Mircalla Addams Oral History Interview

Addams begins by talking about how ze identify as a femme lesbian and what that means to hir. Then, ze talks about hir childhood, experience with feminine presentation, and where ze draws inspiration from. Ze discusses how hir idea of womanhood was drawn from historical lesbian culture, and how it is based in intentionality and community relations. Ze then discussed hir gender/sexuality exploration process and things that are euphoric and dysphoric to hir, which included one of hir objects, a tank top with the phrase “butch bait” on it. Ze moved to a discussion about theatre and hir experience with it in high school and college, and how the act of performance relates to hir gender. Ze then talked about hir experience in online queer spaces, that mainly being with the Danger Days fandom on servers, and with the butch-femme community on Tumblr. Ze also found community in person with the Rocky Horror Picture show performances in Eugene and participating in junior roller derby. After a discussion of hir major, New Media Communications, Addams and the interviewer had a discussion about queer media and queer representation within media in relation to respectability politics. Lastly, Addams related hir experience at OSU and taking classes in Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies.

Mircalla Addams is from Eugene, Oregon and is double majoring in New Media Communications and Theater at OSU. At the time of the interview, ze identified as a femme lesbian.

This interview was conducted in support of interviewer Jozie Billings' honors thesis project titled, "Beyond the Binary: Multimodal Oral Histories of Navigating Gender and Finding Identity from Gender-Diverse and Cisgender Students." More information about that project is available in the finding aid for the OSU Queer Archives Oral History Collection (OH 34).