Ray Wolf Oral History Interview, March 12, 2020

ALEX STURGEON: Today's date is March 12th, 2020, and my name is Alex Sturgeon. This is an oral history interview with Ray Wolf in Corvallis Oregon for the OSU History 368: Lesbian and Gay Movements in Modern American oral history project. Would you please state your name, spell it out, and share which pronouns you use?

RAY WOLF: Ray Wolf. R-A-Y W-O-L-F. And I use he/him pronouns.

AS: And what gender and orientation do you prefer to use?

RW: I identify as a transman. My sexual orientation-actually, that's an interesting conversation-it varies, it's pretty fluid. Right now, I identify as a bisexual man. But honestly, I'm pretty sure that will change soon or later. I don't know. Sexual orientation, for me, is something that varies-at least for 00:01:00me, just personally. So yeah, I don't know. I've identified as a lesbian in the past, obviously, before I transitioned. I identify as straight for quite a while, and then bisexual. But then it's just like "I don't know." I don't even know. It just changes.

AS: What was your childhood like?

RW: I grew up in Spain. I was born in Europe in Spain. I was born in 2001. It was not like the 70s which was really hard. But Spain is a really Christian Catholic country still. It's really, really traditional. Honestly, I do not 00:02:00remember a lot of my childhood. There's a lot of blocked memories. I remember at the beginning, it was pretty good. I remember playing with my siblings, being in the woods, and just doing kid things.

When I started having thoughts that I was supposed not to have as my school taught me, as the church taught me, I started to have identity issues and identity crisis. And then is when it actually starts to get a little bit complicated. There was not information at all about gender identity or sexual 00:03:00orientation. If there was something, it was that all of this was a sin. And you could not come into church with those thoughts. I remember, actually, once, I did the first communion. And I told-I don't remember the name of the person in the church-the priest, I told the priest that I liked girls, when I identified as a girl. I didn't have any other choice. And he made me pray SO much for SO long. It was insane. So, in my brain, I was like "Okay, so that's wrong. That's why he's making me pray so much."

I was not a happy kid, well, happy teenager/kid, whatever you are in those ages. I was really unhappy. I did not have any support. I did not have anyone to talk to, because I did not know what was going on. I didn't have anyone to reference or to even talk about this because I thought it was wrong. So, growing up, I was not happy. I hated when my mom made me put on dresses. I hated when I had to go to school. I had to wear a uniform which was a skirt, and I hated that. And I just hated being around people that I couldn't really talk about my identity. I had too many questions and no one to ask, until I actually discovered the 00:05:00internet and YouTube. That was actually the first reference and the first thing I saw or read about transgender people. I really didn't know that that was a possibility. I thought I was just stuck with what I had and that I had to hate myself forever.

So, I isolated myself for several years because I didn't fit. I didn't have a great relationship with my parents. I didn't have great relationships with any of my family members except for my grandma. And I didn't have a great relationship with teachers. I just didn't have good relationships with anyone. 00:06:00That was more or less my childhood. And the rest is just like, not my childhood anymore. So, yeah, lots of religion.

AS: You mentioned the internet being your first exposure to the word "trans" and the idea of being trans. What was your first exposure to LGBTQ community?

RW: I think my first exposure to LBGT community-it had to have been something in the TV. But it was not positive. It was not with a positive lens. It could have been something like Pride in Madrid which is really, really big. I think it's one of the biggest parades in the world, pride parades. But it was not a 00:07:00positive exposure, which I have oppositional defiance. So I'm like "If my parents didn't like something, if someone didn't like something, it meant that I'm just gonna like it," or the opposite too.

So, I was really, really interested in the queer community since I was really little, obvious reasons. I think it had to have been something in the TV, or someone talking about it in my school. But I believe I didn't have a first contact-face to face and actually talk about this with anyone-until I was, like, 14. I was the only queer kid that was out of the closet in my school for a really long time. Really long time.

So, in my last year of high school there, which was junior year before I came here, there were kids that would come out to me and ask me stuff. Because I was the only figure that they had to ask. My school was a Catholic school, so there was no help for queer kids. It was super ableist. I think there was one person of color in my school, and we were like, 1000. So, these little queers, they would just come up to me ask me like, how to come out to the parents, how to do this, how to do that? It's sad that they didn't have any other adult. Because I was not an adult. I was under 18. I didn't really know much apart from what I 00:09:00learned on my own. So that's kind of sad.

And that's not only in my school. It's so common in Spain. There's no information at all. It's not available. People won't talk about it. I feel like now they're talking a little bit more about it. But, when I was growing up, no one would talk about it. It's like taboo.

AS: Were there any teachers that were particularly close to being helpful?

RW: Yeah. I remember one teacher, specifically. She helped me with something that happened to me when I was 12. When I was 12, my best friend died. And, in fact, I think that when I was 12, everything started to not go so well. And that 00:10:00was the only teacher that actually cared about how I was feeling, because I was dealing with a lot of emotions that I didn't understand. I was too young, and no one explained to me or tried to talk to me or anything. I stayed several years in isolation until that teacher came up to me and talked to me.

I opened myself about how I felt regarding my orientation, because I didn't really know that gender identity issues were a thing. I just knew that "I could be a lesbian." She was the first person I actually talked about it-no, no, the first person was one of my friends, but she just didn't talk to me ever again because she thought I liked her and that's why I told her. But yeah, I think the 00:11:00teacher was the second person I told. I don't remember being negative or positive. I think it was just neutral. I don't have any emotions with that conversation. I just don't really remember, which I think is good. Cuz if there is no negative emotions attached to it, I don't really need to think about it, I guess. But yeah, that was the only adult, more or less, that I actually talked about my sexuality in that time.

AS: Do you struggle with your gender at all? If so, why? If not, what helped you to be comfortable with it?

RW: I don't usually struggle with my gender identity anymore. I struggle how I 00:12:00present myself. Mainly, that's all attached to dysphoria. There's some days, for example, when I wear a crop top, which is categorized as a women's clothes. I don't care the gender that piece of clothing is attached to, and I don't believe that clothes should have gender. But, at the same time, I have a lot of dysphoria with some parts of my body. And if I wear that crop top, I feel more vulnerable to that dysphoria. So, that's the only thing I can think of right now in most of my gender identity and struggle, per se.

But it took me a really long time, and up until I started testosterone, I 00:13:00started seeing some changes which made my dysphoria less prominent. It was way easier to just deal with that part. But up until I started testosterone, I had a terrible dysphoria. And I had a lot of identity issues, because I didn't know if that was what I needed. I didn't know if that was ok, if that was correct, if I was gonna regret it. I didn't know because I didn't really think it was an option up until I came here in August 2018.

So, I wouldn't say I struggle with my identity. I just struggle with, basically dismantling everything that I've been told in my life, that clothes have gender, 00:14:00pink and blue, because that was really, really really intense when I was growing up. So, that's the only thing I can, right now, recall that I struggled with.

AS: Have you seen a difference between the United States and Spain, as far as the communities go?

RW: Yes. I've seen several differences. For example, talking about the queer community, in Spain, it's really marginalized. I also understand that it varies a lot depending on where are you. But here, in Corvallis, Oregon, the sense of 00:15:00community is really, really integrated in the community itself, like the town. When I first came here, I was just walking around town and I could see a lot of pride flags. And my brain was exploding [makes exploding sound]. I was so happy. I've never seen so many pride flags in a small place apart from Pride Week in Spain. That's it. You will not see pride flags at all. But I came here, and everything is with pride flags. There's a Pride Center on campus. There's so many places that celebrate our community. That's one of the biggest differences I noticed.

Also, how you express yourself here. In Spain, if I wear a mohawk, like the thing I'm wearing right now, and it's colored and all that stuff, people are going to think that you're gonna literally rob them, attack them. People will immediately think that you're a bad person and that you're a bad influence. But here, I can just wear whatever I want, and no one verbally judges me. No one questions me why I do the things I do. And that's a really big step, especially in the community. Because no one really asks us what is our sexual orientation or gender identity, the pronoun thing-people ask you for your pronouns. They don't come to you and like "So, are you a boy or a girl?" And that's super 00:17:00common in Spain. I would get that all the time.

One of the biggest shocks I encountered when I came here, I asked my mom-she is Lorena Reynolds, she's been interviewed here as well-if I was allowed to go to the boys' bathroom. We were travelling or something like that. And she was really shocked, "What do you mean you're allowed? Of course you're allowed. Where would you go if it's not the men's bathroom." And I just couldn't wrap myself around that, because I was not allowed to go to the boys' bathroom. I had to run from security officers from going to public boys' bathrooms. So, that was a big difference and something that I had to slowly learn, because I really thought I had to hide myself. I had to hide myself for so many years. And I came 00:18:00here, and I stopped. I didn't have to hide anymore. I can just be Ray and no one would really question why. And I know it's not the same in every single place in America. I know that. But at least in Corvallis, Oregon, or Eugene, Portland, it's something like this. There's a huge gap.

AS: You kind of touched on this here and there, what was the reaction of your friends and family back home, for you, to deciding to come out and deciding to 00:19:00use different pronouns. And has there been a difference in your friends here?

RW: I came out as a lesbian when I was 12, so 2011. And then I came out as trans to my friends in 2015, I guess. I think I was around 15. And I knew that I couldn't come out to my parents as trans because I didn't really get a good reaction when I came out a lesbian. So, I just came out to my friends. My closest friends, from school, some of them just didn't give a shit. They didn't change the way they treated me. They didn't change my pronouns. They just kept naming me by my dead name and, you know, "Nothing has happened. We're not gonna change anything." A few of them started calling me Ray and changed pronouns, slowly.

And out of my school where I normally was, I used to hang out in the capital, in Madrid-I lived in the outskirts, so I had to go to the capital. In fact, the first trans man I met in my life, I met him in Madrid. It was the people that I used to hang out with. And it was the first exposure. Everything he was saying, everything he was feeling, I could feel it too. So, I decided to just go with it.

I started, firstly, using gender-neutral pronouns which in Spanish are super complicated, and people do not respect it at all. So, the non-binary community 00:21:00is non-existent, or almost non-existent in Spain. People do not respect it. So I wanted people to call me with those pronouns. But they didn't even respect it. They would make fun of me. And then I told them to treat me with he/him pronouns, and it made sense. Some clicked and it felt good. I liked when people called me "him" or "Ray". And that was really good. The group of friends that I had in Madrid, totally accepting, they were super open. They were all queer people. So, they were okay with it.

I came out to my parents on January 2018 before I left. They didn't change anything. They only started changing how they treated me as soon as I came here. 00:22:00And I started testosterone, and they saw that I actually fit in society and that my identity was valid and that was real. A lot of members of my family did that as well. They changed the way they referred to me as soon as they saw that I was going to have a future, that I had a future ahead, and that others, especially adults, were treating me seriously, and that, again, I was real.

AS: Alright. It looks like we don't have any follow-up questions. So, our final 00:23:00question then is, is there anything you'd like to say, or any advice you'd like to give for someone who might be in your situation or going through something similar?

RW: I would say, "It gets better." It always gets better. Your emotions are valid. Whatever you're feeling is valid. Everything you're going through is valid. But it gets better. And relate-is that a word? Trust the people that love you. And talk to people. Do not isolate. And, I don't know, just basically that you're valid. And as long as you know yourself, even if you're starting to 00:24:00discover yourself, everything is valid. And don't let anyone tell you that what you are is not real, basically. That's pretty much it.

AS: Thank you for sitting down with us.

RW: Yeah! Thank you.