association of Broadcasters and this podcast.
Tyler Greene:
I asked Lindz what their family looked like growing up and how it affected their coming out journey as a queer and non-binary person. Their parents split up when Lindz was pretty young, but kept co-parenting a few blocks apart in Manhattan. And divorce isn't uncommon, of course, but as a kid, having two apartments and soon after, step-parents and step-siblings, it made Lindz feel an otherness in how their family worked, a dynamic that they didn't often see reflected in media as a, quote, normal family.
Lindz Amer:
At first, it was me, my mom, my dad and my younger sister. She's two years younger than me. And I grew up... [inaudible 00:20:23] I went to preschool on 14th Street just off Union Square Park.
Tyler Greene:
Nice.
Lindz Amer:
Very much a New York City kid. My parents got divorced when I was, I think, in first grade. So, they split and moved into separate houses, but a couple... Not too far away. My parents have always been kind of in a five to 10-block radius of each other and I grew up bouncing between their houses with my sister. My parents... My dad's a lawyer and they did the custody agreement on their own and... Which was nice and lovely.
Tyler Greene:
Nice. Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
They're very am... They're very amicable. They've always... They've kind of been friends throughout all of it and good co-parents, I think. So, I would kind of bop between them every other week, which was tough. It was a lot of movement for a kid.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
Then my parents got re-married. Not to each other. Separately. Two... I want to say when I was in middle school. And I gained two step-siblings, my two step-sisters, from my dad's remarriage.
Tyler Greene:
You started to allude to navigating your queerness in that space.
Lindz Amer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Tyler Greene:
So now that we've sort of painted the scene at least of where you were and sort of bouncing back and forth, maybe we could talk a little bit more about that.
Lindz Amer:
Kind of figuring that stuff out for me within the context of my kind of unconventional family was interesting, in particular because me and my three sisters all went to the same high school. So, my younger sister is two years younger than me, but then my step-siblings are... One... One of my stepsisters is, I think, four or five months younger than me, and my younger stepsister is, so, two years younger than me. So, we're kind of paired up and we... There was at least a year when all four of us were in the same high school at the same time. So, I didn't really have a separate space from my family.
I felt it was difficult to really explore who I was independently and I ended up doing that in high school. I went to a pre-college theater program and... I mean, outside of summer camp, it was really the... As a kid. It was really kind of like the first place where I felt truly independent and, I mean, that's where I first kissed a girl and that little light bulb went off in my head. I was like, "Okay." And I mean... And now that person is one of my closest, dearest friends.
Tyler Greene:
Aww. Yay.
Lindz Amer:
We talk about gender euphoria a lot in the queer community and I really felt like a queer euphoria, I would say, in the space of a month, which was really dense and very intense experience. And I went back to school, back to my life in New York, after that and I was just super depressed because I had to go from this space where I felt like I'd really opened up and I had to go right back. And so, my junior year of high school was rough. I had... The person who was my... One of my dearest chosen family people now. I was in angsty unrequited love with her and that was really hard and I was channeling a lot of energy into that and was also just super depressed and trying to figure out my sexuality. Was very repressed in my gender. Yeah. It just wasn't a good year for me.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
Ended up kind of getting things together after a lot of kind of [inaudible 00:24:02] shit went down and tried to come out the other side of it and was just kind of like biding my time before college. And once I got to college, I felt like I actually really could start to explore my sexuality. I had my first girlfriend and I felt like school and my environment was able to be separated from my family a little bit, so I had time to really question myself and my identity at that time, where I didn't feel like I had the freedom to do that before.
Tyler Greene:
But it's so interesting to hear you talk about growing up in New York and all of the assumptions that I would place on you.
Lindz Amer:
Yeah.
Tyler Greene:
You know? About that. And then hearing how difficult it was. And obviously, it makes perfect sense.
Lindz Amer:
I think a lot of people do make that assumption, that growing up in a liberal environment, you're more adept at maybe understanding yourself a little bit sooner.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
The thing is that I have that assumption about myself as well. What was interesting, I think, is that it was like... Like gay people were totally chill. Walking around the West Village as a kid, that's whatever. Fine. I was exposed to a lot. I had a nanny who was a preschool teacher of mine when I was a kid. Her and her partner were gay and were having kids and... But the thing was that gay people were okay, but that was separate from me and my identity.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
That didn't have any... I was like, "Okay. It's cool. It's okay and cool for you and for you to be gay, for you to live your life as a queer person. But that's not me." And that was something that I found with my parents, too, in kind of my coming out story with them, of them, while being liberal, still having to grapple with the fact that yes, it's okay for other people to be gay, for my friends to be gay. My mom did her MFA in acting and had lots of theater people and theater is just rife with queer folks, which is I'm sure why I gravitated towards it as a young person.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
Kind of feeling like the queerness of that community inherently.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
But I think that it was a different thing to turn to when your child is gay and I think that's something that my liberal parents had in common with a lot of conservative parents, too. So, it's interesting to see. Even if you're in an environment that you think would be progressive and, quote unquote, accepting, it was still really tough and it had a lot to do with the fact that I didn't have those conversations with my parents as a kid. It just wasn't something that we talked about. It wasn't. And I think that really what Queer Kid Stuff is about is about prompting conversation. We always start episodes with a question and it's about... It's about open dialogue with young people. I think overarchingly, if you're looking past kind of the queerness of it in itself, it's about opening up that conversation and that's why I think I took a lot of inspiration from Mr. Rogers, because I think that's what his program was all about and that's what I grew up on when I was in preschool and a kid.
Tyler Greene:
Good inspiration to have. Just before we move on to chosen families and found families, I'm curious how the coming out conversation went, a little more specifically, with your parents.
Lindz Amer:
So, while I was very confused and angsty and depressed in high school, I decided to, on a whim, come out to my mom as bisexual one night because my friend didn't text me back soon enough. So, that was maybe ill-advised.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
And I hadn't really had those inner questions. I'd kind of gone to that theater program and had these inclinations of, "Ooh, gay. What am I? Who am I?" And just kind of blurted that out to my mom. And she very much had that kind of initial reaction of, "I don't really know what to say other than I hope I am... I hope and wish that your life isn't hard." Which I think is not the best thing to say to a confused teen, but also she... It was also a weird situation that I put her in, I think, where I didn't really know what I was saying. I hadn't really fully grappled with it before I put it out into the world. But also, she's done so much work since then, and I feel like maybe once a year after that, we would revisit it until in college I was kind of identifying more as bisexual and was kind of figuring out a little bit more actively.
But the summer before my junior year, I got a summer research grant from Northwestern to go to London. I kind of just made this decision to like, "Okay. I want to try just living life as a gay person. I'm going to just go out to gay bar." I was also... I was about to turn 21, so it was legal for me to drink in the U.K. at the time and I was like, "I'm going to go out and I'm going to try and be in queer spaces." And I did that and I had a lot of fun and was just kind of like... I didn't feel like I had any attachments outside. I really felt super independent. And it was the happiest I'd felt in a long time. And when I came back to the States and started school up again, I was like, "I'm just going to stop lying. I'm just going to stop trying to be something that I'm not." And I started dressing more butch and I started kind of leaning into it a little bit harder and kind of really fully owning my queerness.
And I think my family... We never really had a full conversation about it until I started dating my first girlfriend and I was just kind of like, "I'm dating someone. It is a girl." And everyone was like, "All right. Cool." Because I think that they had already noticed that I was being... I think I was just kind of like living out. I never really had that full coming out conversation. I, for the record, hate coming out. It's something we have to do as queer people all the time. I hate it.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
It's awkward. I don't like... Especially then. It felt like declaring who you want to have sex with and that is uncomfortable for me and was never something I was comfortable with and I felt, "Straight people don't have to do it. Why do I?" So, I didn't ever... And I'm also pretty confrontation-averse as a human. So, I really didn't want to have those conversations either. I would rather just kind of live the life I want to live, how I want to live it. And I think my parents understood that and got that and... I mean, I kind of had the conversation when I started dating my first girlfriend, but... And... I mean, it necessitated... Her gender was very obvious and they met her and stuff.
But, yeah. It was... It was less of a coming out and more of just a decision to stop lying.
Tyler Greene:
I'm struck by this notion of chosen family and found family, and I sort of have two questions baked into one, which is when did that idea become a conscience for you? And then, as a kind of a connected question, and I... And hopefully don't make the answer too complicated. I'm curious how you see kids discovering this concept these days.
Lindz Amer:
When I started feeling that I think was when I started feeling different from my family. I think... And I think that that was also a part of this teenage angst and struggle that I was going through of understanding my unconventional family structure, but also my queerness within all of that and understanding where commonality ended with my family in some aspects. My mom is a very creative person. She has an MFA in acting. She's a musician. She work... So, she's part of Music Together, which is a international organization that basically is like parent-baby classes in teaching music.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
So, I've been around music and teaching kids my entire life. She got into it because she had me when she was young and was a musician and wanted to be a parent and a musician and then found this program and started her own small business franchise of it on the Upper West Side and now is a senior executive with the kind of global corporate side of things. So, I've [inaudible 00:32:59] creative side of things and then my dad is a very successful lawyer, very set in his path and has been very successful in that way. And I think that their... My dad, in particular, I think had a lot of... Had a very set way of understanding how career works and how paths forward into adulthood worked, and I don't think... I think because I have such a strong creative drive, particularly from my mom, I think, and my mom's influence, I don't think he ever really understood. Maybe he does. Maybe I'm not giving him enough credit. But I've always felt a little misunderstood in that way.
My younger sister has followed kind of a sort of similar creative path, but my two stepsisters are a doctor and a lawyer, so much more kind of straightforward ways of pursuing career. I mean, I've been on such a windy path. So, it wasn't just my literal queerness that I was dealing with within this kind of funky structure, but also a queer way of looking at how I could live my life in every aspect of it, and I think that that was something that my family hasn't always understood, at least on my kind of like... Within my dad's immediate circle.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
So, I think I was grappling with that as well, and I think all of that... Essentially, I'm very extra-queer when you're talking about me in the context of certain parts of my family.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
And I think it was coming to terms with that and figuring that out and the path to figuring that out and understanding that, just ideologically and conceptually, was something that made me feel a little othered and also forced me to seek out spaces where I didn't feel othered. And that has been a long and winding journey to just like...
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Lindz Amer:
Of just picking up people throughout my life who I now call my closest and dearest friends and chosen family. But I think that's been... For me, it's been about the people who've stuck along for the ride a little bit.
Tyler Greene:
Let's close out with talking about your family now and your immediate family.
Lindz Amer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Tyler Greene:
So, your partner and your puppy?
Lindz Amer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Tyler Greene:
I'd love to hear more about them and also what it's been like in the pandemic for you.
Lindz Amer:
So, my partner and I have been together three and a half years, about.
Tyler Greene:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Lindz Amer:
We're actually engaged. I tend to use the word partner. I don't... I don't know why I don't like the word fiancee very much, but I don't. It just... It doesn't feel very different from the rest of the time we've been together. We're just going to have a party in June, theoretically, if the pandemic is fine by then.
Hopefully. So, yeah. We met three and a half years ago in New York. We were set up by a mutual friend. I don't know. Just from the outset, we just really clicked. I went on that first date with her. We went to [inaudible 00:36:10] Park and we saw one of those out... Free, outdoor public screenings and the movie was Nine to Five, so we watch Nine to Five every year on our anniversary.
Tyler Greene:
Ha ha ha. Yes. Oh. Yes.
Lindz Amer:
Which is excellent. We're both really goofy and playful and we have a lot of fun together. We're both pretty fiery and passionate, so that can... She's an Aries and I'm a Scorpio, so we have some [inaudible 00:36:35] conflicts sometimes.
Tyler Greene:
Yep.
Lindz Amer:
But I think that we... We just really care about each other and we're both really ambitious and creative. She's a journalist. I'm a writer and I am multi-hyphenate all of the things. And she's just always been incredibly supportive of my work and what I do, and I try to be really supportive of her and what she's doing. She writes really cool stuff and I think we just are just trying to be really supportive of each other and... I mean, we've been working from home for a long time and this is... Kind of together and figuring that out. But it's definitely been a new dynamic to sort through since the pandemic really hit and we've... I mean, we see other people, sort of. We have a friend who we kind of pod up with. We see my mom sometimes. She lives upstate New York with my stepdad now and they are pretty isolated, so we've been driving down to see them.
Tyler Greene:
What type of family do you have aspirations to be in the future?
Lindz Amer:
So, we're getting married in June and we are talking about buying a house together sometime next year, probably after the wedding because that sounds crazy fancy, getting married and buy a house at the same time. We've got a dog called [inaudible 00:37:48] Georgie. She's a cattle dog mix rescue dog who's a little bonkers but we love her anyways.
Tyler Greene:
[crosstalk 00:37:56] been chill this whole time, sitting next to you.
Lindz Amer:
She has been. She's been taking her mid-morning nap, I guess. Yeah, so we've had her for three years. We got her very early on in our relationship, which was maybe ill-advised, but it's worked out for the best in the end. Yeah. I mean, we definitely want to build a family together. We're trying to get financially stable first.
Tyler Greene:
Sure.
Lindz Amer:
Which is part of all of this. But, yeah. We definitely want to have kids and second dog and a house and we're just trying to kind of build our careers up to a stable place right now and get on that life journey and try and build kind of our queer happily ever after, you know?
Tyler Greene:
Thank you so much for spending this time with me, and I have... Really have a deep connection to your approach.
Lindz Amer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Tyler Greene:
Kindness and education go very, very, very far and that's sort of the whole point of the show. And so...
Lindz Amer:
Spread queer joy.
Tyler Greene:
Keep fighting the fight and spreading that queer joy. And...
Lindz Amer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Tyler Greene:
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Lindz Amer:
Yeah. Thank you for having me. This was really lovely.
Tyler Greene:
Sometimes I look at my son and I see him five, 10, 15 and even today, I was like, "He'll be 21 and I'll be 50-whatever." And it occurs to me, the thing that's true across all of those age groups is that it's now my job to be there for him, and that makes me nervous because it's becoming more and more clear to me that I'm already fumbling the ball when it comes to things like gender identity. But I did take a breath after listening to this conversation and I felt a sense of calm because of Lindz's work. Through their videos, it's clear to me that there's actually no age too young to talk about this stuff. And sure, when Sam is three or four or five, he's going to actually understand things about gender, and I'm so grateful that these videos exist as a kind of booster for these conversations because that's really what they are, conversations.
My kid is watching a lot of media where his family is not represented. Even if he was watching Queer Kid Stuff all day, it's important to just not assume that kids are going to absorb it. You have to talk. And even if my son identifies as a cisgendered, straight male, I want him to be an ally, and one of the only ways that you can do that is by understanding empathy. Through conversation, you're able to figure out what it's like to maybe stand in someone else's shoes. At the end of the day, I am committed to helping my son be a friend to the queer community because quite frankly, it's a community that, over the decades, has given me and my husband immense amounts of love, laughter and joy.
Your homework for this week is to watch Queer Kid Stuff. Go onto YouTube and type Queer Kid Stuff and you'll see countless videos. I highly recommend the video about consent. There's one about drag kings and drag queens, and one in particular that I really love. It's called Why Is Pride in June? And it's sort of a primer on Stonewall for kids.
On next week's episode, we've got Arionne Nettles, who is a brilliant journalist and journalism professor. She's also a single mother raising a son with special needs.
Arionne Nettles:
So, his birth was normal. He didn't have any issues at birth. I didn't have any pregnancy issues that I knew of. Everything was pretty normal. But when he was around three months old, I saw him have a seizure and for the longest, nobody would believe me.
Tyler Greene:
Thanks for listening to This Is My Family. You can find Lindz on Twitter @lindzamer and @queerkidstuff. You can find our podcast @timfshow. Our website is timfshow.com. When you're there, we'd love it if you'd click subscribe in the right-hand corner to our newsletter. We're going to start sending out weekly emails with more stories from the TIMF show universe very soon. This podcast is a production of The Story Producer and it's produced by me, Tricia Bobeda and Jackie Ball. It's edited and mixed by Adam Yoffe. Our music is by Andrew Edwards. Our community manager is Anika Exum. And last but certainly not least, our art director is my handsome husband, Ziwu Zhou.
Would you be willing to share an episode with a friend or family member? You'd be surprised how much of an impact a personal recommendation can make. And of course, do the usus, right? Review, five stars, all of those things. Thanks for listening. I'm Tyler Greene and until next time, stay beautiful and messy.
Is the podcast all done, Sam?
Sam:
All done.