Audio Storytelling

Transcript:

Kevyn takes us to his favorite place by the river, where he likes to sing, close to his church, close to his community, close to him.

“We are on the Cuyahoga River which means crooked river in Kent Ohio. The Shiloh is not too far away and we’re going to go down to go to my favorite spot… It’s a good place for singing… A heron just flew away.”

You could say Kevyn crawled to the hunting bow as a child. In different Native American cultures, there was a ceremony much like a gender reveal party, except the child got to pick. They’d set the baby down in front of a basket or a hunting bow and whichever they crawled to is which would dictate their life.

“In many languages on Turtle Island, it roughly translated to two spirits, two spirits in one body.”

Kevyn said that this may not be his culture, but he feels he understands it and even has a connection to it. In his culture, this would be considered transgender.

“But when I learned the word two spirit in college while I was at Kent State, it was the most validating thing that anyone could have ever told me.”

He first knew he was transgender when he was two or three. He had an encounter with his dad.

“’I pee in the big kid toilet, everybody clap.’ And my dad jokes, next I’m going to teach you how to pee standing up. And I got really excited like, Oh I’ve been trying to figure that out, thank you!”

But his dad had to explain to Kevyn that girls don’t pee standing up, only boys do. That left Kevyn flustered and embarrassed, wondering why he felt more interested in the opposite gender. Even in a liberal family, Kevyn found it hard to express the way he actually felt. Kevyn said on several occasions he would stand in the boy’s line in elementary school. He would be bullied by his classmates and even his teacher.

“You know, elementary school comes along I realize; you’re not supposed to talk about this stuff. This is wrong, you keep this hidden.”

Although people didn’t know how to react to him questioning his gender in the 90’s, his parents still supported him. They were both patrons of the arts, his father was a landscape painter. They constantly took Kevyn outside, hiking and exploring. They also supported Kevyn’s art forms; singing and drawing.     

“About singing, I like to say I came out of the womb singing and I never stopped singing.”

Kevyn continued to work on his artwork in middle school and in high school he won several scholarships for it.

“I think it was more validating for my parents who knew they had this gifted, talented, artistic child constantly being told to sit down shut up stop drawing like every other kid… but here I was on the stage getting a total of several thousand dollars for my college education because of my art.”

Kevyn went to college to get a graphic design degree because his mother convinced him that would be better than a fine art’s degree. He was frustrated with the amount of minimalism expected in design. He left Ohio after he got his bachelor’s in fine arts.

“And I was realizing that my classmates didn’t give a shit about nature, it’s not that they didn’t know about nature, or they didn’t spend enough time in nature as they would have liked, they really didn’t give a shit. They might recycle because it’s cool to take care of the planet, but they didn’t want to go outside and listen to birds in between class.”

He traveled after he graduated, did some soul searching. He realized that he wanted to teach children and got jobs doing so at wilderness centers. 

 “I moved to the other side of the country to Seattle Washington which is queer and trans heaven!”

In Seattle, he got a job at Wilderness Awareness School. He wanted the kids to have a “nature connection” which is separate from outdoor recreation, environmental science or nature therapy. Nature connection is about letting yourself connect and understand the world because you are the world. To understand you’re as much of the world as the world is.

 “I want to connect everything I might be teaching children with nature, with love of being outside.”

The kids there were correcting each other, even their own parents about pronouns. The new places he worked were some of the first times he went by Kevyn. Once President Trump got elected, he came out to more people. After 3 years of teaching around the country, he decides to come back home to Kent, Ohio and is currently a Museum Educator at Hale Farm and Village.  For the future, he hopes to open up a community nature and art center all in one, hoping to create an understanding that art and nature are related. 

“…And, Thereby learning that these things are inseparable and at the center of everything is wonder.”

Transcript:

I’m standing outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in Kent, Ohio. It’s marked by a green sign with gold letters, all the buildings around it are marked by the same sign. It’s tucked behind all the quirky shops and restaurant in Akron ally. It’s in the suite upstairs and almost impossible to find if you aren’t looking for it. There are two planned parenthood clinics in Ohio that perform abortions, 10 total. Kent’s planned parenthood is not one of them, you can tell because there aren’t any protestors outside. 

There are two sides of Planned Parenthood, the medical side and the activism side. Mackenzie Burchett is the president of the Planned Parenthood activists of Kent State University and says she has always been an activist. Even today, she is dressed up for a job interview to be a grant assistant for a nonprofit in Akron that offers addiction services. 

“In fifth grade I started campaigning against Sarah Palin because she was having bounties on wolves from Alaska, and I was like, ‘Wow I don’t like that,’ even though I was 10 and didn’t really fully understand the implications of sending petitions to somebody in office in Alaska.” 

Her activism has grown since then, now spending time mostly with reproductive rights and union rights. 

“I think abortions and contraceptives represent bodily autonomy; I think that’s one of my main issues.”

Mackenzie is a grassroots activist. She spends time learning local legislation and getting familiar with local issues. She wanted to become the President of the Planned Parenthood activists of Kent State to shed more light on abortion. 

“I wanted it to be very abortion focused since we’ve seen so many abortion attacks this year in Ohio.”

Mackenzie’s platforms change from day to day, either a panel that was planned for months or off handed facts in class. But even with her outgoing nature, she believes that students can help motivate each other to act against injustice, whatever platform a person has, they should use it. 

“I think students seeing other students can have these positions that give them a platform is pretty inspiring, and I think they see, ‘Oh that person is the same as me I can relate to them and they can use that as a way to get involved.’”

But students aren’t the only ones getting involved and using their platforms to help reproductive rights. 

“Who has the authority to make the call about whether women, about women’s reproductive health and reproductive rights…”

Tammy Clewell has been a professor in Kent State University’s English department for 20 years and actively speaks out against the oppression of reproduction rights. 

“The position that I don’t respect, and that I would work actively against is the position that people who would not choose an abortion for themselves, whether they be men or women, would want to legislate their choice onto other people’s bodies.” 

She has taught classes revolving around grief, personal accounts of trauma, and women’s literature, but her academics are not the first time she grasped the importance of reproductive rights. Her great grandmother gave her an anecdote when she asked her about the changes in women’s rights from the early 1900’s to the 1980’s. 

“And she said two things, the first thing she said in a little bit of a joking manner, but she said the ability to cut her long hair and wear her hair short really freed up her time and her days… and the second more important thing she said was the availability of contraceptives.”

For Tammy, when it comes to protecting Planned Parenthood, “I can’t think of an issue that is culturally more important.”

Tammy donates money to Planned Parenthood because she says her days of marching the streets are over, to let the young people cover that. But she helps in other ways, not only talking about reproductive rights in literature to her classes, but by giving her own personal experiences with Planned Parenthood as well. 

“I shared with my women’s literature class that I myself have had 2 abortions in my life. Both times I had an abortion were when I was married.”

She chose to get each abortion because she didn’t think she could afford a child while continuing with her research. She believes by sharing her experiences, she can help fight the stigma that surrounds abortions, and more broadly, Planned Parenthood. To help people make the right decision for themselves. 

“I have never regretted it, I have never calculated, ‘Oh how old would that child be today’ because it was the right decision for me. And I shudder to think what my life would look like had I not had access to making the right choice for myself.”

 Activism takes many forms. Tammy and Mackenzie might not take the same road, but their strong position towards reproductive rights have the same goal: equality. I’m Isabel Brinegar

“And we have about 10 verbally active students, Mackenzie is one of those students.”

“As people are affected by these changes, we need to do everything we can to help fight against them. I think there’s an obligation to do so.”