Interview with Peyton Michelle

SL Ziegler interviews Petyon Michelle. Peyton is is transfemme and uses she/her pronouns.

We talk about homecoming dresses, visibility as activism, and being the first out trans woman elected to office in Louisiana.

Interviewee: Peyton Michelle                                                          

Interviewer: S.L. Ziegler                                                                       

Transcriber: Dre Tarleton

Location of Interviewee: Breaux Bridge                                                                      

August 17, 2020

 [Transcription has been slightly edited for space and clarity]

S.L. ZIEGLER: This is SL Ziegler sitting down remotely with Peyton Michelle. Peyton is transfemme and uses she/her pronouns. Today is August 17, 2020, and we're meeting remotely using ZOOM because the COVID-19 pandemic is still very scary here in Louisiana. Peyton, 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, in part or in whole, to the T. Harry Williams Oral History Center at LSU, and to put them, in part or in whole, on the project's website. So, please know that you can stop this interview at any time. If you have any questions about this or anything else you can reach out to me at any time. And please also know that these interviews are a joint project between me and you, so you'll have a chance to review any transcripts or recordings and any portions can be deidentified or just completely removed as deemed necessary. Does that sound good?

PEYTON MICHELLE: Yes, that's perfect.

ZIEGLER:    Perfect. Fantastic. Thank you. With that out of the way, I would just love to start, I guess, with your early life. So, you were born in Lafayette, raised in Breaux Bridge.

MICHELLE:     Right. Right.

ZIEGLER:        And am I correct that you've lived in the area your whole life?

MICHELLE:        I have. I actually have lived on this property my entire 22 years of life.

ZIEGLER:        You say this property. Is it a piece of land? Is it some acreage?

MICHELLE:     Right. Yeah, my family owns this. It's not that big, but yeah, we own this land. I've been here from birth, essentially, or shortly after.

ZIEGLER:         So, being born in Lafayette, that was just a matter of hospitals?

MICHELLE:        Right. My mom went to a women's and children hospital rather than just some hospital.

ZIEGLER:        What do or did your parents do?

MICHELLE:     So, first of all, they're no longer together, but upbringing, my dad worked for some steel company here in Breaux Bridge, and my mom, for as long as I've lived, has worked for a medical software company out of Lafayette, and now out of home. And my dad currently works in construction, I think, but I'm not really sure because we don't talk that often. Not because I'm trans, just because he's a bad father.

ZIEGLER:        So, you have some land that you mentioned you've been there since just after birth. Out of curiosity, has it been in your family for long? Does that stretch back?

MICHELLE:        They bought it. My mom and dad bought it right before I was born and we've stayed here since. But my family does have small amounts of land where my grandparents live in Vermilion Parish. They have a cane field over there.

ZIEGLER:         And so do you have family on both sides?

MICHELLE:     Yeah. My mom's side is from the Vermilion Parish area, like Erath, Henry, Abbeville area, whereas my dad's side is from like Henderson. So, yeah, I really got the best of both Cajun worlds.

ZIEGLER:        I know, I was going to ask, does anybody speak Cajun French?

MICHELLE:        My great grandmother on my mom's side spoke. I remember her speaking almost only Cajun French, but apparently she did not only speak Cajun French. It was probably just her talking in French around us so we didn't understand her. But yeah, my grandmas. I think both sides, my grandparents speak Cajun French to varying degrees, though I haven't heard them speak French in years, at least, so I'm sure it's dwindling, as we all know.

ZIEGLER:     And so, it's not down to your generation?

MICHELLE:        I tried to learn. Like in 4th grade, we had a Cajun French class. And in middle school. In high school, I took French classes. I guess France-French. But while I really liked French and really wanted to absorb that information, I wasn't able to use it, and I've lost it. So, yeah that has been lost fairly, sadly.

ZIEGLER:        Yeah. So, among all the many reasons I'm excited to talk to you, among them is a perspective you can bring about that part of the state. I think, like we said a little bit before the recording started, there's been about eleven or so interviews, to date, for this project, and most of them, there's been one from New Iberia, but most of them have been Baton Rouge or New Orleans. I guess that's not that surprising, but I would love to talk a bit more, if you feel comfortable ith it, about how you find living in Breaux Bridge. As a trans person.

MICHELLE:     Right. In my opinion, I have a later trans story, but of course, so many people don't figure out until they're like 30s, 40s, 50s even. But growing up, probably from kindergarten, first grade, my peers knew something was "off"  with me. They called me gay and all that stuff. But I was none the wiser. I was like, "I don't know what y'all are talking about." And this, of course, followed me throughout my entire school journey, forcing me to take, not forcing me, but going into high school, my freshman, 9th grade year, I was overwhelmed by the bullying. I didn't want to go to high school. I just didn't want to do it. So, I ended up doing virtual school for that entire year.

And though I destroyed my GPA, I really got to be with myself for the year, and not be bullied constantly. I played a lot of online video games and whatnot, and being introduced to people from all over the world, really, and that taught me, along with a lot of Ru Paul's Drag Race, that I had a much more femme identity inside of me that I needed to express. So, the next maybe two years, I spent exploring my gender identity.

At first I was like, "I'm just going to be a full time drag queen." And then, I think the idea of being a trans was presented to me on probably Drag Race or something, and I was like, "Oh, you can just do that. You can just change." So, from then on, I was like, "Well, maybe this is what I want to do." But hormones were terrifying to me, so I continued to change my clothing, wear makeup, heels, all of that kind of stuff, until one day, probably around January-ish of my senior year, I was 18, and me and my mom went to a local gay bar named Bolt, and we went to the drag show. We were doing our thing, whatever, and there was a transwoman bartender, and my mom just ended up talking to her for basically the entire night. And at the end of that evening, my mom told me, "If you want to start hormones, you just let me know, and I will pay for it. Like, it'll be fine. You just tell me, we'll make the appointments. Just let me know when you're ready," basically.

So, I think maybe the next morning or next day, I called a doctor in New Orleans that did not require a letter or anything like that, and I had to wait three months or something like that, but I think in April of my senior year, that sounds right, end of April, I started hormones. And because I kind of decided that I was transitioning so late into my senior year, I didn't really bring that to school with me. I had kind of decided personally that I didn't feel like having all those conversations and I didn't feel like going through that. Six more months, or five or whatever, wasn't that great of a deal to me.

Peyton was my dead name's first name, so it didn't majorly affect me when people called me that. I was privileged, I guess, I know, that it didn't, like, affect me heavily. But there were teachers that still called me she and her, which was astounding to me. And I was, to my knowledge, the first not-cis person that my school had to deal with, and I wore a dress to my homecoming and stuff. They had told me that I could not wear a dress to homecoming, and I told the principal that I was going to sue him if he told me I couldn't wear a dress to homecoming. And I think within 24 hours, he had decided that I could wear a dress to homecoming, as long as I fit the requirements that the girls had to wear.

ZIEGLER:         I'm sorry to interrupt. Does that mean dress length?

MICHELLE:        Right.

ZIEGLER:        Okay, yeah.

MICHELLE: Like cleavage or whatever. All of that stuff. But yeah, as long as I fit those guidelines, I could wear a dress and they would not kick me out, which is what they told me they would do before. 

ZIEGLER:        Can I ask about the dress that you chose?

MICHELLE:        I have a picture. So, my sophomore year homecoming, I had wore this really androgynous outfit that was still pants and a shirt, but they were both women's pants and a women's shirt, but they couldn't tell me anything because it wasn't a dress. So, for my junior year, I had decided that I was going to look good in a nice dress, so I wore this dress that had a nude slip under it, and it had a black, meshy kind of overlay, that gave it designs and stuff. It was kind of like a nude illusion, but it really shaped your body in this nice way, basically. And of course it was long enough. I had nice shoes. So, I showed up and everyone was like, "Who's that girl?" And I was like...

ZIEGLER:        I love that. Let's see. So, which high school was this?

MICHELLE:     I went to Breaux Bridge High School.

ZIEGLER:         It sounds like your mother was very supportive.

MICHELLE:    Yeah. When I came out to her as gay when I was maybe 15 or something, before I realized I was trans, she was really supportive. I'm her only child, so she didn't really want to lose me. She didn't really care what I wanted to do, as long as I was still her child, and she could love me. So, when I came out as trans, her only thing was really like, "I don't really know what hormones do." She was more afraid of the logistics of being trans rather than me actually being trans. I was too, so that probably didn't comfort her very much. I was also scared of hormones, and all that. So, yeah. But now she's all fine and dandy, calls me she/her basically all of the time.

ZIEGLER:         That's lovely, and thank you for sharing all of that. I made some notes and I'm just going to circle back to a couple of things. The gay bar that you went to with your mother, the time that she spoke with the bartender, was that in Lafayette or was that in Breaux Bridge?

MICHELLE:     Lafayette. Yeah, we don't have anything affirming in Breaux Bridge at all. We barely have bars.

ZIEGLER:         And the bar in Lafayette, which was Bolt, is that right?

MICHELLE: Yeah.

ZIEGLER:         Do they do drag shows regularly?

MICHELLE:     Yes. At the time they were doing them, I think, every Friday night, but now we have them every Friday and Sunday. However, I no longer attend or give them my money because since then, I have been shared with some transphobic things that they have done, so I try to steer clear. They're definitely a white gay bar and I haven't really seen many black queer people there. I also see almost no trans people there when I go, and that was really off-putting to me because I know there's a crap load of trans people in Lafayette. I run the support group here. I've seen all of them, and no one shows up. And it's like, "Wow." But yeah...

ZIEGLER:         Yeah, that's what I was going to ask, whether or not your relationship with, if not the drag scene as a whole, the local drag scene had changed as your thinking about your identity has changed.

MICHELLE:     I did spend a lot of time with the local drag queens before, and I don't anymore, but I think it's more about our lives just kind of diverging than any bad blood or anything like that. Some of the local drag queens are still doing good work and doing their advocacy and all that. So, yeah.

ZIEGLER:         Yeah. Fantastic. Oh, and one thing, I don't know if I heard this right, but if I did, I definitely wanted to talk more about it. So, in your 9th grade year, when you're doing virtual schooling, you were talking about Drag Race being an important, maybe catalyst. Did you also say the gaming community? You said you were spending-

MICHELLE: Yeah.

ZIEGLER:         Yeah, I would love to hear more about that. I mean, the gaming community is, at least from what I understand as an outsider, can sometimes be fraught with, I guess, negativity and toxicity, so I would love to-

MICHELLE:     I would say that the majority of online gaming, especially in really high volume games, like Call of Duty and all that, they are really toxic. But at the time, I was playing Minecraft in a role playing server, so everyone that was on the server was... I would say pretty much the majority of the people on that server were outcasts in some way, from their own societies. We were role playing on a video game. To some degree, we were all trying to escape. You know what I mean?

For a long time. I used to put in hours and hours and hours. I remember I would stay up 'til 6:00 AM and play that game. But during that, because it was online and because I played it all the time, I got to meet people from Europe, Australia, of course everywhere else around the US, and a lot of great places. And these people, in general, they weren't malicious. They were all just kind of doing their own thing. They were there to have their own good time, you know? So, I think that really allowed me to express myself. Even though I didn't really express my gender identity through it, I think it really just allowed me to unbury myself from basically the decade that I had already faced of bullying and being told that I should shut up.

The way I reacted to bullying in my primary and middle school years was trying to be quiet, trying to not get attention, trying to hide in the corner, that kind of stuff. So, that really put me in a really, really tight box that didn't allow me to express myself in basically any way. So, over the time of playing the game, I kind of slowly opened things and expressed myself here and there.

And then, later being introduced to Drag Race. And there was a gay teacher at my school when I went back. Just the small things kind of built up. I also went back to school my sophomore year being like, "If they're going to be mean to me, I'm going to be mean to them. If they want to say stuff to me, I can push back." Obviously, the administration are not going to do anything, so I can either be nice or not, and I learned very quickly that, when I wasn't nice, they stopped being mean to me, so that was kind of my attitude returning.

Which also probably helped me. I don't want to say being more confrontational allowed me to express myself, but I think in some ways it really did. It allowed me to communicate. It allowed me to defend myself and value myself in a way that I hadn't before, and that was really powerful for me, I think.

ZIEGLER:         Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it.

MICHELLE:     Yeah.

ZIEGLER:     So, after high school... Let me back up a little bit. So, we talked about getting all the way up to to homecoming in high school in Breaux Bridge High. And then after that, are you currently a student at ULL? Is that correct?

MICHELLE:     Yeah. I'm not going to be attending this fall because I am not an online learner, as I learned my freshman year of high school, and I want to go to law school after this, and my GPA cannot be destroyed by one semester out of school. So, I've decided-

ZIEGLER:        So, you mean this semester that's starting right now?

MICHELLE:     Right, this fall.

ZIEGLER:        Is this fall? This is fall. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm all confused. Yes, the one that starting right now.

MICHELLE:     It's okay. Time is an illusion.

ZIEGLER:        And is ULL all online?

MICHELLE:     No, they're doing online and in-person classes, but I personally don't believe that in-person classes are going to continue more than a month, maximum, so even though they told me I'm going to go back, and today was the first day of classes, I'm sure people are on campus right now, but I also am pretty confident that they're very rapidly not going to be on campus, and I don't want to be... I'm going to lose thousands of dollars because I don't want to be in an online school. So, I had decided I'm just going to take a break.

I'll do some volunteer work during my me-time.

ZIEGLER:     That sounds nice. And yes, I think all we can do is just sort of cross all our fingers and hope that everybody who's trying to go back just does well.

MICHELLE:     Right. I'm going to pray to go back in the spring. Hopefully we have something under control by then, but we also know that the winter is going to be rougher probably, so like... I had already decided when I went to school that I wasn't going to graduate on time because I didn't want to hold myself to that four year standard, like that stress, that's just white supremacy, capitalism. I don't care to follow all that, so I figured I'd enjoy it and do it at my own pace because I have to go to law school after, and that's going to be another feat to tackle. And I don't want to just dislike it.

ZIEGLER:         Yes, like so many of us did. What are you studying right now in undergrad?

MICHELLE:     I am majoring in political science, minoring in sociology.

ZIEGLER:         And the plan is to go to law school?

MICHELLE: Right, probably Southern or something in Baton Rouge or in New Orleans.

ZIEGLER:         And that's exactly what I was going to ask. Again, you're in Breaux Bridge. So many of the people that I've spoken to are in either Baton Rouge or New Orleans, and I’m sort of curious about your future plans, whether or not you see yourself moving to one of those cities. 

MICHELLE:     I think I would only move there for school, but I personally... You know, for a long time, I wanted to move away to California. We always romanticize those places that are more liberal, but they all have their problems too, you know? And I always wanted to move away, but after being more involved in Louisiana Trans Advocates, I would say that I really kind of settled into staying here. Because we really need it. 

I understand why some people do. Not all of our life journey revolves around fighting the patriarchy and white supremacy and capitalism, and all that stuff, but I feel like mine is. So, this is the most effective place to do it.

ZIEGLER:     Yeah. That's fantastic. I guess I should say that's a nice segue to what I also wanted to talk about, which was activism and community. And you're a very busy person. You do a lot. So, I wonder, I have a list of things I gleaned that you're on. I'll just sort of read them, and then maybe we can talk about it. So, you're a board member for PFLAG Lafayette. You're also Director of Operations for the Louisiana Trans Advocates, as we talked a little bit about. 

ZIEGLER:         Could you say a little bit about your role as Director of Operations at LTA? Do I have that title correct?

MICHELLE:     Yeah. I'm the board secretary, the Lafayette representative. We don't have a vice president, so I'm technically the interim vice president, but one day we decided to give us all titles for accountability purposes, and my title became Director of Operations. And I think operations kind of fell on the president and vice president previously, but with our vice president stepping down and our president, Dylan, being busy, I kind of decided that I was capable of taking on more of the operational tasks. I was already doing a fair amount, to be fair, but I just took it upon myself.

[00:31:54]    I'm also a very organized person. I'm a very to-do heavy person. If there's a to-do for me to do somewhere, I'm going to do it on time, you know? I'm just very organized in that sense. So, I think it just kind of made sense for our leadership, for me to kind of step up into that position.

ZIEGLER:         And what type of operations?

MICHELLE:        Everything. From board meeting agendas to the notes to our health care provider list. We all, as a team, run the Facebook group, but I feel like I've definitely put in a lot of effort into that. Basically everything, to some mild degree, at least.

ZIEGLER:     And how long have you been active with the Louisiana Trans Advocates?

MICHELLE:     I became Board Secretary and Lafayette Representative a little over two years ago. We were supposed to have elections in May of this year for the new president and representatives and blah, blah, but with COVID, we weren't meeting in person and that was how our elections had obviously previously occurred, and we decided to push it back a few months, and hope that things would calm down or whatever. But now we've realized that's probably not going to happen anytime soon enough, so we are currently working on an online election system for our membership to elect those positions. But yeah, I've been over two years.

ZIEGLER:         I see. And then recently, as recently as last month, you were elected to the Democratic State Central Committee. You can tell from the way I stumbled over that, that I was reading it from my notes.

MICHELLE:     I understand. Usually people are like, "The what?"

ZIEGLER:         But that is more or less the managing committee for the state party though, right?

MICHELLE:     I usually tell people it's like the Board of Directors for the Louisiana Democratic Party, because it really is. We're the people in the room voting on the stuff, making motions, seconding the motions, Yeaing and Naying. So, yeah, we essentially deal with party fundraising, I guess endorsing candidates, all that fun stuff.

ZIEGLER:         And that's gotten a lot of attention. them. magazine picked up an interview, the Louisiana Illuminator. I know you recently did an interview with them.

MICHELLE:     The Hill picked it up as well.

ZIEGLER:         Yeah. Just huge news, and the way that I normally see it framed is that we expect that you were the first openly trans, or let's just say the first person who was running as openly trans.

MICHELLE:     Right. There is a previously one other trans person that was elected to the same, not like my district, but another Democratic State central committee seat, but she transitioned after. So, I was the first openly trans person while running.

ZIEGLER:     That's really exciting. And it just seems to me that it fits so nicely with what you were saying before, about knowing that the battle, in some parts of the country, and definitely some parts of our state, is just beginning.

MICHELLE:     Right.

ZIEGLER:         Education and visibility, as you were saying. It feels like all of the roles that we just talked about merge nicely with that.

MICHELLE:     I agree.

ZIEGLER:         It's just an amazing amount of work. There's not a question related to that. I just wanted to get it all on tape that you're doing it.

MICHELLE:        Got you. Yeah. It's really something. We have our first DSCC meeting later this month, so I'm really excited. We're gonna be re-electing like a chairperson and whatnot. All the leadership is changing, so I'm really excited because once that's all done, we can really get moving on doing the things that we need to do.

ZIEGLER:     That's fantastic. I'm trying to be very conscious of your time. I don't take up too much of your time. Let me see what I have here. I ask this of a lot of people, mainly just because, Louisiana. Do you consider yourself a religious person? Do you have a religious life?

MICHELLE:     I have a cross and a rosary on my neck. I do consider myself a religious person. Actually, I consider myself a spiritual person. Like basically everyone else in our community, I've also been ostracized by the Catholic Church. I did get my first communion, then I stopped. I was atheist for a long time in my life, but over the last maybe year or two, I kind of decided that I didn't really like not believing in something. I felt like, for me, or at least how I was thinking, it was a very pessimistic space to be in, so I decided that I was just going to kind of be agnostic.

And over time, I've explored things, different spiritualities, and now I attend a Black Baptist Church with my boyfriend, which is a black trans man, and they're really lovely people. We're sometimes feel like they forget that we're trans, and sometimes they remember, like, "Oh." But they're amazing. They have solidified my connection to spirituality, for sure.

ZIEGLER:        That's nice. And when they do remember that y'all are trans, is it still a welcoming...

MICHELLE:     Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's more they talk to us and then they realize, "Oh, yeah." I mean, we're advocates and lead vastly different lives than most cis people.Specifically me and my boyfriend, at least. We're both very, very politically active, and I think that's kind of where they remember, like, "Oh, yeah, they're active because y'all need to be active. Like it's not just for fun," to a certain degree.

ZIEGLER:        Yeah. Yeah. That way of cis people being, "Oh, yeah, now I remember." Yeah.

MICHELLE:     Yeah. Saturday, I was with my family and this one lady was like, "I've never voted." I was like, "Oh my God. What a nice life you live, to just, never vote. To not care." She literally told me, "I know I'm going to wake up and everything's going to be fine." And I was like, "Goals, girl..." 

ZIEGLER:         We'll just well wish and walk away. This has been fantastic. Let me, and sort of by way of closing, just reiterate that this project is optimistic that there will be a future, right? So, we're making recordings, trying to leave a record for people in the coming decades. When we think about somebody revisiting this interview in about 30 years, for instance, is there anything that you would like for them to know about what it's like for us here in Louisiana, halfway through 2020, that we haven't covered? Any sort of parting words?

MICHELLE: [00:41:00]     I would say that though we do see the news articles and whatnot, of Black trans women being murdered across not only the state but the country and the world, I think that we don't see a news story every time someone microagressioned you or even kinda hate crimes you, you know? I personally, at least in Lafayette, people consider Lafayette to be very progressive and stuff, and I guess it is compared to other places in the state, but I think personally, I've seen my fair share of hate crimes, or at the very least microagressions.

Like I've been spit on. I've been yelled at. I've been followed aggressively and threateningly. I've had all those things happen, and I'm hoping, in 30 years, whoever would be potentially listening to this, I'm hoping that they're seeing a change. They have seen a change. It's hard to measure change if you don't have a measuring point, like a constant, I guess. And while our lives might not be just completely publicized as being rough as trans people here, we do regularly face issues getting jobs. We face issues keeping jobs because we're treated poorly. There's so much happening, even though you don't see the news stories, you don't see the documentation of it happening, and that doesn't mean that life in Louisiana in 2020 as a trans person was okay. It means that it wasn't publicized.

And I really hope that they, in the future, have seen change. Well, obviously this rolls over into the economy and all that stuff. But I hope that trans people can go out and get their job without being like, "Your name doesn't match how you look." Like these are all issues we face heavily. Like name changes should be easier, hopefully. Like gender marker stuff should be easier. Surgery should be easier to access. Hormones should be easier to access. Therapy should be easier to access. All of those things should just be, hopefully, fingers crossed, we pray that those things are just so much easier to access.

And hopefully those people look back now and are just like, "Those people were crazy. What was wrong with them?" Hopefully they have very brash reactions how they treated us today. And hopefully it's vastly different. So, I would say that specifically just don't misconstrue what things were like 30 years previously, you don't hear about all the hate crimes. You don't hear about all the shitty things that people do to trans people in their jobs and whatnot. Those things don't make news here.

I've only learned that kind of information because I hosted the Lafayette support meetings for over a year and I've attended them for multiple years before then. I've heard the people come and tell their story about what shitty thing their employer just said to them, or their parents even. It's a whole other conversation, for sure, but those things are not documented to the degrees that I would like them to be. And I also don't want everyone to think that life was just so terrible for trans people in 2020. I'm sure a lot of trans people have rough times, but it's not the absolute worst thing in the world. It just can be so much better. And that's what we pray for. So, yeah.

ZIEGLER:    Let me say again that this was wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I'm so glad to have you as part of the project.