Interview with Diana Newburger

SL Ziegler interview Diana Newburger.

Diana is a trans woman and uses she/her pronouns. We talk about her time with the Franciscan Order, and building a new community.

Interviewee: Diana Newburger                                                         

Interviewer: S.L. Ziegler                                                                       

Transcriber: Dre Tarleton                                                                      

January 24, 2021

[Transcript edited slightly for length and clarity.]

SL ZIEGLER:     Okay, fantastic. So, this is the part where I say my little thing. This is S.L. Ziegler, sitting down remotely with Diana Newburger. Diana is a trans woman and uses she/her pronouns. Today is January 24, 2021. We're meeting remotely using Zoom because COVID. My goodness, the COVID. So, Diana, as we discussed before, this interview is part of the Louisiana Trans Oral History Project. The goal is to gather real world examples of what it means to be trans in Louisiana, here in the early 21st century, and to donate these interviews to the T. Harry Williams History Center at LSU, if you so choose, as well as to put them online, in part or in whole, on the project's website and for various promotional purposes. So, please know that you can stop this interview at any time, and if you have any questions about this or anything else you can reach out to me at any time. And please also know, like we said before, these interviews are a joint project between the two of us. You'll have a chance to review the transcripts and any portion of them can be de-identified, edited or restricted as you deem necessary. Does all that sound good, Diana?

DIANA NEWBURGER:     That sounds great. 

ZIEGLER:     Thank you so much for being here. And for agreeing to that, I want, I'm so very excited about this talk, for all the reasons we were just talking about. But let's start at the very beginning, just for the sake of completeness. Can you tell us, so you were born in Metairie.

NEWBURGER:         Yes, I was born in Metairie. I grew up in Old Metairie, to be specific. 

ZIEGLER:        So, what did your parents do?

NEWBURGER:    My dad is a stock broker, and so he buys and sells stocks for his clients, specifically in general wealth management, and my mother is a high school English teacher. 

ZIEGLER:        Oh, wow. Which high school?

NEWBURGER:    Right now, she's teaching at Brother Martin High School, and that's actually where I went to high school. 

ZIEGLER:         Was she teaching there when you were there?

NEWBURGER:     No, she started the year after I left. But a lot of my friends were her students. They would say things like “Oh my gosh! I love your mom," and I'd say, "Oh my gosh, me too."

ZIEGLER:     How long has your family been in Metairie? Your grandparents were there, too?

NEWBURGER:    My mom and my dad grew up in New Orleans. I'm not entirely exactly sure, but in New Orleans, Metairie. This area's where they've been their whole lives except with Hurricane Katrina when we evacuated for a year, to Jackson, MS. 

ZIEGLER:        For a full year?

NEWBURGER:    Almost a year. Well, 'til December I think it was. I was only nine, so I don't really remember it perfectly.

.ZIEGLER:        Can you tell me again the name of your high school?

NEWBURGER:         I went to Brother Martin. It's in Gentilly. That was a Catholic high school.

ZIEGLER:        Yeah. Yeah. That's a fine springboard, right? What I'm really very excited to talk to you about is your experience with Catholicism. So, can you tell us a little bit about this? Did you consider yourself Catholic in high school?

NEWBURGER:    I did. And I actually still consider myself Catholic. Some people may say that I can't be trans and Catholic, but I disagree with them.

ZIEGLER:        Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But you were planning on being a priest. Is that right? 

NEWBURGER:    When I started college, my first semester, I was very inspired to pursue the career and life of a Catholic priest, and particularly in a religious order. I don't know if you want me to talk about the details of that just yet. 

ZIEGLER:        I would love to, but first let me ask you about the college experience. So, you went to LSU. Is that right?

NEWBURGER:         Right. I went to LSU from 2015 to 2017. I got my Bachelor's degree in French. 

ZIEGLER:        So, it was during this time that you decided to pursue religious order. I wonder was there anything thinking about what you were studying or maybe the location?

NEWBURGER:    I was very involved in the Catholic campus ministry. The church there is called Christ the King, and I went there all the time. I would go there in the middle of the day. I would go there until midnight. My friends were there. I spent a lot of time there. I loved being there to study, to pray, to hang out. They have a very nice space, not just for worship but for congregating. 

ZIEGLER:        So what happened after college?

NEWBURGER:    I immediately joined the Franciscan Order. I don't know if you know of St. Francis of Assisi.

ZIEGLER:        If you want to talk more about it, please do.

NEWBURGER:    Sure. Saint Francis of Assisi was born in the late 1100s, and he died in the early 1200s. He founded an order of men. He calls them the Order of Little Brothers, but they're often, once he died, called the Franciscans, possibly while he was still alive, called the Franciscans. I'm sure he didn't like that. 

And they make the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Obedience to the community. Not poverty as in having nothing of one's own, so not technically poverty, but it's an attitude for toward possessions, and chastity, not having sex, not being in romantic relationships, focusing on love and community, and on prayer.

ZIEGLER:        I wonder, again, to the extent that you feel comfortable, I wonder if you could say a little bit about your motivation for following that particular order.

NEWBURGER:    I remember I met a Franciscan priest on a retreat at the beginning of the year 2016, and when I met him, I asked him, "Can you tell a little more about your order? I want to hear about it." Because I was looking for a religious order to join. And I ended up going on a trip with their vocation director, sort of the recruiter. That's a good analogy. To visit one of their houses. And I fell in love. I loved the men in the order. I felt at home. I felt this is the place and the life for me. I love this. I could see myself living with them and working with these men for the rest of my life. I'm not doing that anymore, but it's hard to be in an order of men when you're not a man.

ZIEGLER:        Again, to the extent you feel comfortable, can you tell us a little bit about that? How far along were you?

NEWBURGER:    I had been in the Franciscan order, well, with them, living with them, in the process of joining, for a little over two years. I started there in September of 2017. I lived in Indiana for a year, lived in rural Indiana at one of their homes there, and then in the DC area for a year. And then I was in Santa Barbara, CA, for a few months. I got there in June or July of 2019. I left there in November of 2019. That's three or four months, I think. Yeah. I think that's four or five months.

And then a particular time in Santa Barbara, that was a time for a lot of looking inward and getting to know ourselves more and more. And one of the things we did is we had a sexuality workshop in October of 2019, and at one point, they talked about gender, and a lot of things came up that I had been hiding from myself. Because they had asked, There are things that are associated with femininity and masculinity. And we talked about how other people are talking about this, regarding how you feel about yourself. And I didn't want to talk about it. I was just scared to say how I felt because I'd had a tough time with accepting who I am. Actually, it was only in prayer that I felt that I could be feminine, because I felt like... I don't really know how to describe it perfectly, but I felt that I had this... 

When I was talking to God, I was a woman. And I sort of accepted that in my spirituality, that that's just the way this works for me. This is how I pray. When I'm talking to God, I'm woman. Otherwise, I'm a man. And it worked out, or at least I thought it did, for a while at least. And that had been going on for years. I started having that sort of attitude in late high school.

ZIEGLER:     So, this was a workshop put on by the Franciscans?

NEWBURGER:    Yeah. We had somebody come to talk to us about it. We had a guest come to do this workshop with us. And we just talked about these things. No one was trying to make me feel certain ways. It was just, "There are these concepts that exist in this world. Gender is something that we could talk about." They also talked about sex and sexual orientation, and how we deal with that in an order in which we take vows of chastity. How, if you take a vow of chastity, you're not supposed to be with anyone, but you still have your sexual energies and how do we deal with it? What do we do? People had various approaches to it. I think, for some people, it's very important to recognize that life with taking a vow of chastity isn’t for everyone.  But for this where it is for them, my opinion is it's a beautiful thing to do.

ZIEGLER:         So, can you talk a little bit about what happened after the workshop? So, if the workshop got you to the point where you were thinking there were things about you that you could no long not embrace-

NEWBURGER:    I was very upset. I was having a really hard time. I didn't know how to deal with it. I talked to one of my classmates, one on one,  who, he is gay, and very open about it. He and I just talked about. I was saying, and realizing there are these things about me that are queer. I knew that word from years before. I hadn't used it. I had used it to describe myself multiple times before, but that was the best term I had because I didn't know where to go. I wasn't ready to say that I might be trans or not. That was the word that I had. And I love that word. It's a great word. It's very useful. It's very powerful and I still agree with him on that still.

I talked to some of my other classmates. Classmates are people we are in the same year of joining the order. It wasn't a very academically focused process, but classmate is the term that we use . And I started to realize that this was not something that I could approach while in the order. And I had to talk to the people who were in charge of me in Santa Barbara and I'm not really comfortable talking about how they reacted to it, but there was no, "Get the heck out of here. You're not welcome here," or anything. They were very helpful. And when I left the order, they were saying that they understand, and they were sad to see me go, but they were really happy for me to move forward with my life and who embraced things that are great about me. 

ZIEGLER:         I wonder if you can say a little bit about why Santa Barbara. So, you were in other locations before that.

NEWBURGER:         So, the Franciscans are the second largest order of men. This particular Franciscan order is the second largest order of men in the world, Catholic order. The Jesuits are the largest, and they have many locations all over the world. All over. And one of the things that is very important to the history of the Franciscan order is that they, especially in the beginning of the order, they were very, I can't think of the right word, but nomadic is the best word I can think of right now. They would go from place to place. So, there's not really a focus on staying in oneplace. If I were to have stayed in the order, fully joining, taking my final vows, I would have probably moved every few years, and maybe moved from Chicago. I'd be in Chicago for a few years and then they'd send me to Paris. I don't know. It could have been anywhere. 

ZIEGLER:        That's very interesting. I just wonder why you came to that realization at Santa Barbara about yourself, as opposed to when you went to the D.C. area, for instance.

NEWBURGER:    Before I joined the Franciscan order, I was very, very, both on social issues and in general, very conservative. I had been told a lot of incorrect things about transgender people. I was of the opinion, and I had been taught this through very biased media, that trans people are mentally ill and need help. And the help is not transitioning. Trans  people need to be their assigned gender because that's the way God made them. And I internalized that a lot, and during my time in the order, I learned a lot better about that. I learned that things weren't that simple or that complicated, depending on how you look at it.

It's not that. That's not the right way to look at things. Because I lived with people who had had different experiences. I knew a lot of people in the order who didn't believe that. And they'd tell me about it and tell me why. And I knew people who were open about that they were gay. In fact, I wasn't there when it was done, but the United States Franciscans, just in the order I was in, worked together on a letter to the Pope, who talked about something that he may or may not have said. It was from a second-hand source. I’m not sure exaclty what it was, but that he had said something about priests, that gay men should not be priests, which the previous Pope did say. Openly, he said gay men should not be admitted to the priesthood. And I was sort of part of that team, but then when I left, I wasn't part of the team anymore. So, having those spaces, having those attitudes around me, it really opened my mind, and I was able  to see myself as able to be different from what I had been told I have to be.

ZIEGLER:        Do you think you would have recognized that about yourself had you not started the journey of joining the order?

NEWBURGER:    Maybe. I think that it would have been a lot later. I'm really thankful that I was in the order. And that's not the only reason. There's so many things I learned and so many great experiences and adventures from there. Wonderful friends that I'll have for the rest of my life. I'm really thankful. It's given me the ability to give myself permission to transition.

ZIEGLER:        So, you mentioned the views that you had, that I think a lot of us internalized about trans people. I'm assuming you left the order and went back home, and if so, I don't know if you want to tell us anything about what that was like. I don't know if your parents had the same views that you did when you left.

NEWBURGER:         Sure. I did not tell my parents why I left the order. I just told them that it wasn't for me. Because I was really scared to come out to them. And I wasn't even ready to say that I was trans. I just knew that, in the space that I was in, that was very much in the public eye because I lived in Old Mission Santa Barbara, which is also a tourist attraction, so everywhere I went, I'd basically be visible. So, it just wasn't the space.

And I didn't tell a lot of the people in the order why I was leaving, either. Only a few people knew. So, not many people back here  in Louisiana. But I was very scared to come out, actually. Last year, in January, I moved out when my parents were at work, moved into a friend’s living room.I stayed at a friend’s. I left a letter behind telling them that I was trans.  I was so scared to come out because they had said things that made me feel that it would go over very well.

I remember in high school, I would crossdress sometimes, and they wouldn't say, "Don't do that," but they would try to get me to hide it. I felt very ashamed from the way my parents reacted. And I still feel uncomfortable around them, even though I don't have any men's clothes anymore. I can't dress like a man.

ZIEGLER:        So, it sounds like y'all are on talking terms.

NEWBURGER:    We are. It's been complicated and difficult. But I see things moving forward. I'd like them to move forward faster, but it's not my choice. I'm glad they're still in my life, even though it's not easy.

ZIEGLER:     I appreciate you telling us all of this. I know that some of this is hard to talk about. I wonder now if we can talk a little bit about the sense of community you've been able to develop here in Louisiana, or maybe elsewhere as well, since you have come out. Maybe in the time periods, which would have been a year ago this month. Is that correct?

NEWBURGER:    Right. Actually moved out of my parents' on January 14th last year, and I started hormones the same day. Very exciting. It was a big day. It was a big day. Yeah. What were you saying?

ZIEGLER:        I guess what I was asking is your ability to meet people or to build a community since that time.

NEWBURGER:    It's been difficult because the pandemic came shortly after. It's something that's kind of interesting, is as soon as I came out, I started finding out about friends of mine from my childhood who are nonbinary, which is crazy because when I was in elementary school, I went to Country Day for elementary school. We had classes of about, I don't know, 25, and finding out who of my friends from my grade were nonbinary, I'm just thinking, "That's a bit higher than to be expected. It's been an unusual number of nonbinary people in my little group." Just random, but it's funny.

But I was able to, the friend that I stayed with after I left the parents', she is trans. I met her, actually, through the Louisiana Trans Advocates Facebook page, and she was a big help. And I was able to connect with a few people, but I was very reserved. I was very much in a situation I wasn't familiar with because I was staying on a friend's couch. I didn't know how long I'd be doing that. In the middle of February, I got a job at a restaurant. I hadn't had a job when I left the order, but I got a job in the middle of February and temporarily moved into my cousin's house, but it didn't last very long. It just didn't work out. The dynamic there, it didn't work out for us. I ended up moving into my parents' for a few months, until July, when I moved where I am now in Bayou St. John.

ZIEGLER: [00:26:08]     Nice. So, you mentioned the Louisiana Trans Advocates, a huge and important resource to many of us in Louisiana, kind of a lifeline for a lot of us a lot of the time. In fact, this is how you and I connected originally, for this interview. I'd just love your thoughts, if you have any, about that organization. So, presumably, you didn't know about them when you first came back from Santa Barbara.

NEWBURGER:     Right, I didn't. When I came back, as far as I knew, I only knew one trans person who I met at a friend of mine's house when I was in high school. We were there playing Cards Against Humanity and he was changing his name and stuff. I didn't really get it, but he said, "Call me this." And I called him that. I don't even remember if I really understood. He used he/him pronouns, but [inaudible 00:27:10] But I was friends with him on Facebook, and I messaged him, clearly after I moved back to Louisiana in November of 2019. I was like, "Hey, I'm thinking that I might be trans, and you’re the only trans person that I know of. Can you help me with this?" He's trans masculine, I'm trans feminine, but still, I was thinking he might tell me somewhere to go.

And I think that he told me to look up Louisiana Trans Advocates. I hopped in the Facebook group and I've made a few friends on there that I've never met in person because of the pandemic, but that was how I found that. And it's been a really good social resource for me, just to have people I can connect with and be with and relate to. Actually, I'm not the only person that I know of who is both Christian and has gone to a seminary type thing, and is trans, and I think that's really exciting to know someone else like that. I don't know anybody else who was in a religious order, but I have kind of connected with one or two of them. Somebody was in a Catholic diocesan  seminary. She’s on Twitter and is trans, and left the seminary and transitioned, kind of how I left the Franciscan order. It's really cool to connect with that person.

ZIEGLER:     So far in this project with the interviews, we've definitely found plenty of people who consider themselves very religious. 

ZIEGLER:         That's fantastic about the connections. I wonder, sort of since it has almost been pandemic time for you since coming out, and I know a lot of us are sort of in the same position, but just to know the different reasons 2020 seemed like a time that a lot of us came out. I wonder, thinking about where you are in your life, and where you are geographically, I wonder if there's any message that you would like to leave us with, here at the end of the interview. So, again, part of this is we're talking to each other as the community, so we'll be sharing these stories among ourselves, but we also, should you choose to, are going to preserve these long term. So, if we think about somebody reading this transcript or looking back at this, listening to this audio I should say, in about 30 years, what message would you like them to know about being trans in Louisiana, here in 2021?

NEWBURGER:         Really hard to say that because you can't see the future, what people would want to hear. It's been very hard, but it's been very beautiful. I know that some people agree with me and other people disagree with me. I see being trans as a gift from God. It's a difficult gift at times, but I think that what makes it difficult is mostly other people. I don't know if that's the message that they would need in 30 years, but that's how I'm feeling. 

ZIEGLER:         I was just hoping that you could offer something of a snapshot of how you're feeling, so that's perfect. And I think it's a beautiful way of putting it. So often, the trouble is other people. 

NEWBURGER:    Well, the problem is other people who don't understand and may not even want to understand.

ZIEGLER:     Yeah. Well, that's lovely. Diana, let me thank you again for participating in this. Your story is unique, and I think will have a lot of value as a story that other people can see and share. Because navigating all of this is difficult and throwing in religion complicates things. 

NEWBURGER:     It does. 

ZIEGLER:         Yeah, and your story is just, I think, fantastic. So, thank you so much for sharing it with us.

NEWBURGER:    You're welcome.