Ashlee Marie Preston: Transitioning & Abstinence
Podcast Transcript Season 2 Episode 32
Interviewer: Liz Goldwyn
Illustration BY Black Women Animate
This week’s podcast features activist and journalist Ashlee Marie Preston. Ashlee is the first openly trans person to run for state office in California, as well as the first trans person to become editor-in-chief of a nationwide publication. Ashlee and Liz talk about how tattoos have been a source of empowerment for her; life as a survival sex worker; abstinence and how transitioning, by its very definition, doesn’t follow a linear path.
The following is a transcript of the interview from the episode:
Liz:
Thank you for being here with me today.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Thank you for having me.
Liz:
What do your tattoos on your hands say?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Well, it depends. On my right hand, it says sink, swim. And then on my left hand it says todo, and then the bottom says nada, all or nothing. So sink or swim, all or nothing. That's pretty much been the model of my life.
Liz:
When did you get them?
Ashlee Marie P.:
I got them when I was 25, believe it or not. And it's so funny because being a trans woman, people automatically assumed that maybe pre-transition, I did that. But the thing is growing up in Kentucky, I was raised by really strong women and femininity has different layers. So I don't believe unnecessarily in the monolithic expression of femininity or womanhood, but to be able to express that through tones of masculinity. And so I like tattoos and ink and I like themes that are kind of edgy.
Liz:
So do you think we deem tattoos masculine?
Ashlee Marie P.:
We do, societally. Especially depending on what part of the country you're in. There's this idea that, especially if they're not rainbows and fairies-
Liz:
Or eyeliner-
Ashlee Marie P.:
Right.
Liz:
Or beauty mark.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Right. Unicorns. I have skulls and I have gangster guys pouring out liquor. I have Marylyn Monroe with a bandanna over her mouth. I have all of these different images that represented a specific chapter of my life.
Liz:
And when did you started getting them? In your 20s?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah, I did. So there was this moment where I remember I had a mini mid. People talk about the midlife crisis, but it was like a mini mid where I was working at a corporate job.
Liz:
Doing what?
Ashlee Marie P.:
I direct TV. I was at the call center, then I got promoted and I already came from a background of being homeless and being a survival sex worker and being a meth addict, and all of these things. And so here I was in this very different life than what I had imagined. It was the complete antithesis of where I was and I wasn't really ready to completely let some of that go. I was afraid that I was starting to adult a little too hard and I didn't want to. And so I was like, "You know what, I have some financial freedom. I have some economic stability. I'm in a place where, to be honest, there's a lot of people, a lot of artists and creatives and people who were actually just like me." They just had bills to pay, but they had other passions and I went forward. And so I pretty much got most of my body covered in the span of maybe seven months. Needless to say, my mother wasn't enthused about it, but-
Liz:
Yeah. So you grew up in Kentucky, right? And I know you said you grew up in the church, so how have you redefined your own relationship to religion or spirituality? Because a lot of the times if we grow up in organized religion, we're taught well, supposedly, God loves all his children. Right? But that's not often the case.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Well, I was really lucky because, so I grew up in a religious family. However, my mother never forced anything on my sister or I. And we didn't attend church every Sunday. And when we finally did find a church, it was one of the newer churches, like the hip church that had a bowling alley, basketball core, there were dances. They built a recreation center next door to the church. It was one of those cool hip like, mean girls. "I'm not a regular mom. I'm a cool mom." It was a cool church.
Liz:
Cool church, yeah.
Ashlee Marie P.:
And so I had actually explored Wicca and different necronomicon spirituality, all this-
Liz:
As a kid? And your mom was cool with that?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Well, she didn't know about a lot of it, but then because I would actually steal books from the bookstore, which is so funny, kids still things like candy or toys. But I used to go to bookstores and whatever I was curious about, I would just take it. But I do remember her finding some of those books and just being like, "Have mercy." I don't know. But I think that she never stunted our spiritual development. She let us figure things out on our own. Because of that, when I did get to the place in my life where I identified as a Christian, not so much now, I'm just more spiritual, but it felt right for me because it was a decision that I got to make.
Liz:
See, I believe very much in the sex ed as our position. It's sex health and consciousness. And consciousness is inclusive of spirituality and religion. I find a lot of people have trouble with this idea that you can have faith, that faith is a personal thing and I think we should be questioning and exploring our spirituality as we're on that journey of exploring our sexuality. It sounds like you were doing that simultaneously as a kid.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. I think it's one of those things where there were a lot of things that happened to me as a kid that no child should have to experience. There was physical abuse and sexual abuse and just all these different things. But I've always had an awareness that there was a bigger picture. Even with cartoon shows and things, other kids were easily entertained by, I was bored really easily.
Liz:
What did you watch?
Ashlee Marie P.:
I would watch history shows that were talking about the near collapse of the Venezuelan economy. And I was watching shows that were talking about World War Two and what happened in Nazi Germany. And I was watching shows. I remember watching a documentary on Anne Frank and I was that kid because I knew that underneath this superficial veneer of childhood, that there was a real world going on out there and I had had a taste of it and been exposed to it. And so I spent a great deal of my childhood just trying to understand because I felt many of the adults, the adults that I'd interacted with were quite condescending.
I remember being shooed and being told, "Oh, you're a child. You don't understand right now, but maybe someday you will get it." And it was like, "No, no, no. I get it right now." And in fact, there were moments in which I felt I had a hyper awareness that even many of the adults around me didn't have. I was even treated different by my peers in school because I didn't know how to have these very-
Liz:
Superficial.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Right. Basic conversations. These very empty surface interactions with people. Every time I spoke it was always about something that challenged people to think deeper. And as a kid, I'm sure you can imagine, it left me in the corner of art class by myself or I was hitting the gym on the highest bleacher and I became somewhat isolated. And so it's really interesting looking back that I felt I was so weird and I was such a social pariah. But now today I look back and I'm like, I would've totally been friends with that kid.
Liz:
Yeah. It's funny how the kids who weren't cool in high school or elementary school ended up being the cool kids and the kids who have all the power end up sort of... Yeah. Not evolving, really. A lot of the time.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. Today spirituality looks more connected for me. It looks like no singular doctrine or idea, but it's kind of this kaleidoscope of different traditions and ideals and entities and ideologies and streams of consciousness and intentionality. And it's just, I think that God is an adamant. When I think God, I don't think this white guy up in the sky with Pantene shiny hair. But I think of God is all encompassing. I don't think of God as gendered. I don't think of God as... I think it's just energy. I think energy, we're all made up of energy and it exists in all of us. And so I think that a lot of the... Some of our core values and beliefs are part of a social construct. I think that the universe is so much bigger than even the concept of good and bad and all of these things we use to explain away our existence are pretty much irrelevant when it all comes down to it.
Liz:
So you are this hyper aware, hyper curious, intelligent kid. And on top of that you start transitioning as a teenager or at-
Ashlee Marie P.:
Nine years old.
Liz:
Yeah.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Nine years old, actually. I started developing secondary female characteristics. So I started growing breasts and I was not overweight or there was no kind of... I know some people would automatically think, "Oh well maybe." No, I was growing breasts and I remember the shame in that because I already knew that sometimes I like playing with Barbie. Sometimes I like playing with GI Joe. Sometimes I wanted my little pony, sometimes I wanted a pickup truck. And I was okay with the duality of that interest. I was okay with that. But when my body started to mirror some of the thoughts that I had repressed, it became really confusing. And then I also nicknamed Kentucky as the land of God doesn't make mistakes. And so what I didn't understand is why these things were happening to me because I wasn't making a conscious decision for it to happen. I didn't even have a language to unpack trans identity. I mean, we're talking about 1994 maybe-
Liz:
There's no social media. You can't see other people around the world or around your state even that are going through the same.
Ashlee Marie P.:
No, there's no one like me, there's not even really any feminine kids who are assigned male. There's none of that. And so I'm literally the only me and I remember what that relationship looked like between me and my father. I remember what that relationship looked like between me and some of my peers. I remember having to fight some of my cousins because in hindsight, I know that they were probably trying to protect me by making me tougher. And it's so funny because I'm probably more of a black... I don't know how to describe it without using profanity-
Liz:
You can use profanity. You're allowed to use profanity.
Ashlee Marie P.:
I'm more of a badass now than I ever was at any point in my life, even before transition. So I'm much more stronger now. But I think that it just became really confusing because I couldn't explain it and I had no point of reference and there wasn't any visibility and there was nowhere that I could turn to for it. So I started taking my little sister's tee-shirts because she was much smaller than me. She's four or five years younger than me. And so I would put one of her shirts on so that it would bind my chest down. And then I would put a baggy sweater over top of it, so that people... It wasn't as noticeable. There was also a dual function there, a multi-pronged approach there because I was also subconsciously thinking that maybe the adults would stop touching me, if I wasn't visibly attractive in that way or if I wasn't presenting those female traits of myself.
Liz:
So that's a start a to a childhood right there.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah.
Liz:
You left home at 19 and what happens next in your story?
Ashlee Marie P.:
So I graduated high school. I got a job at the local airport, saved up a little bit of money and I came out to Los Angeles and the ocean, the shore life, everything. I remember watching, I'm kind of really embarrassed about this now, but there was this show called The O.C.
Liz:
I knew you were going to say the The O.C. They're bringing it back, apparently.
Ashlee Marie P.:
I heard. Gossip Girl, all of that. It's a really good time to be alive.
Liz:
I love Gossip Girl.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah.
Liz:
The O.C. Seth and Summer.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes!
Liz:
And Marissa.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes. And so I just looked at these young adults navigating love, friendship, betrayal, trust, family dynamics. All of these things that I felt in many ways I could identify with, others. I think are related to Ryan Moore being the outsider that somehow found their way in the middle of it all, and trying to kind of just experiencing the juxtaposition of all of that. I was in California, but unlike The O.C. there were experiences that were very unique to me, such as this growing need to present the way that I felt on the inside. And when I got to LA, it was the first time I'd met Trans People. I remember going to a club, I was taken with a friend and there was this girl, she was so beautiful and I just couldn't... I mean, she literally looked like Mariah Carey, mid '90s Mariah. That very fresh-
Liz:
Tommy Mottola, Butterfly.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah, that fresh look that... And I knew there was something about her, there was kind of a sparkle in her eye. She had this very interesting thing and I couldn't put my finger on it. And I was telling my friend, "Gosh, she's so beautiful." And I remember, which is really problematic, I turned to this gay guy. And he was like, "Oh, that's a man." And I was like, "No, what are you talking about? Are you crazy? She's clearly a woman." And he was explaining to me how we're able to live authentically in our own skin and some of the steps that a trans woman go through. The unfortunate thing was seeing the disgust and disdain in his eyes and in his tone and how he felt and the way that there were others around him who shared the same sentiment.
It instilled this sense of fear in me. And so when I finally did decide to transition, I had to distance myself, even from the LGBTQ community because it wasn't really supportive of trans people. I remember you're getting a job at a retail store and I transitioned on the job and I began facing harassment and discrimination. Human resources, none of my employers did anything to protect me.
And I remember thinking to myself, "Okay, well if they're not going to defend me, I'll defend myself." So I started speaking up for myself and when I did, I was seen as being problematic and I was disrupting the work environment and I was fired. I ended up becoming homeless. I ended up having to engage in survival sex work and the street economy in order to do everything that I had to in the name of survival. I used drugs more specifically methamphetamine as a social lubricant to help me navigate all of that. It was one of the lowest points of my life because I didn't understand what I was doing wrong. I did everything I felt that the Bible had told me up until I couldn't. I had treated people how I wanted to be treated.
I had always stayed to myself the best way that I could. I didn't ask for anything. I was a hard worker. And so I felt that society had failed me and let me down. And for whatever reason I came through that chapter unscathed. I don't have a record. I am HIV negative. For the most part most of my mental faculties are in order. There are moments where I still experience PTSD and trauma and hyper anxiety. And some of that is I've been clean and sober seven and a half years, but some of that is just damage from the drugs. Some of it was preexisting. I failed to mention that even the day after my 12th birthday, It was the first time I was hospitalized. I would be hospitalized anywhere from three weeks to six months-
Liz:
For what?
Ashlee Marie P.:
For different things. Basically you're a guinea pig for pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare industry when you're in those facilities. So there are moments when I was bipolar, there were moments when it was a schizoaffective disorder. There were moments when it was for aggression or all of these things. In fact, I felt like I was just experiencing what any kid who was experiencing what I would go through. But instead I saw myself demonized. And even in the hospitals, you saw the way that race played into a lot of the treatment and care that you got. How some of the staff responded to me. I experienced physical abuse by the staff members in the facility. I was strapped down, strapped to a bed, locked in a room, left there screaming, crying. Sometimes it'd be a day, sometimes there were just terrible things that happened in those facilities. And so talking about institutionalization, I may not have a record, but I had still been locked down.
And so fast forward, what that looked like for me was this sort of built in resilience because where most of my peers out there didn't know how to cope with everything that was happening, I had already had a crash course, if you will. And people ask me all the time, "What was the turning point? What changed for you?" That was a moment in my life where anger was my friend. I think we talk about anger a lot and in self help spaces and in spiritual spaces it's shunned and anger as seen as this terrible thing and you should be ashamed of it and it's harmful. But in that specific chapter of my life, anger was a life breath.
Liz:
It's a powerful tool. And if you avoid anger, it's like you were saying earlier, this idea of good or evil, light or dark, we all as human beings have that duality and we have to get comfortable with that and we have to get comfortable with our rage. I think it can be... Yeah, if you ignore that rage, it just seeps up underneath the surface, which we obviously see happening right now in America.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. And I understood what that anger was. I understood even at a young age that anger is a secondary emotion. The baseline emotion is usually fear. And it's this fear that many of us have that we'll never have enough or that we'll never be enough.
Liz:
And sadness.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. But even sadness. Sadness for me, that kind of turned off after a while because I had already made it clear that, okay, nobody's coming to save me. No, the adults in my life can't save me. My peers can't save me. Social services, my father was brought into the courtroom for abusing me, cannot save me. So it was very clear at a young age that you have to save yourself. And so when you're aware of that, everything is clear on that front. Sadness is not something that I could afford myself at that moment, but fear... Because, what if I fail? What if I'm not able to show up for myself in a way that's going to sustain me and see to it that I thrive?
And so that fear drove me and it was just that feeling as if I were being robbed. I was being robbed of opportunity. I was being robbed of space, I was being robbed of love, dignity, all of these things that every inalienable being deserves to have. And so something I just snapped out of it. And I remember just standing up and being like, "No, I'm not taking this anymore." I remember trying to go to shelters and I couldn't get into a shelter because the men shelters wouldn't take me, because I was a distraction to the male you and I looked how I look, I literally look like my mother. So they would see my ID and think like, "No." Obviously I would want to go to the women shelters because I was a woman, but women shelters wouldn't accept me because of my assigned sex at birth.
So I found myself faced with this systemic barrier, that wouldn't permit me to access services even though I was a taxpayer, like everybody else, even though I was a contributing member of society, I was told that my experience wasn't worthy of help and that I wasn't valid. And so I pushed back against that. There was a moment in my life where I actually didn't tell people that I was trans because I realized that I had a privilege in that sense. Yes, I was black. Yes, I was at that point I'm getting off drugs. Even on the streets, I was gaining weight. So I was fat, I was black, but at the same time I could pass. And so I used that as what Janet Mock would refer to as a pretty privilege. I used that to be able to get ahead.
And so I applied for another job. But meanwhile, in the backdrop, I was looking at some of these organizations who claimed to serve LGBTQ people, who claim to serve disenfranchised youth. And I was questioning some of their administration and their executive level as to what their practices were and why they weren't being more intentional about reaching those at the farther edges of the margins. It landed me a job because they wanted my voice and my insight in some of those spaces. But what I figured out soon is that in many cases, nonprofit is the biggest profit model.
I realized that people like me, they would pimp us for our narratives. And then once they were done gathering up all the donor dollars that they brought in from airing our trauma porn, they would stop us to wait back in the bottom drawer and we wouldn't see them again until it was time to raise money.
Liz:
I want to go back to a minute, working, being a working woman. So you're working so called legitimate jobs, but you're also working as a sex worker, which I believe is a legitimate profession. I believe that I had read that you lost your virginity in sex work. So how do you reclaim your sexuality for yourself post those experiences?
Ashlee Marie P.:
That's where I'm at right now. And actually it's a very interesting time. I just turned 35 recently, which is really interesting because the average life expectancy for a black trans woman is estimated at only 35 years old. And I am having somewhat of a rebirth. And so what I figured out, I've actually been abstinent, I think since 2014. Yeah, 2014. The reason is because I realized that I... There's two things to that. One, I never really had sex in a way that was about pleasure and it was never about me and what I wanted, it was about survival. It was a tool. So it was a way for me to get housing, food, resources. And so I didn't know how to have interactions with men or anyone without it being about sex or money. And so the idea, once I started (working) more legit jobs, then it was like, "What do I need you for?"
I didn't feel like I needed to engage a man for anything because it reminds me of that quote that Cher talked about before, when her mother was like, "Honey, settle down. You've done all these amazing things. Why don't you just marry yourself a rich man."
Liz:
A rich man.
Ashlee Marie P.:
And then she's like, "Mom, I am a rich man." And it's that thing where it was like, I am that person who can provide for myself. I am that person who can respect my own boundaries. I am that person who can stand up for myself. I am that person who can tell me that I'm beautiful, who can underscore my talents and skills and everything that makes me special. So I don't need that from an external source.
Liz:
I believe that that's kind of where we should all start out as kids. Right? With this idea of self love and self pleasure before. Because we always are expecting someone else to tell us what turns us on or how to be sexy or what we like. I think so few of us give ourselves a permission to either choose a period of celibacy or abstinence to kind of get in touch.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah.
Liz:
With your own body and your own pleasure.
Ashlee Marie P.:
But then that old friend, fear.
Liz:
Fear of loneliness.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Fear knocked on the door. Fear of making myself vulnerable. Vulnerability is a very... You want to talk about... Again, some people connect with it as sadness. I connect with it as anger. The idea that I could leave myself open for someone to... Because there was a moment when I wasn't in sex work and I was trying to have these relationships that I'd seen on TV or that I'd see-
Liz:
In The O.C.?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Right.
Liz:
These very attainable relationships on The O.C.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Exactly. And I remember thinking, "Okay, I'm just going to do normal stuff. What do people who don't have sex for money do?" They go have spaghetti and garlic bread at Olive Garden or whatever? Or they go sit, walk on the beach, just all of this. And what I realized is that I was getting these people who said they didn't want to be treated like Johns, but then they were treating me like I was an escort still. They were exploiting me and using me because the more trans identity began to be a topic of national conversation, we began to see these men also started to become these weird, twisted head doctors where they knew what our weaknesses were and they knew what our Achilles heel looked like and they were taking advantage of that.
There were so many moments that I thought that I had met somebody who was awesome, who I was sexually attracted to, they were sexually attracted to me, and yet they discarded me. It just made me grow angrier and angrier because there was a moment when it was like, "Well fuck, I could've got money. I could've cashed in." This guy is the CEO of this company, or he's in this office, or he's like this, this and this. And then I later realized it wasn't that I was upset that I didn't cash in, it was that I was upset that once again I had been made to feel worthless.
And so I eventually grew out of that and realized that there was a part of me that, it was two different sides to it too. So it was, yes, definitely scumbags, people taking advantage of people, people who are so cowardly that they can't openly love us and respect us and be proud of us in public, so we have to be kept someone's secret. But the other piece was that I needed that validation too. What men did for me at that time was they made me feel more of a woman. And it was again, an aesthetic of womanhood that didn't feel authentic for me. So in a sense, I had two transitions. I had a transition into my authentic self, as the woman I am. But then I had a transition into authenticity and what that looked like being a woman in the 2000s at that time, it was around 2010, 2011 when I was just like, "You know what? No, I don't have to..."
And then also my battle with respectability politics because I had so much shame around being a sex worker. So much shame around everything that I had to do in the name of survival, losing my virginity as a sex worker, doing all of these things that I didn't want to face it. I also didn't want anyone else, especially the cis hetero community judging me for decisions that I had to make.
And so eventually I had to unsubscribe from respectability politics that were authored by people who never respected me. Not me, just as Ashlee Marie Preston, but me as a woman, me as an African American, me as a freethinking individual who has full agency of their own body and their own life and the ability to make their own choices and decisions. I pushed back so hard against my truth and where I was because I thought it made me less than. And so in that moment I realized I had a lot of work to do around internalized transphobia.
Liz:
And so that came sort of parallel with choosing abstinence, a period of abstinence for you?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes, because it was that I didn't want to just be anybody's bug toys, somebody just basic, whatever. Again, it'd be one thing if I wanted that, but the truth was that there was so much trauma that I was still holding in my body, and at times they're still... I'm in the middle of trying to do... In the beginning actually of doing chakra work.
Liz:
I was about to ask you if you've done any sexological bodywork, trauma release-
Ashlee Marie P.:
Really new for me. Really new right now. A friend of mine is actually walking me through it and there's so much resistance because even I recently had my first massage because one of my friends was like-
Liz:
Body massage?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Because one of my friends was like, "Yeah, when I'm on set in my trailer, the studio will sometimes send somebody." And the thing is... So they treated me to a massage and when I had it, I did not like it. It was not enjoyable. It was-
Liz:
You were tense and uncomfortable?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Super tense. And even when people say, "Loosen up, you'll..." I actually feel safe tense.
Liz:
Yeah.
Ashlee Marie P.:
It's just my default. It's-
Liz:
You know what, that's super normal. And this idea of the trauma that we hold in our body is pretty new to psychiatry even, Somatic therapy, they call it. So when animals are in the wild and they get attacked, they shake it off, they shake, they shake, they shake, and they kind of get it out of their body. When humans are either attacked or even in a car accident, this is what we do. We tense up, we get whiplash and that memory stays in our body. So this idea to tell your brain or to tell someone else, "Oh, just loosen up. Oh, just relax." You can maybe intellectually understand that. You can go to all the therapy you want, but your body is still holding on to this muscle memory that's sometimes so deep, so layered that of course even just getting a massage can be really... Can induce a panic attack.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. It doesn't feel pleasurable at all. And so I think where I'm at right now is I'm starting to try... So basically, I don't know, there was this movement, especially among young urban youth, hoe life. And so there's this whole idea, that's the sane. And so this idea that women should be able to make decisions that serve their pleasure and their needs in there. And although I'm not there, I'm taking steps to lean into those movements and to lean into that messaging and lean into those ideologies and surround myself around empowered women who are okay with exploring all of that. And we're all in different places. And just realizing that it's not a race, there isn't a finish line.
I honestly believe that I'm probably gonna be a late bloomer because I feel like I always have been. So funny enough, I've always dated older men. This is going to sound funny and awkward. But I'm 35 and I'm also getting older. So most of the men that I would have dated before are either dead or they're not interested in dating. All of a sudden these 22 year old, 23 year old guys, these are coming out of the wood-
Liz:
You're a cougar.
Ashlee Marie P.:
There's actually a term for it.
Liz:
A puma. Are you a puma?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah!
Liz:
Yeah, you're a puma.
Ashlee Marie P.:
I cried when I heard that for the first time. Puma. Basically you're too young to be a cougar, but you're like a cougar in training, so it's a puma. Hilarious. The Internet has no chill. But just kind of imagining... Because it's weird. Typically I'm really maternal. So I'm the kind of person that sometimes I'm so nice that people think I'm flirting and it's like, "No, no, no. I'm just really..." Especially, it doesn't matter. I could be a guy, a woman or I just want to cradle people, which is funny. I don't know, maybe Gemini. So either I'm like a ball-buster or a nurturer. And there really isn't much of an in between. I'm pretty just consistent in that way. But I'm leaning into the idea of what would it look like to talk to someone possibly younger down the road?
I think maybe when I'm 40 or maybe 45, there's going to be, I don't know, Samantha from Sex and the City. Who knows? There's going to be some kind of awakening. So I'm trying to experience some of that culture. Even today I'm wearing-
Liz:
You're wearing the crave, right?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes.
Liz:
Yeah, I was going to ask you. So she's wearing a crave necklace, which is a little mini vibrator on a chain.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes.
Liz:
Because I was going to say if you're abstinent, some people think abstinence means that you can't masturbate, but that's not true actually. You can choose what abstinence looks like for you.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes.
Liz:
You can choose what celibacy looks like for you and it can be an empowered sexually liberated decision.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes. Shan Boodram sent this to me. Sexologist, amazing person, sent me her book and she was like, "I have a little gift for you." And I was like, "What?" And I'd seen it and I was like, "Is this..." And when I pressed the button, I was like, "Okay, no. There is no way. Who is actually going to wear this out in public?"
Liz:
I think only other people in the know-
Ashlee Marie P.:
Exactly.
Liz:
Know that it's a little mini vibrator because it just looks like a chic necklace-
Ashlee Marie P.:
Right. And it says, desire on it. It has desire engraved on it and it has a heart. And so for me, again, my life, my journey and my highest points of personal growth has always been leaning into discomfort. So when I saw this and now I've been wearing this everywhere, I wore this on another interview, I wore... So I think that it's going to take a little bit of work for me to figure out what intimacy, what sexuality looks like for me. There are moments where I also feel like I'm almost borderline asexual and it's kind of hard to know because you have so many different things at play. You have the fact that yes, there's trauma. Yes, there's PTSD. You also have the fact that in a weird way, I'm attracted to men, not so much sexually, really. I have to be into the person, almost like a sapiosexual.
I'm more mentally, I'm into people than anything, which is why sometimes I can find a woman attractive. Sometimes I can find... It doesn't... My ex boyfriend was a trans man who was assigned female at birth, transitioned male. And that was pretty interesting because there was just something about having an authentic interaction with someone that you don't have to educate or you don't have to teach them. We had similar lived experiences. So there was just an understanding there that I didn't have to take on the labor of having to explain and I also didn't have to, in a sense, apologize, there's these silent apologies that we make to our cisgender partners all the times, because we understand that we're trying to figure all of this out and it's chaotic and crazy and fluid and ever changing.
So I could only imagine sometimes what it's like to have to try to figure out where you fit, what you... It's just all confusing. And it's those things that we don't want to talk about because in a PC society, "No screw that. You should just get it. You should just love trans woman openly, period, done." But it's like...
Liz:
But that assumes that most people love themselves.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Exactly.
Liz:
First of all. And most people have reflected on themselves or even thought about, well, actually, how do I identify? Am I even questioning the way... What I was assigned at birth or who I was told to love or want to fuck.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Which is crazy. Because now I'm in that place where I just... Typically, I'm not attracted to men prefer trans women. And I know that sounds so crazy. Most people would be like, "But wait, wouldn't it be easier?" No, because you already come with this set of ideas and thoughts around who and what a trans woman is. These ideas that usually stem from the adult entertainment industry, and maybe... I mean, people don't do DVDs anymore, but the girl on the website that you watched last night. And it's like, that's not necessarily me. I am a unique person. You have to get to know me, as you would get to know cisgender woman. You wouldn't just automatically assume that every cisgender woman is... I don't know, like Marilyn Monroe or a certain kind of... You wouldn't have this set idea.
You know that there's different types of women, there's different... I just think that sometimes trans women are seen as caricatures and these inanimate objects, just objects that don't have a soul, that don't have a heart, that don't have a life. We're just seeing this ancillary and I refuse to live in existence that measures my worth up against my ability to satisfy a man's libido. I'm so much bigger than that. I think a lot of my work has also been teaching other trans women that it's okay to be in touch with your sexuality. In fact, there is a movement of trans women now who are like, "Not only do I not want gender affirmation surgery, but I am not even subscribing to these ideas that I necessarily have to be a "bottom".
So you have trans women now who are realizing that their sexuality doesn't validate or invalidate their womanhood. They're completely separate. And it's interesting because I see more men too having these conversations. In fact, I'm recently a contributing editor for Playboy Magazine, but before I had submitted some pieces and they had featured me for the June issue of last year and this year. And one of the things I was talking about, there was a piece that I wrote about kind of a guide, an introductory guide to transamorous sexuality and kind of like a letter to men, kind of being like, "Hey, this is what it is. This is what it is not. These are some of the things you're probably going to come up against from your peers, from loved ones, from some of the messages that you get from media. These ideas that trans people are a joke." We're a punchline. Like guys going to a bar with his friends, there's a hot girl, then all of a sudden, "Oh shit, she's really..."-
Liz:
Like the Pharcyde Song.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Oh my God. Yeah.
Liz:
Yeah.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Just like that.
Liz:
Oh shit, I believe was where they dropped the beat in that song.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah.
Liz:
So I was going to ask you about how you practice self care in the middle of all the outreach and activism that you do, but it sounds like you're doing it.
Ashlee Marie P.:
I'm not.
Liz:
You're not. I mean, you're-
Ashlee Marie P.:
I'm becoming conscious. I'm getting better. I'm recognizing that I can give myself credit where credit is due, but I can also aspire to do better. When you're talking about someone intersectionality, the fact that discrimination, I don't experience it on a single axis, but I experience racism, sexism and transphobia simultaneously. So when you're living a life, shielding off all of this bad juju and hatred and bigotry and all of this stuff from different directions. You don't always have time. Self care in and of itself is a privilege.
I've even had some of these conversations with some of my white friends who are really good allies and they're always like trying to learn what, how, and sometimes they'll be like, "Well, it's just easy. Just take a day off, go up to..." And I'm like, "Honey, I'm from a community that on a national average makes less than $10,000 a year. I'm from a community again, as a black trans woman who's life expectancy is only 35 years old. I'm from a community who has all of these different struggles that are systemic and structural." And so literally I'm always in the throes of survival. I think that when I was talking about even how sexuality develops and is nurtured through trauma, it's weird when you undergo re-traumatization sometimes on a daily basis, sometimes on a weekly basis, a monthly basis because it's fight or flight.
Liz:
But you're still taking time in your day or in your week or your month to say, "Oh maybe I'm interested in sexological body work or maybe I'm going to try this massage even though it freaks me out."
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. Trying.
Liz:
Because you've got a lot of weight on your shoulders. You're out there on the front lines advocating, educating and in many cases being the first in certain spaces that you're in and that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of pressure to be that person and be that role model for other people. It's impossible for anyone human to carry that mantle.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. Well it's a lot of sacrifice. The truth is that I think it goes back to these storybook ideas and these narratives we tell about what heroes look like and what they really do and we romanticize it, but there isn't anything romantic about it, nine times out of 10. People like myself, I'm an ENFP also, Myers-Briggs, we make up less than I think 3% of the population. So Tupac, Marilyn Monroe, Robin Williams, these people who are-
Liz:
You love Marilyn Monroe.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Clearly. You picked up on that. But I think it's because I related. At a young age... So my grandmother, I would watch-
Liz:
Because she also loved books, loved reading, loved learning.
Ashlee Marie P.:
And also they were... But I saw-
Liz:
Very misunderstood.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes, this tortured saw that there's this exterior and there's this thing that people buy into and then there's who you really are. And there was nothing worse than knowing the beauty and who you really are. But then having to lean into others' perceptions as a means of survival. I understood that at an early age. Whether I knew what trans was or not, I understood that clearly. I also understood Tupac, his need to speak truth to power despite the consequences, knowing that it was going to cause issues, knowing that it was going to cause rifts. One of the things that I found impressive about Tupac more than anything was that he was willing to have rifts even with people in his own community and his own... Which even as a trans woman, there are so many times where I go to war under the radar with community leaders and people who work for these organizations.
Because the thing is that sometimes we are an impediment to our own progress and there are many times where on the surface we have to appear unified. And yes, we're this front and we're going to win and we're going to do all this and we're going to fight on. But the thing is that hurt people hurt people. And when you haven't had the space or the time or the resources to heal properly, you project onto other people. And the thing is that I've had to make decisions even with the whole Caitlyn Jenner brouhaha, every-
Liz:
And for listeners who don't know about the Caitlyn Jenner brouhaha, you approached her and spoke to her about her support of Trump, in a public space, as a trans woman. Yeah. As a trans woman, how could she support Trump?
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. And people didn't know either. Some people were like, "Oh, you should have just given her..." I actually became friends with her and it was a thing where people were like, "What are you doing? First of all, she's a Republican." And I'm like, "Honey, I'm in Hollywood. There's a lot of Republicans." I actually separated Trumpism, even though I've been a democrat my entire life, I was able to separate Trumpism from being a Republican. So it wasn't synonymous for me. But after having those deep conversations and after bringing her around community to these events and including her in some of these conversations and trying to lend a nuance in the middle of so much noise, when I saw that unwillingness, people also didn't know that the day that I had the confrontation with her, it was the day that Trump assigned... He sent out the first executive order for the trans military ban.
It was on a Friday. That was the first time that he had done it that day. And she showed up in a space where they made the program about her and it was like, "No." And it wasn't even about her. So basically there's this thing again, what I related to about Tupac and I loved is that fearlessness to just call shit out, even if it means you may be the only voice in the room.
Liz:
Call shit out and maybe even make friends with them after.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. The thing is I have an ability to hold people accountable and hold them at the same time. One of my really good friends right now is Rose McGowan. And it was really that blindsided a lot of people because she had this controversy at Barnes & Noble with this trans Woman. And there were some things she had said that people had taken it out of context. And then there were also some words and thoughts that she had that people were like, "That's insensitive." And rightfully so. And so the thing is that I had her come on my show, Shook with Ashlee Marie Preston, when I had my podcast. And we talked about it and we sat down across from one another. I heard her, she heard me, we found similarities, we found differences.
Liz:
That's the problem with cancel culture on social media, is that there's no space for nuanced discussion. There's no space to really look into each other's eyes and understand where someone else is coming from, where they've been. I mean, and it's the same thing with social media outrage versus real life activism.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Oh my gosh.
Liz:
And community work. Because we can all decide what that means or in whatever small ways that we want to better our community or serve others. So yeah, that's a whole other podcast probably.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah.
Liz:
But it's something to think about.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah, I think about it all the time. I know that a lot of my work looks different the more I am connected to more communities and different thought leaders, and I noticed that my approach has expanded. So there is a time to shake the table and there's a time to set the table and invite people to it. And I think if I could imagine what my legacy would look like and what it would be, I would want it to be truth teller. Because we can't heal what we don't reveal. And I think that we're in a place in America where even though there are so many egregious things flooding from the White House and from all of these spaces that once felt safe, the fact that we're seeing it for what it truly is, the fact that we're calling these truths to the carpet, it indiscriminately and intentionally is going to set us up for growth and healing.
I think that that has to be the thing that I focus on, on a daily basis because otherwise you feed more into the noise instead of the nuance. It's I think, these spaces, these podcasts, these shows, these private conversations over coffee, dinner with friends, family members. I think that change happens one conversation at a time.
Liz:
I agree. So I just have one last question for you today. Because I'm sure we're going to have more conversations offline is, what are you still learning about sex?
Ashlee Marie P.:
I'm still learning what pleasure is. Because for me as a former survival sex worker, pleasure was literally just a feeling. Even since my sexuality a lot was stunted as a child, because I remember there was a time as a child where I was discovering it on my own and I didn't have anybody doing anything. It was actually right before some of those things started happening. I remember the feelings and the electricity and the warmth and just all of these very beautiful interactions that I had with self. And then coming into adulthood, it was kind of very cold. It was very mechanical. It became very mechanical.
And so I think for me, pleasure is taking it outside of the container that I've always held it in, is this very simple... I mean, even with sex work men, you know when there's pleasure, you know when it's done, you know it's just very mechanical. But just being able to connect to my mind with it. Because I think for me that the biggest disconnect has been, I can't get out of my head because there's so much stuff like that my... And again, I'm sure you know survivors of rape, which I have been raped in my adult life, trauma, all of those things, we disassociate.
So there's this outer body. In fact, the way that I move throughout the world, probably the reason why I'm able to do so much that I'm doing is because I'm not even listening to my body. I'm not even aware, I'm not in and I'm just out. And so kind of feeling safe enough to return to my own body-
Liz:
And play.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes.
Liz:
Like you did as a kid.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yes. And work through some of the mental parts of it. And then once I can do that, then I can start to explore what that looks like. I think even sexuality, there's a lot more to sexuality than again, than organs or private parts or all of that. There's a mental, there's an exchange, there's... Even courting, those simple things. And I think what it is, it's so funny, but I may be tattooed, this badass big hair, edgy kind of, but in some ways I'm still kind of old fashion.
Liz:
And you want those love letters. You want that O.C. romance. So if you're listening to this and you're a fan of Ashley Marie Preston, maybe you should write an old fashioned love letter.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Please. You notice, it's so funny too. Funny enough, when I have actually leaned more into my full expression without trying to take on these roles of... Because there were moments when I felt like I had to actually fem it down, because I didn't want to make the guy feel as if he weren't man enough or he weren't... But the truth is that most people picture me like, "Oh, she's already bad-ass. So she has to have this Mr. T kind of, this roar. I don't know, bodybuilder kind of... I'm actually attracted to "nerds."
Liz:
You're a sapiosexual.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah, that's what it is.
Liz:
You like a brain.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Yeah. I think it's underrated. I don't know.
Liz:
Well, thank you so much. I learned a lot from our conversation.
Ashlee Marie P.:
Thanks for having me.
Liz:
Thank you.