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Oscar Alexander Robles

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Offline2/OAR%20Final.mp3

Oscar Robles is a New Yorker by way of Florida. He moved to Hartford, CT in August of 2009. From a young age, he has been engaged in LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) activism work and helped start the first Gay Straight Alliance in Brevard County, FL .

Oscar attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL, and continued his work with the LGBT community by sitting on the board for the Pride Student Union – the student organization focused on activism and raising awareness of issues related to the LGBT campus community to the FSU body and Tallahassee community. He later went on to serve as their co-director and was very active in the Coalition for Equitable Communities. This group worked to implement a non-discrimination policy on FSU’s campus that protects sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The policy was adopted on June 25, 2010 by the FSU Board of Trustees.

While in Tallahassee, Oscar spoke to a variety of groups on gender and sexuality from the perspective of a medically transitioning transgender man. Most of his talks were delivered to college students and focused on social perceptions, definitions and challenges of gender expression and current binary gender system. He continued this work upon relocating to Hartford – speaking at the University of Hartford numerous times and hosting workshops at the True Colors, Inc. annual youth conference and the Transgender Lives Conference, sponsored by the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition.

Aside from his activism and awareness work for the LGBT community, Oscar is heavily involved in civic engagement and community service. He relocated to Hartford specifically to fulfill a term with the Corporation for National and Community Service as an AmeriCorps VISTA with Our Piece of the Pie, a youth organization focused on empowering urban youth through educational and employment services. He is now participating in a second service a term with Public Allies and is placed at the Hartford Public Library. There, he works collaboratively with many organizations and on a range of projects that invites and further involves residents in their communities and the democratic process.

TRANSCRIPT


I am Oscar Alexander Robles and my family moved to Florida when I was sixteen from Long Island.  And it was a major culture shock, but finished high school and I went to college there in Florida.

I lived a female lifestyle, a lesbian lifestyle, for very long time.  I was semi-comfortable in that place for a little while, you know, and I embraced the lesbian community, I embraced this kind of like butchness that I had about myself.  And it wasn't until I was in college and I met the first trans-person that I ever met, and I got a language, or I got a vocabulary, for some of these things that I felt --- that I had been feeling --- about myself and my body.  And I didn’t have any context for that before, and so I started to hear . . . I started to hear about what her experience . . . and it mirrored a lot of my own feelings by myself.  But it took little while after that before I socially started to transition.  I think I was at a party one time with my friend Lauren and I said to her, [large sigh] “Lauren, would you still love me if I was a dude?”  [Laughter]  And she was like, “Yeah, absolutely, of course!”  And so it kind of went on from there and so I started telling my friends and I started going by Oscar.

I hit a rock bottom place in my life.  I was dealing with depression and anxiety and for the first time in my life it just got so big in me that I was taking medication for it and I was seeing this therapist.  And I was going through all of these things, having a really hard time with my body and with my life.  I had, you know . . . I was out of school and was out of work and just really kind of living on the good graces of friends.  And I overdosed on my medication.  I tried to commit suicide.  I was in the hospital for five days.  While I was in the Emergency Room, they didn’t think I was going to make it, my heartbeat was so faint.

I shouldn’t have made it.  My plan was not to wake up, but I was in the hospital for five days after that and it was really a life changing experience.  It was almost like, I want to say, a life making experience because in my mind, when I look at the timeline of my life, it was the end of that old self and the beginning of that new self.  Like, I got out of the hospital, got back on track with where I wanted to be as far as hormones were concerned, got my prescriptions, started taking T (i.e. testosterone) a few months later and from there forward my life has been completely different.

I moved to Hartford that summer and I'm actually a VISTA, which stands for Volunteer In Service To America.  And I’ve been working with the program since last August and it's been one amazing experience after another.  But I love it so much, I mean, I'm gonna stay here after my term is over with AmeriCorps and actually do a second term with a different program, so that's gonna be pretty cool and I'm really excited about that.  And it's just interesting how . . . yeah, so I’m twenty five now and I didn't think I was going to be where I thought I was gonna be when I thought about being twenty five when I was eighteen.  But I’m loving where I’m at, you know.  I love being here Hartford and I love the energy here in Hartford.  I’ve gotten involved with some LGBT organizations here in Hartford.  I work a little bit with True Colors, which is the LGBT youth mentor program here, and I worked with the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition, which is pretty interesting

My transition has been crazy, you know.  I went from being really out, because I was doing it in everyone’s face, to moving here to Hartford a year ago and looking and sounding like I do now.  And I have people tell me all the time, co-workers who know, tell me all the time that they sometimes forget, which is kind of like,  “Well, you know, that's the point [laughter].  Right?”  So that's been really cool.

But when I first got here, I went kind of stealth for a little while, meaning, you know, people didn’t know anything about my female history, and as that would develop relationships and meet people and they would tell me about themselves and I would tell them about myself and I started feeling a little bit inauthentic, in the sense.  Like, why am I so comfortable telling you all these other things but I can’t tell you this. But then, what would be more authentic?  Would it be more authentic to break this chain of thought you have about me is the man in the world, which I do live as a man in the world, for me to stop you and tell you, “Oh, well, no actually . . .“  And how is that relevant to our experience now?  So while, you know, I'm not looking to go stealth --- I do conferences here in Connecticut --- I did the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition Conference (where I talked about machismo and the transman) and I did the True Colors Youth Conference in March, where I met the guy that I’m seeing now.

Well, my boyfriend is also trans, so he is female-bodied, so we have a very similar experience in that sense.  And my boyfriend and I sometimes you have a hard time embracing this gayness that we find ourselves in, because we didn't identify as gay before --- we didn’t identify as men before.  So it's a very new kind of culture for us and there is some internalized homophobia that I feel myself dealing with, which is interesting because I didn't necessarily feel that when I identified as a lesbian.

But then again, as a lesbian living in a patriarchal society, men look at women and two women together is just more of what they already want.  So there's an acceptance there from the power group in our society that lesbianism and is okay in a way that gayness is not.  So it’s kind of like a really interesting shift in my mind when I look at it from a sociological point of view, because now, I mean, I identify as a . . . now being a gay relationship, a man with another man.  There’s a little bit of a tightness in my chest sometimes when go out amongst other men, straight men, and I wonder, when there’s a moment of tension, I wonder what's going to be like.  I have a fear there that I never had before as a lesbian, and so that’s kind of interesting, and so me and Ryan talk about that sometimes.  There’s a way that lesbians can express affection in society that gay men necessarily still  cannot and going through that shift has been kind of interesting.

We had this conversation with someone about:  Is there a need for queer space?  And I think the answer is yes, but I think that a straight person looking to enter that queer space should not be immediately shunned.  And then I also . . .  I’ve been to, obviously, a bunch of different gay bars across the East Coast, you know.  And as I go, I mean, sometimes I get this feeling like it's the same thing, you know, like the same techno beat, the same drag queens, the same shop boys, the same glitter.  [Laughter]  You know what I’m saying?  Like, is this really what our community is?

And there are all these little pocket groups of LGBT communities.  You know, there are black gay men writers, there are gay lawyers, gay accountants, and they break down and that kind of way.  Obviously there is value to being amongst people who you share that common bond with of having similar sexual orientation, but the same time people are obviously still needing to break down into other enclaves of other like-minded people, because it's not just about being gay, but also do we share a common connection to something else.  And then also it's hard for me sometimes to participate or get involved in the LGBT community because I'm a person of color, and I think that that it's very hard for me to find representations of myself amongst mainstream gay culture.  I mean, I would definitely say I’m a writer, I’m an avid reader, I love the outdoors, I care about politics, I'm a Democrat, way before I feel I would say I’m gay and I’m trans.  [Laughter]

I'm also not trying to say that I'm not proud.  Since I’ve been in New England I’ve been to maybe six to seven Prides (i.e. gay pride festivals) here in New England.  It's great.  I love it.  I love being out there and love being amongst queer people, ‘cause when I got here and I didn’t move here working with the LGBT population, so I was kind of stealth for a little while, just because it wasn’t who I was running with, and then I started to long for that community.  I started to long to be around people who I could relate to identify with the way that didn't make me feel like I had to put up a guard.

So I recognize the value in the identity, I just think sometimes we make it too much.  I don't feel like your identity as being gay, bi, straight, whatever, has necessarily anything to do with who sleep with.  I mean, how you self-identify is how you self-identify and I allow people for that space and who they want to sleep with is whoever they want to sleep with.

Personally, I want the 2.5 kids, and the house with the white picket fence and charter schools and the SUV and van and the dog and the cat and that whole nine yards.  I want that life, so for me, that’s my goal, but for other people is very different.  I mean, I'd love to see . . . and I think it's definitely going to happen in our lifetime . . . I think that gay marriage is going to happen in my lifetime.  I think that’s definitely coming.  The stage is being set for that.

When I think about myself and my living in Connecticut and my LGBT identity and my trans status and whatever, whatever, it all comes down to:  This is just me trying to live my life.  I’m trying to live my life to the best of my ability and in the funnest and happiest and coolest way possible.  And the fact that I am queer is just that, you know, it’s a fact about me.  And it’s not necessarily . . . it doesn’t make me, it doesn’t break me, it just is who I am.

I think the goal is that I want to live in the world without any barriers.  And I think that is the goal --- is for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals --- that their orientation is not influential on what their goals are --- getting to whatever they wanted from life --- getting whatever they want from life --- as far as employment, education.  That they have the ability to live and live comfortably and live happily without any restrictions just because of a non-merit characteristic like their sexual orientation or their gender.  So I think that's where it's at.  Or that's what we're looking for and what we’re all trying to get to.

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