This week In the Den, Jen talks with LGBTQ/disability advocate Carson Tueller about his experiences surrounding the intersection of sexuality and disability. Carson talks about coming out as gay and the spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed. He also shares his thoughts on systemic ableism and offers valuable insights into sexual intimacy and vulnerability.
Special Guest: Carson Tueller
Carson Tueller is a coach, speaker, and writer whose transformational work explores and challenges our notions of freedom, identity, and radical self-discovery. Carson’s work began when the trajectory of his life changed in 2013 - not only did he come out and leave his lifelong Mormon faith, but he was also injured in an accident that left him paralyzed. Carson took what seemed to many like an insurmountable tragedy and turned it into the foundation of personal transformation. Carson is a prominent figure on social media, featured in major publications and award-winning podcasts, sharing his unique message with audiences worldwide. His diverse talents have taken him all over the globe, from speaking internationally to serving as a policy advisor for a major presidential campaign in 2020. Carson Tueller is more than just a coach and speaker - he's a catalyst for change.
Links from the Show:
In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you.
Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
This week In the Den, Jen talks with LGBTQ/disability advocate Carson Tueller about his experiences surrounding the intersection of sexuality and disability. Carson talks about coming out as gay and the spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed. He also shares his thoughts on systemic ableism and offers valuable insights into sexual intimacy and vulnerability.
Special Guest: Carson Tueller
Carson Tueller is a coach, speaker, and writer whose transformational work explores and challenges our notions of freedom, identity, and radical self-discovery. Carson’s work began when the trajectory of his life changed in 2013 - not only did he come out and leave his lifelong Mormon faith, but he was also injured in an accident that left him paralyzed. Carson took what seemed to many like an insurmountable tragedy and turned it into the foundation of personal transformation. Carson is a prominent figure on social media, featured in major publications and award-winning podcasts, sharing his unique message with audiences worldwide. His diverse talents have taken him all over the globe, from speaking internationally to serving as a policy advisor for a major presidential campaign in 2020. Carson Tueller is more than just a coach and speaker - he's a catalyst for change.
Links from the Show:
In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you.
Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
JEN: Hello and welcome. You are listening to In the Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created out of our desire to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. We are so happy that you’re here with us.
For me, this interview today feels almost like a reunion with someone I long admired, but haven’t had the chance to speak with in a little while. So I’m pretty excited about the conversation. Today, we have Carson Tueller. Not only is Carson brilliant and articulate, but he is going to talk with us today in hopes of helping us better understand a variety of topics so we can all become better advocates and better friends to those around us. Carson Tueller is a coach, speaker, and writer whose transformational work explores and challenges our notions of freedom, identity, and radical self-discovery. Carson’s work began when the trajectory of his life changed in 2013 - not only did he come out and leave his lifelong Mormon faith, but he was also injured in an accident that left him paralyzed.
Carson took what seemed to many to be like an insurmountable tragedy and turned it into the foundation of personal transformation. Carson is a prominent figure on social media, featured in major publications and award-winning podcasts, sharing his unique messages with audiences worldwide. His diverse talents have taken him all over the globe, from speaking internationally to serving as a policy advisor for a major presidential campaign in 2020. Carson Tueller is more than just a coach and speaker - he is a catalyst for change. Welcome Carson!
CARSON: Hello. Thanks for the intro. Having Jen Blair tell me that I am brilliant or articulate is like the height of praise because I have so often thought of you in those terms. Especially in the early Facebook years, I was always like, Jen knows what to say. Jen will clarify.
JEN: That’s so sweet of you. It’s so good to see you. It’s been way too long.
CARSON: Yeah. It’s been years. So thanks for having me.
JEN: So, can we start the conversation today with your basic origin story? Tell us about your childhood and teens and how you imagined your life when you were young.
CARSON: OK. So, I grew up in an Air Force family. I’m the second of six children. And we moved all over the place. So I lived in several different states. I think a total of nine different places by the time that I got to high school. And me and my siblings were all really tight-knit. We were our best friends. In many ways, a kind of traditional Mormon family, very strong family bonds, all of that. So I have really great memories of my childhood. I first had some of those queer stirrings in my soul when I was twelve or thirteen years old, and kind of related that to my parents and ended up talking with the bishop and it was a whole thing. I don’t know how much you want to get into that at this point. But I ended up deciding that I needed to be like a perfect little Mormon boy. And so I just became super obedient and really fixated on doctrine and rules and doing the right thing and being like Jesus, but in a way that wasn’t always healthy. And I was very effective at keeping myself in denial until after my mission regarding all things gayness. So I was convinced that I was going to marry a woman, that I was going to be within the Mormon church in the temple. I would have the dream in that way at the time and I just thought my life would turn out that way.
JEN: Was there anything significant, you talked about those original stirrings, was there something specific, like memories when you look back and you’re like, “Oh, this is maybe what’s happening here?” Or was it just kind of like a slow evolution?
CARSON: Totally. I still have a specific memory of walking back home from Mutual – and mutual is kind of like your mid-week youth activity in the church – and so I was walking back with a couple of guys my age and they were talking about the changes they were seeing in their bodies and puberty. And I had one friend in particular that I was attracted to and he was maturing faster than the rest of us. So he was this man.
JEN: This 12-year-old man.
CARSON: And that made me have feelings. He was a year or two older, but all the things that happen when you’re that age like getting leg hair, whatever, like a little bit of scruff. I was just like, “Oh my gosh, what is this? I want to be like you. but also, I want your attention.” So that was a real early moment. And I think it’s because, for the first time – this happens in puberty – I had a physiological reaction to that, because before that, I still had gay little feelings but they were like childlike crushes in these ways of, “I admire you.” or “I want to be your best friend.” Or whatever. But this came with that additional component, that gut punch. And I was like, “Oof, this is different.”
JEN: Were you aware at this time of how these sorts of feelings were perceived in your religious culture or maybe even in family culture?
CARSON: That’s such a good question. I don’t think I even knew what gayness was. I had never seen queer people. I had never seen people in same sex relationships. It was just totally absent from the narrative of what happened in life. Does that make sense?
JEN: Yeah.
CARSON: It wasn’t even present. And so I think that I just absorbed that to deduce that this just wasn’t a thing, and it wasn’t allowed, and there was no place for it because I had never seen it. But I don’t have explicit memory of knowing, “This is that gay thing and this will send me to Hell.” It wasn’t like that. It was more the absence.
JEN: Did you think it would go away or did you think this was permanent but I’m the only one?
CARSON: I thought it would go away. I thought that there would be some kind of healing situation that would happen. I thought maybe it was a phase or that I was a late bloomer. I really held onto the idea that I was this late bloomer or something like that. But I totally thought it would change. I thought that way until I came home from my mission. And there’s nowhere left to hide once you get back from a mission because, for Mormons, it’s immediately time to get married. That’s the exit interview on the mission is, “Okay. What are you going to do to get married?” and the implication is always to, in my case, it would be a woman.
JEN: Okay. You are also a military kid, going through all this. I know nothing about military life at all. But is there an additional culture that you were trying to navigate as you’re moving around and living in military communities when it comes to these sorts of attractions? Is there extra pressure to just be quiet and you’ll outgrow it, or don’t tell? Or wasn't that really part of your experience?
CARSON: Good question. I don’t think so. So I had these interesting dynamics in my household growing up. My dad was a military officer. And he is a clinical psychologist. And so I did not have to deal with what some of my other Mormon friends dealt with with conversion therapy or with all of these things. My dad had all the education about – at the time – homosexuality and that it was a healthy deviation of sexuality and things of that nature. So it was normalized.
JEN: Normalized for him. But you were clueless.
CARSON: Yes.
JEN: He had all the information, but you didn’t have any access to it.
CARSON: That is true. I think that I did benefit from his having the information because there were times when I would wrap a blanket around me and make a paper fan or put on my mom’s heels. Like, I would do a lot of things that were not traditionally little boy things and I don’t have recollection of being shamed for that or any of those things. And, at the same time, the military family is – my family is conservative in other ways as well. So it was an interesting mix.
JEN: So you told them when you were 13.
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: And then, was that kind of end. You just didn’t talk about it again? You went and graduated from high school and left on a mission and came home? Or were there conversations during that little six-year span about it.
CARSON: There was really not any conversation. It was conversation at 13 with my mom and then later with the bishop. Then nothing. And partially nothing because that’s when I became incredibly rigid and thoughtful and truly obsessed with erasing – the focus of my life was to not be gay. And I had plans and strategies and ways of making it so that I was never faced with that until I started falling in love, again, with my friends in high school and that was when I was probably 17. And then I did have another conversation with my parents. That was the late bloomer thing where I was like, “Everyone else is girl crazy, at least my guy friends are. And I just truly have no interest and I don’t know what’s going on.” And the consensus at that time was, “Okay. We’ll wait until you go on your two-year mission and come back and we’ll see how things go from there.”
JEN: I like that you’re like, I’ve got a strategy to un-gay myself. How’d that work out for you?
CARSON: I would be successful for a very long time. I was also very successful in keeping the law of chastity – meaning abstaining from any kind of sexual arousal by myself, with others. I was very, very good at that. And so I would go a long period of time with being like, “I’m free.” And then something out of my control would happen. I’d see someone. I’d have those unsolicited feelings and it’d be like, at that point, “Ugh, this is still here and I’m not beating it,” essentially.
JEN: You come home from your mission. And we hear this over and over and over from guys. They’re like, “I’m good. I’m good. I’m good. There’s so much else to focus on. You’re not really supposed to date anyway.” And you come home and all the sudden you’re supposed to get married. And you’re like “I’m 21, the late blooming is not blooming. It’s not going well.” Did you have a plan? You’re like, “I’m just going to hang in there until I’m 50 and then maybe it’ll bloom?” What were you thinking at that point?
CARSON: At that point, the late bloomer narrative really ceased to work for me because it was too obvious. I remember very clearly, I remember because I was in college and I remember specifically realizing the way that I was flirting with men, the way I was trying to get their attention, the way I was trying to make bids for connection. I just had no idea that I was doing that all the time. And I had never named it. I had never been like, “Oh my gosh, I am literally doing the song and the dance to try and get with this guy.” And in my mind it was like brotherly love or something. I don’t know. But, at that point, I started getting real with myself. And it was partially because I really was open to finding someone, a woman, that I was interested in. This is one thing that was true about me through high school is I never even dated women. I went to some dances with some girlfriends, but never kissed because it didn’t feel authentic to me. And that really bothered me. And so, when I came home, same thing. I was like, “I’m only going to do this if it feels right.” And it never did. And by the end of that year, I was like, “Okay. I have to really actually look at this.”
JEN: That’s nice that you were able to feel that because I know a lot of people are like, it’s awkward. This kissing stuff is awkward for everyone. I’m just going to try harder. I’m going to kiss more people. And then, when I get good at it, then I’ll like it. That’s kind of backwards. And you were like, “I think you’re supposed to feel something first.” So what was your plan? You’re this returned missionary, happy, good-looking guy. And the woman thing? Not working out. So what’s your plan? What are you going to do?
CARSON: You know what did it, is Mormonsandgays.org happened. It was this early church website that told stories of individuals that were in what they called mixed-orientation marriages who were telling their story and it was exactly my story. You could have cut and pasted my face on some of the individuals. And I was like, “That’s me.” And at that point, there was just no more. I couldn’t deny it any more. And so I told myself, “We are gay.” And then started talking to my parents definitely about that. So my plan was to be celibate and alone forever and to be like the poster child of obedience and being stalwart because that was my whole identity. Everyone knew me as “Carson is so religious, spiritual.” That was me.
JEN: So you were like, “I’m going to be super happy and celibate.”
CARSON: Exactly.
JEN: And how did those things balance out? I think some people can do it. Don’t get me wrong. I think celibacy and happiness go great for some people.
CARSON: For sure. Agreed.
JEN: I don’t want to diminish that. But I’m wondering, how did that work out for you?
CARSON: Yeah. So, I think that what happened is that I started writing with abandon, with a phoneticism of trying to figure out what this thing is, how does it work, who am I? I really started journaling and writing. It was the beginning of how I would use writing for the rest of my life to solve problems and figure things out. And the more I wrote and the more honest I became and really swallowed some hard truths. It was so clear to me that my whole life I had longed for a connection with a man the way that I needed it, the way that I wanted it. So I was never really under this idea that I would be happy doing it. It would just be worth it, right?
JEN: Oh, okay. Yeah. Like an endurance test, of sorts?
CARSON: Oh, there was this scripture that talked about the disciples. And it talks about they were murdered and stones and sawn asunder and burnt at the stake. I used that scripture to be like, “Okay. This is it. This is my way of suffering for what I care so much about. And I’m willing to do anything and suffer all of this because look at them?” And that was the plan. Yes.
JEN: I will do it. I will be sawn asunder. It’s fine. It’s fine.
CARSON: Exactly. So I was never like this is going to be fun or easy or I can do this and be happy. It was like, I’ll suffer so I can be with my family in the next life.
JEN: That’s a pretty big difference, I don’t know if everybody understands. There’s the concept of Hell that a lot of Christians have embraced and other religions have their version of eternal punishment when it comes to things like homosexuality or homosexual behaviors. But, Mormonism has this unique little spin where everybody else gets to be with their family except you.
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: Which, you’re disappointing everyone, right?
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: It’s not just your own eternal picture that you’re looking at.
CARSON: And I was just going to say, and in my case, because the idea of eternal families is complicated for people who don’t particularly love all their family members. They’re like, maybe that’s not the best reward, right? But for me, it was. My family, we were partially because of the military thing, my family, my siblings are my best friends to this day and they were at that time. So, imagining that maybe this would preclude me from being with them was a truly unbearable thought. Yeah.
JEN: I don’t know if people always understand the weight of that. When you’re choosing to be with your family, it’s this really beautiful thing. But when that choice is being removed . . .
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: So, about this point in the narrative, you’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do this. Celibacy is not working out.” A pretty big shift in the narrative. Tell us what happened?
CARSON: Yeah. so I was at this point. Actually, I’ll give you a little bit more information that I think would be important is, by the end of that year, I had started really questioning my faith for the first time, starting to listen to myself. I got to a place where I was so low. I was studying music at the time and was a flutist. And I was, maybe I want to be a doctor. I don’t know. I had a couple different ideas. And I was in pre-med and stuff. But I kept imagining myself coming home to an empty house for the rest of my life. And this was the future I had to live into, and it just wrecked me. and I started waking up with a heaviness I had never known in my life. And I started having scary thoughts or thought that I was heading down a path emotionally that I was like, “This is not good or safe.” And so I had this really pivotal conversation with my parents where I said, “instead of continuing down the path that I’m on, I’m going to safely gather some more information and I’m going to go on some dates. I’m not going to do anything. I’m not going to break any rules. But I am going to try some stuff because I want to know.” And so by the end of that year, I had a boyfriend. I had all of these really affirming experiences, even spiritually where I was like, “Oh, my gosh. This is God. This is good.” Everything I’d ever felt about the spirit was present again. And it was just all beautiful.
JEN: That narrative is important to test, right? You’re told that it’s awful that it’s sinning. That wickedness is never happiness. That you’ll be so miserable if you do this. And then you’re testing it out, that whole “plant a seed and see if it grows situation.”
CARSON: Totally.
JEN: And you’re like, “It’s not panning out. I’m actually doing alright.” So you’re doing this grand experiment. I love it. How was your family with the experiment?
CARSON: Nervous. Yeah, they were nervous. My mom was nervous because it was one thing to come out and be like, “I’m gay, but I won’t ever do any gay things.” That was one thing to accept and it was another thing to be like, “I’m gay, but for real, for real. And I’m going to act gay and be gay.” That was a different experience for them, but they were supportive.
JEN: I’m going to be gay and do gay.
CARSON: Exactly.
JEN: Two different topics.
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: So you actually started dating before the accident?
CARSON: Yep. I was dating. I had my first kiss like truly four weeks before.
JEN: That’s super close.
CARSON: I was in love. I was experiencing being loved by another man. I couldn’t believe it was true that this could happen to people. It was truly like a fairytale.
JEN: You’re like, “I’m in a movie.”
CARSON: Yeah, oh, yeah. And then came the plot twist.
JEN: So tell us about that. Talk to us. I don’t know how many of our listeners know about this plot twist.
CARSON: Yeah. So on December 30th, during Christmas break for my family, we went to a trampoline park. And I used to tumble when I was a kid, enjoyed gymnastics and things, and then got really tall. And so I love trampoline parks because I couldn’t tumble the same way when you’re like 6’5”, so I needed a trampoline for support. But, I do like going to that trampoline park and tumbling into some foam pits that were poorly maintained. And I end up breaking my neck in one of those pits and sustained a spinal cord injury at C8. So, it’s basically I broke the base of my neck, hit my spinal cord, and was immediately paralyzed. So I was sitting at the bottom of that pit wondering what was going on, why can’t I move. And then was life-flighted to the University of Utah.
JEN: Back up a little bit for me. Back up into the pit for a minute, if these questions aren’t too personal. But you’re in the pit and you’re telling me you can’t move. Did it hurt? Were you suffering and you couldn’t move or was it this kind of weird numbness?
CARSON: So what happened was, I was in a tuck and then I came out of the tuck into the foam pit, went through the foam into the trampoline and hit whatever is under that trampoline, so hard surface. I had a hematoma on the back of my head. So I felt a small crack and a sting. But not anything, when you think of breaking your neck, you think of something catastrophic. It was not that. In retrospect, it’s incredibly disproportionate or anticlimactic given what it would mean for my life. But I had a little bit of pain there and I thought I just kind of tweaked my neck.
And then I tried to get out of the pit and I couldn’t move anything. Tried to get out, couldn’t move anything. And I was there for 20 seconds. But my family had watched me tumble in. So my dad jumped in the pit with me. And I said, “I think I’m paralyzed.” And was just kind of processing it. and paralysis, when you have a spinal cord injury, it creates swelling in the spinal column so the paralysis actually gets worse than you’ll end up, if that makes sense. So I started, my diaphragm started becoming paralyzed and I was having a hard time breathing. And that’s why it’s so important to go and get this steroid injection in your spinal column that will reduce the swelling and reduce all of the damage. Those were the beginnings of my life of disability.
JEN: So before I interrupted you, you were saying that you went to the University of Utah. Did they helicopter you out? An ambulance came?
CARSON: Yeah. They life-flighted me.
JEN: Were you alert and awake for all of this?
CARSON: Yeah. they life-flighted me and I was awake and alert. Yeah. and I actually had a great amount of peace of mind, strangely, throughout this entire experience and clarity. And I have mixed feelings about all of the information I’m about to tell you because I don’t know what to do with it and it doesn’t make sense to me and it feels confusing. I had a moment of great clarity in that foam pit where I panicked thinking of all of the things that I would never be able to do again. Like, wondering, “This can’t be permanent. Certainly some people are paralyzed and then they get better. They get shocked or something . And this can’t really be it.” But also the panic of “What if I’m experiencing the thing I’ve seen in those movies in “Remember the Titans,” when people just, that catastrophic event. I’m like, “That can’t be me.”
JEN: That’s got to be like just for make believe, right? That doesn’t happen to real people.
CARSON: Exactly. And this is a phenomenon that to this day, after 10 years of being paralyzed, I still experience, which is this feeling of I’m not really paralyzed. Like I feel as paralyzed as you, Jen Blair, feel paralyzed. You’re like, that’s not my life. I’m like one of the people that just walks around and that’s how I get around.” Sometimes I’ll be pushing my chair and I’ll stop and I’ll be like, “Oh, my God. I’m paralyzed. I cannot believe that this is real.” And there are some really interesting questions that come out of that regarding identity and disability and being born with a disability versus acquiring a disability that’s very, very interesting.
JEN: And you’re a baby. You’re only 23, right?
CARSON: I was 23 at the time. Yeah.
JEN: That’s so young. And for most of us, no concept of self at that age.
CARSON: Yeah. So I’m thinking about all this panic and I have this thought that is like clear as crystal. And the thought is, I have so much love in my life. It sounds like a fairytale. I almost feel silly saying it. I’m going to say it because it’s the truth. “I have so much love in my life and I feel so much love for people in my life. Whatever happens, I’m going to be okay.” And this peace settled with me before anyone else came to me. My dad came in super worried. I was consoling him. I was like, “Dad, it’s going to be okay.”
JEN: It’s all right, Dad.
CARSON: So I get on the stretcher. They’re pulling me out and I tell my mom, I said, “You know what, this is going to be easier than being gay.” I told her that.
JEN: And is that true still, ten years later?
CARSON: That’s a good question. No. But for different reasons than I thought. But I also told her, I said, “This is the next step for me. This is it.” I mean, I’m on the stretcher It’s been five minutes. And I’m like, “This is the next step for my life. Let’s go.” And then they put me on the helicopter and I get sick and throw up and they take me to the hospital and give me two spinal fusions and there we go. It’s really interesting.
JEN: Did that peace last? Did that stick with you like, has it all been kind of settled?
CARSON: Absolutely not. It acted as a kind of buffer for a couple of months. I’m really, really grateful for that. But shit got real when I came home from the hospital. And also because during the first couple of months of spinal cord injury, your nervous system is still kind of settling down. You don’t even know how paralyzed you’re going to be. So every day that passes, you could get something back. And they can’t even tell you on an MRI whether or not you’re paralyzed forever, if you’re going to walk. They don’t know. So your neighbor two doors down in the hospital who also broke his neck will start feeling his toes and start taking steps and things. And it’s kind of the luck of the draw. And what was really hard for me was that my spinal cord injury was deemed what we call “Complete”. I have a complete injury so nothing came back. And so that settling in was really, really, really hard.
JEN: When you say you went home, you were 23, did you go to an apartment? Did you go home to your parent’s house? What does it mean to go home?
CARSON: Parent’s basement.
JEN: Oh, basement. That’s good. Stairs.
CARSON: Yeah, we threw in some lifts for that.
JEN: I like that. So, reality set in. I can feel, as you talk about it, this tension between realism and practicality and hope and trying to balance those two. There’s nothing more devastating than having unrealistic expectations. But hope’s also really motivating and powerful. And being stuck, how long did that period last where you were like, “Maybe. Did I feel something?” Or did you know like, ‘This is not happening.”
CARSON: Yeah. You know, after several months, people are like, “You usually see it come back within the first one to two months, for sure within that first year.” So, by the end of that year, everyone was like, “There’s no chance here.” I thought that walking would solve my problem. In my mind, my problem was being paralyzed. And I would learn later that all of the fear and the brokenness and the identity piece, that was all the social/political dynamics, and dynamics having to do with ableism. And so I would kind of figure that out later. When I no longer had hope for recovery, I was forced to look at all of the other stuff that was causing me suffering that had actually very little to do with the fact that I had a paralyzed body, at least per se.
JEN: So teach us some of the things that you learned about ableism. If you’re like me, you were probably 23 and had never even considered the concept of ableism at all. And all the sudden you’re faced with all of it. Tell us some of those lessons.
CARSON: Yea. So, yeah, for anyone who’s listening who doesn’t know much about ableism, you’re in the best company. Because, even in the most educated, progressive spaces when it comes to social justice or these kinds of dynamics, ableism is still really in its nascency. It’s a very new conversation for a lot of people. Ableism is the idea that there is a good body, a normal body. When we think about the good or the normal body, we think about a body that has two arms and two legs and is free of disease and it generally in its “prime”, right? So there’s an intersection with age in here. Also, when we think of a good body, we’re also typically thinking of a male body as the default body, and a white body in western culture. So it overlaps and intersects with every other system of oppression. So there’s this idea that there’s a good body and it’s almost impossible to talk about ableism without talking about capitalism.
JEN: I was just going to ask that, like if it’s connected to this idea that if you’re not contributing, then you just have no worth.
CARSON: Yes. The normal body is the profitable body. That body can work 80 hours a week if it needs to. That body can donate all of its time and attention and energy to producing, right? That body costs less, costs less to take care of, has lower medical costs. So it really all comes back to economics as well. and this is also especially true during industrial times. There was no such thing as remote work. Today, we have education, we have all of these other modes of work that don’t require physical labor, right? And so being disabled was devastating to someone whose value was how hard and long their body could work and contribute. So all of that has dragged over to today. And this intersects so much also with masculinity and femininity, I mean, with gender roles and things like that. So, ableism is the idea that there’s that body that’s the most valuable body. It's’ the most protected body. It’s the body worth saving. We saw that in COVID. If you were considered to have, someone like me, right, they would say he has the worse quality of life and so he’s worth less saving.
JEN: Was it hard to hear all those conversations because it was hard for me to hear, “Well, they were sick anyway.”
CARSON: Yeah. Totally.
JEN: Those were some painful conversations for somebody not even in those spaces.
CARSON: It brings up a lot of interesting philosophical questions about ethics and decision making with limited resources in terms of who you decide to give resources to. There are a lot of really complicated questions that it brings up. But ableism always chooses the able body as a default.
JEN: Right. It’s only the old people who are dying.
CARSON: Pre-existing conditions and old people.
JEN: Let’s keep the economy going. It’s okay if it’s just the old people. If we only lose the old and fat, it’s fine. Those conversations were really enlightening. And you’ve had this earlier chunk, a decade of life, where you were experiencing homophobia. And you’re still going to experience that in the world. Talk to me. A lot of our listeners are going to understand concepts of homophobia because of their children or their own lived experience, but not ableism. Can you talk about those things overlap, like the similarities and some of the things that are different? I think it might help people understand better.
CARSON: Yeah. It’s very interesting the way that I experience homophobia fairly distinctly from ableism. It has a totally different flavor. If someone is being obviously homophobic or derogatory, it feels aggressive. It feels hostile. It feels aggressive, is the best word I have, right? Ableism is really tricky to detect because it often does not feel that way. Ableism often takes the form of pity or interacting with someone as though they are a tragedy or morbid curiosity. Like strangers will come up and ask what happened to me. And they have the experience on their end of feeling well intentioned. It feels like being curious. It feels like I’m getting to know this person. But, underlying it, is a context of something’s wrong with your body, something must’ve happened to you. You’re a deviation of the good body. But it often can also feel like empathy or compassion when really I’m just grabbing some cookies. There’s nothing inspiring about existing for me. I go to the gym. Let me tell you, Jen. I will go to the gym and I won’t lift a single weight. I will be on my phone the whole time. and people will come up and be like, “You are so inspiring for being here.” I’m like, “Girl, have you seen me do anything?”
JEN: You’re so inspiring to just come and sit here.
CARSON: Just for existing, for leaving the house, I’m inspiring. But people think that’s a compliment, right? They think it sounds amazing. But it's ableism.
JEN: I like that comparison between the two because I don’t know that I would have even thought of that, the difference between pity and almost with homophobia there’s almost like a rage.
CARSON: That’s right.
JEN: Like you’re doing it wrong. Quit doing that. So, let's flip it. We just talked a little bit about external ableism and homophobia. But it feels to me like, for most people, the mountains that they’re climbing are those internalized messages, the stuff we naturally absorb. So, when you’re thinking about internalized ableism and internalized homophobia, do a little compare and contrast for those also.
CARSON: Oh, gosh. It’s so funny. I was thinking about this today. Internalized homophobia for me looked like there was a lot of the evil stuff that was about the church.
JEN: Like the religious aspects?
CARSON: That’s right, yeah. like being evil, being depraved, being immoral, being unnatural, these kinds of things we’re used to hearing as queer people. I did think about some of those things for a while. But then, the lasting piece of internalized homophobia that for me has been a little stickier, has more had to do with my gender expression, has had to do with my experience of being male also and dealing with feeling like – it’s sometimes hard for me to parse out which thing is which because both internalized homophobia and both disability and internalized ableism, send very similar messages about masculinity which is like, “You’re not a real man. You’re not the right kind of man.” Right. Either I’m too feminine or I’m too, or I’m not strong. I’m broken. I can’t change a lightbulb. I can’t protect my family members, like those kinds of messages.
JEN: There are a lot of talks, ideas attached to masculinity when it comes to orientation that we think about and we talk about a lot. But I haven’t really had conversations about that when it comes to ableism, right? Like, you're manly if you can pick up a tree and dump it into your truck.
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: Those are the things that we consider manly or masculine. So it makes a lot of sense.
CARSON: I have a three-way intersection in my mind and a lot of things do come back to sexuality in terms of my faith and my queerness and my disability all intersect around this struggle. And all of these things, speaking of similarities and differences with internalized ableism and homophobia, both also very much impact my experience of sexuality and sex specifically, also how I have sex. So they way that disability and queerness come together in a very particular way for me is that – and this is where I experience a lot of internalized both of those things – I feel this pressure to have a perfect body as a gay man.
And, to have the right kind of sex, there’s a lot of emphasis and I’m going to be a little stereotypical here and this is not true for everyone. But if you open up a gay dating app, there’s typically some conversation about “Are you a top, bottom, reverse, side, what are you? What do you like? How do you do it?” And those conversations are very complicated for me. Disabled people have great sex and it looks different for every single person. But all of that comes together, can often leave me with a sense of, “God I’m just broken. Something’s wrong with me. I’m not the right kind of gay man. I’m too disabled.” I still deal with a lot of that stuff, frankly. I’m working on it.
JEN: I’m struck, every time I dive into the world of trying to understand disability more and become less ableist, I’m really struck with the idea – or maybe it’s just because I’m getting old – but I’m struck with the idea that we sort of consider disability as other. And really it could be any of us at any second. Even I spent decades completely couldn’t see without my glasses, but we’ve normalized glasses. So I have this ability aid, this accommodation that helps me move through life, and so we don’t consider that a disability. But, really, it is. and as I get older and my back creaks when I stand up, I’m like, “I’m just heading toward disability.” But we don’t think about that. How much better if we would change the world now when we have some energy and some voting power instead of waiting until we’re because it’s going to be all of us at some point if we have the blessing to live, it’s going to be all of us at some point. It’s not other. It’s all of us in different ways.
CARSON: It is baked into being human, is disability. There’s nothing so human as being disabled. And, like you said, if you have the gift of aging, you will acquire a disability during your lifetime. And aging just generally comes with a decrease of energy and strength and all of these things. Everything you said, just really resonates.
JEN: So you have a story that I’ve heard that I’m hoping you’ll tell our audience because, like one of those lightbulb things that just helped me understand ableism a little bit more about living in New York and the difference of being disabled in New York as opposed to your choice to move and return to Utah.
CARSON: Yeah. so I moved to New York City to be with a guy that I was dating. It made sense at this time to do it, so I was like, “I’m going to take on the city.” And I thought that New York – you think about New York ,you tend to think that it’s progressive, very diverse. And I thought that for sure it would be accessible to some extent, and it was not. It was like really disappointingly inaccessible. At the time, only less than 20 percent of the subway system was wheelchair accessible. And the MTA, which is the transportation organization that runs all the subways in New York City, had been sued so many times, class action lawsuits. Today, they have a plan to have everything accessible by 2055.
JEN: Oh, that’s so far.
CARSON: It’s so far. I was like, “Peace out. I have a life to live.” I don’t have 20 years to wait to use the subway.
JEN: For anyone who hasn’t been to New York, my experience is that the only way to get anywhere unless you’re a billionaire is the subway. You can’t afford to take cabs.
CARSON: Yes.
JEN: There aren’t buses. There’s, maybe if you’re super wealthy you have a private driver. But if you can’t access the subway, how do you go anywhere?
CARSON: Yeah. There are some buses that you can use, especially, if you’re in Manhattan proper, you know. But the subway is by far the easiest, fastest way to go. You can’t really drive. People mostly don’t have cars if they live in the city. So I just started going, trying to build a life for myself there and I just realized that I was spending so much of my time trying to move from a point A to a point B in a really simple way. I would watch abled people walk to a subway and then take a 15 minute ride into Manhattan from Brooklyn. And I would have to take a ferry and two buses and spend triple or even more than that the time to get to the same location.
So, as someone who already has fewer resources in terms of like what my body’s able to do, the energy that I have, the effort available to me, it just compounds the marginalization to suddenly not have access to anything. And so, eventually, I was so frustrated and I was trying to prove to myself that I could beat the system, that I could muscle through. And I had this moment of being, “This is so inefficient. This is foolish for me to try and build a life in a place that was not made for me.” And this is not to mention that one in two places that I would go to for dinner or anything like were inaccessible. I couldn’t get inside. I peed in bottles in corners and closets. It was just trying anyway I could to try and squeeze my body into this city at my expense. And it’s dehumanizing, right? And so it’s time to move to Utah.
JEN: It feels like you almost would feel like – your body’s the same, but you would feel more disabled because you couldn’t do what needed to be done.
CARSON: 100%
JEN: It’s not really you that’s disabled. It’s the city is making you – I don’t know if I’m wording that right.
CARSON: You are. Yeah. So what you’re pointing to is the social model of disability and the medical model of disability. Both of them have their place. But right now, we’re so used to having medicalized disability that a lot of people are more interested right now in talking about the social model. The idea is that a human being is only disabled by their environment. So, I am only functionally disabled if I am in a space that I cannot access because of the space. So, for example also, if there were an imaginary world, floating buildings and certain humans had wings, the people without wings would be disabled from this social model because they couldn’t access the same spaces and that kind of thing. So I think my best example is when I show up to a staircase in the subway system in New York City because the elevators are down, the medical model locates disability in my body. It says you can’t use these stairs. You’re stuck here because you are disabled. The social model says, You should have a ramp. The stairs are the problem. The stairs are what is causing the disability here, it’s not your body. That should be changed. Does that make sense?
JEN: Yeah. I actually really like that. And I want to make sure to note that some disabilities come with a lot of pain and discomfort. That’s a different.., I’m not trying to change topics, but I want to recognize that you can’t just put ramps everywhere and people are fine. Like you mentioned, it takes you more energy you have to accommodate other things.
CARSON: Yeah. I love that you brought that up because that’s exactly right. So, people with chronic illness or who have inherent pain as part of their disability, that isn’t always necessarily a piece of the social model. That exists separately as an inherent piece of what their body is doing.
JEN: I’m diving too deep. I need to ask some of these other things that I want to talk about. But I just find you fascinating. Have you figured out how to own and celebrate your body and your identity as it actually exists in the world? Like, how do we free ourselves from the hang ups we have about our bodies?
CARSON: Yeah. You know what? I’m going to tell you right now that I am writing a book about this and I just finished the proposal. So I’m just putting that out into the universe.
JEN: Does it have a name yet?
CARSON: It has yet to reveal its name to me, but I know what it’s about.
JEN: When you write it, we’ll add it. We’ll add a link to it in your show notes. We’ll go back.
CARSON: Okay. Perfect. So the most helpful way of finding access to loving my body has been to acknowledge that I was born into and assimilated the values of a system that placed all of these thoughts in my head.
JEN: Right.
CARSON: That there's actually nothing wrong with my body. And this was the big breakthrough that I had regarding ableism was a conversation that I had with my little sister when she very casually -- because I used to call the date of my injury the date of my death, you know.
JEN: There’s a certain weight to that, okay.
CARSON: And I said that kind of like jokingly with my family because they would roll their eyes and it was some dark humor. But my sister was 13, and she was like, “What if we call this the day of your rebirth.” And it was just such a simple question.
JEN: She’s a smarty.
CARSON: It was very metaphysical. What is this? What is the nature of this day? And that led to a paradigm shift where I discovered for myself that the only thing that was true about my body is that it worked the way that it did and the way that it didn’t. That’s it. Not good. Not bad. Not right. Not wrong. And so all of my suffering had come from having assimilated these ideas about my body that just were not true. And that’s when I discovered anti-abelism and realizing, “Oh my God. There’s nothing wrong with me.” My body is whole and complete and I can really reclaim that and start engaging in social justice to build this narrative of, “We are whole and complete. Our bodies are worthy. We deserve participation in society.” So I have found that understanding that when I go out into the world – and this is true for fat-phobia, this is true for all beauty standards – when you go out in the world, everything that I see reinforces that something’s wrong with my body. The way that people talk to me, the way that people look at me, that’s what ableism does. And that that is a current social reality that is not a fixed truth about who I am, helps me to recenter myself so that I’m not swept up in the self-loathing that that can quickly become. One of my favorite philosophers is Antonio Gramsci. And this was during the time he was part of the anti-facist movement in Italy. And he was incarcerated in his 30s and spent 10 years writing philosophy about these topics and about oppression. And he argued that a people would remain oppressed through cultural hegemony or this idea that, he said basically, “If people in power can convince everyone that the world they’re living in is a fixed world, is the way it is, they will govern themselves and stay trapped inside of their systems.”
Because previously, philosophers had said, “No, it’s by owning the means of production that you, by brute force and by the physical circumstances, you can oppress a people.” And he was saying, “No. No. If you can just convince them that this the world we live in and it’s just the way it is, that people wouldn’t move out of their place of oppression.” Like being disabled really makes you broken or that you have to work a 9 to 5 and a 40-hour work week and that’s just normal. It’s just the way life is. So I don’t think of it as a benign force. I think of it as this actually intentional structure that it’s trying to convince me that there's something wrong with me and that will benefit from my believing that. So it gives me a little bit of fire to be like, “I have to be in touch with the world that I want to create and be moving that forward through social justice.” And that’s why the anti-ableism movement is so important to me. That was a super long answer.
JEN: No. I liked it. I like the idea of stopping the war against our bodies and turning that war into the system that’s lying to us about our bodies.
CARSON: Yes, because we all think that these are the thoughts. When I look into the mirror and I look at my legs and my paralysis and how it shows up, it’s so tempting to think that my thoughts about what I’m seeing are mine and are true.
JEN: The trickiest lies are the ones in our own head, right?
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: So what do you think instead? What’s the speech you give yourself? I’m going to copy it, so make it good.
CARSON: OK. So I love X-men.
JEN: All right. Awesome.
CARSON: I love the X-men. In one of the movies, in X-II there’s a moment when they’re going to enter this room where there’s like this illusionist. And the illusionist is creating this whole other reality that looks perfectly real. And so before the X-men go in, someone says, “You can’t believe anything that you see out there. You cannot believe that. Don’t pay attention to it.” So that’s how I engage with it, I think, none of this is real. None of this is real. This is all made up and I get to say, and I get to lobby for and fight for creating a world that reflects something different because it’s all made up.
JEN: OK. I’m trying this all week. I’m going to let you know how it goes.
CARSON: I should’ve given you a more concise tool.
JEN: No, I actually like it. It’s all make believe. If I have to put on a swimming suit and go into the world, it’s all just make believe.
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: Not the same exactly. Okay. I want to talk about sex a little bit because I think you have a really healthy and whole approach to sex that might help all sorts of people. First of all, people struggle to talk about sex. There’s probably people listening who are feeling a little bit prickly like, “Oh. I might have to turn this off if it gets gross.” There’s some shame. There’s some embarrassment. There’s some awkwardness. How do we learn how to communicate and speak to our needs and desires in this important realm when the world does not encourage that sort of thing, because I think you figured it out, at least most of the time.
CARSON: That’s generous of you. I will say I’m still figuring it out. And I have found that I like to think about sexuality as really like a shared agreement, a shared experience that you’re having with this other human being in this specific time and place. And I learned because of paralysis that it really didn’t work for me to enter into those kinds of sexual situations without being able to actually explicitly say what I do and don’t need and what I want and I don’t want, so that the experience was really powerful and good for everyone involved.
JEN: I imagine that your partners like that because they probably don't know what to do either.
CARSON: Oh, yeah. I think so. I think so. So I tried to preempt that conversation. Sometimes I do so cleverly like I say, “Wheel chair comes with instructions.” Or something like that. Or I’ll just tell them, I also joke and just say, “I’m just going to give you a quick tour of my body and where I feel, where I don’t feel. How I will experience pleasure. How I’m not going to experience pleasure. How things are very similar and be things you can predict. And then these other things that are going to be different.” And I give them a quick tour and then it’s just the process of exploration and discovery and everybody learning and communicating what feels good and what might not feel so good, those kinds of things.
JEN: I’m really interested in this idea that thoughtfulness and intentionality with physical intimacy requires conversation, and simultaneously, this is a topic that we’re all afraid to talk about. So I think we kind of sell ourselves short by entering intimate relationships and just work off assumptions because it’s too uncomfortable to talk about. We’re just going to make some assumptions and hope it goes okay. And you kind of got pushed out of that realm. We’re not going to make any assumptions. You’re going to have to figure out a better way. and it’s so much better than what everyone else is doing.
CARSON: Yeah. I think it’s true. I think that disabled sex, because it flips, it throws the script out because if someone thinks they know how I’m going to experience pleasure, they’re going to be wrong and it’s just not going to work out. And so all of the same assumptions, the scripts, the templates of what people have maybe seen on television or even in porn or what they’ve heard about sex from the birds and the bees talk with their parents, doesn’t include the dynamic nature of individuality and exploration. So when people get in, “Okay. This is my job because I have these parts. And this is your job because you have those parts.” It comes with a literal script down to what sounds you’re supposed to make or not make. And the sequence of events and the body parts involved. And I don’t have sensation below basically, like below my armpits. And so I had to be creative and learn all of these different ways of experiencing the most beautiful pleasure and sexual experiences that did not include your traditional ideas of where that takes place or have.
JEN: I love that creativity. I hope that anyone listening is like, “Wait. I could talk more.” But I think the concept when we look at things from a new angle from a lens we’re not used to, it can open our eyes to, “The story it was told, the script I was given is not the best one. There’s a better way to do this.”
CARSON: Yes. I’ve had so many sexual partners who, because of the nature of how my body works, have been shocked by what they have experienced and felt, right? It kind of just opens the door to all sorts of exploration. And everything from just the way you touch someone to how, I mean, of course I could get super detailed about this and this might not be the place to do that.
JEN: Probably not the right venue.
CARSON: But there are all these little nuances of how you engage from a place of curiosity and creativity. And it is vulnerable. It’s so vulnerable to just say…
JEN: I was just going to ask about that.
CARSON: Yeah. It is vulnerable and I still experience that 100%. I’m not sure that there’s a way to get rid of that part because saying, “This is what I like and how I like it,” can set you up for maybe disappointment or can set you up to feel like maybe you shouldn’t want those things or that some things, I don't know, that you should want it the way that you’ve painted or the traditional way. So I still definitely deal with, “Maybe I’m high maintenance. Maybe I’m asking for too much. Maybe I should just kind of give in to the model of traditional sex and pretend to enjoy it.” And that’s definitely an option, it’s just far less satisfying for most people.
JEN: OK. So, you’re now in your early 30s. Whew! Finally done. Healed. You're like the success story. You’re always happy. You’ve figured out he secrets, right? That’s not how this is going to work, right?
CARSON: No.
JEN: That’s not how life works. So talk to us about the parts of life that are hard still and what you’re doing with this life of yours now.
CARSON: Beautiful, yeah. Yeah, Today was a hard day for me, actually. Today specifically. I went on a 10-day trip to Palm Springs and then Palm Desert in California.
JEN: Oh, fun.
CARSON: Yeah. It was supposed to be fun. And there was a lot of access issues. I had a UTI. I got a puncture in my cushion. All these wheelchair things happened. And I’ve had moments this week of being like, “I’m so f-ing tired of being paralyzed. I’m so tired of dealing with the weight of dragging my body around or pushing this chair.” And I feel this way when I’ve had a lot of disruptions that are related to spinal cord injury. I’ve been griefy and mad and sad about it. And there's that temptation to kind of go back and be like, “NO. I already did this. I know what this is. I’ve already overcome this. I know this is ableism or whatever it is that I want to say, like all the other breakthroughs that I’ve had and want to bring them up and shove them into the space. But I’ve learned that doesn’t work and that I have to let it all speak and I have to let it be. I have to cry. I’m so good at crying. Really.
JEN: Me too.
CARSON: That is just let the grief happen and I can be with it all and then, once it’s passed, then there’s a space for me to be like, “Okay. What do I want to create? What do I want to say about this? How do I want to get back in touch with what really matters to me?” And then, transparently, I’m also noticing recently that there are still pieces of disempowerment in my relationship with men where I sometimes still have the sensation that someone would need to settle for me. Or that someone would be settling for me.
JEN: I think you’re the grand prize.
CARSON: I want to feel like the grand prize. I think I’m frustrated that I still deal with these moments of going back to the broken thing. Like someone’s going to have to settle to be with Little Paralyzed Carson. And I don’t like feeling that way. I’m looking at what it would take for me to be with a different truth and experience myself as being worthy. But I ebb and flow out of that space for sure.
JEN: Ebb and flow feels so real. It’s like the cycle right? Like I’m doing better, oh, it’s the same challenge, I’m just on level 32 now.
CARSON: Yes.
JEN: Now I’ve got to do level 37 of the same dang challenge.
CARSON: Yeah.
JEN: Anyone who’s young that’s listening, you should know that even when you’re old, same. It just keeps coming. You never get to the top of that mountain. It’s just always a climb. So what are you doing, though, in life? We kind of talked about some of it. But you’re doing some cool stuff.
CARSON: Yeah. I really love what I get to do for work. So I’m speaking professionally. I just spoke at the Out and Equal Summit which is the largest LGBTQ Conference in the world. Just the best experience I’ve ever had in terms of professionally, it was such a beautiful experience and I really got to share what I believe was the most important things that I have to say with the audience which is a lot of the topics that we’re talking about today
JEN: That’s awesome. That’s a great experience.
CARSON: So I’m speaking in all sorts of spaces. And I’m coaching. So I have a weekly clientele of coaching clients that I speak with and work with in creating their futures and their lives. And I found a specific methodology of coaching called ontological coaching which is a branch of philosophy that deals with being. And so this work really transformed my life and my relationship to disability and just a lot of things. So I get to work with my clients using these methods and it’s amazing to work with people and see them make shifts and get new results and play new games in life.
JEN: Do you have a specific category of clients that you kind of focus on or work with or are you across the spectrum?
CARSON: Yeah. Right now I tend to attract people who are either queer or disabled. So most of my clients belong to those two categories. But I’m not coaching specifically about disability or about queerness or religion or anything like that. It’s considered in the realm of life-coaching. Life coach is a funny word these days. And so I call it Personal Performance Coaching. So I usually explain it this way. That therapy moves people to a place out of survival into wellbeing and into a place where things are going well, where they’re not just trying to make it from one day to the next. Coaching is about creating life from the future that is one of thriving and one that super lights you up. So it’s future-based. It’s action forward. And I really love it.
JEN: And if anybody’s listening, Carson is the guy that is going to take me to the next level, that’s the coach I need. We will include a link to your website in the show notes.
CARSON: Great.
JEN: You are young and you are so wise. But I want to thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom with us. I think that – I keep saying this in every episode. People are going to get annoyed – but I feel like everything in life is a spectrum and when we quit thinking of these binaries or others and we listen to other people’s experiences, we can learn FROM those and it helps us ourselves. And it helps us to create this world that’s more gentle and compassionate world where we all would prefer to live. So thank you for coming and helping us get one step closer to that goal.
CARSON: Thank you for the thoughtful questions and for giving me space to talk about some of these things that are so important to me.
JEN: You’re such an awesome guy. Thank you.
CARSON: Thanks, Jen.
JEN: Thanks so much for joining us here in the den. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. We’d also love it if you could take a minute to leave us a positive rating and review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. But, review or not, we’re glad you’re here. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can visit our website at mamdragons.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes.