Oral History with Aaron Wilson, June 26, 2015 (Ms2015-007)

TRANSCRIPT: AARON WILSON

Date of Interview: June 26th, 2015 Interviewer: Megan Lee Myklegard Place of Interview: 76 South Park Street, San Francisco, CA Length: 34:16 Transcribers: Megan Lee Myklegard

Megan Lee Myklegard: Good morning this is Megan Lee Myklegard, it's June 26th, 2015. We are at 76 South Park Street, I'm here with Aaron Wilson. Would you like to introduce yourself with the date of birth and place of birth?

Aaron Wilson: Hi, Aaron Wilson 01/27/1984 in Lynchburg, Virginia.

MYKLEGARD: Wonderful. Alright so let's start off with you talking about your family life and how you were raised up until you went to college.

WILSON: Sure, that's pretty easy. Born in Lynchburg spent probably the first five years of my life there before moving back to kind of my ancestral homeground. It's where both sides of my family have been for a few generations, it's Covington, Virginia. Just a little bit north of Roanoke and not too many people actually know where it is unless you coach them into it. We kinda just like grew up normally there as, you know, a good Christian people or 1:00whatever and went to high school there. I don't know where to kinda go one— I know that this is like open ended for you, but I don't know if you'd like more focus. I mean I guess I could say my grandfather was an old dairy man he owned the last private, really, run dairy in Virginia. Kinda scat out of the business in the seventies and was a book collector for the rest of his life. So we had a big library and stuff of really old and interesting things. As far as it goes in the area we were kind of royalty. It's like we had these, this big dairy property that was like acres and acres and acres of things. We didn't 2:00have to worry about like the a lot of the stuff other people have to worry about in the area which is kind of whether or not they're going to eat Cheetos or vegetable that day, that sort of thing. So it's a real poor area in general and diabetes is rampant and it's got all the problems associated with rural America. I got to kind of skip past all that and grow up in a kind of loving and secure family environment for my entire life and it was really nice so.

MYKLEGARD: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

WILSON: I have two sisters, they're both younger. Three years and seven years.

MYKLEGARD: Alright. How would you describe your relationship with your parents?

WILSON: I get along pretty well with my parents they're both great people they made a lot of really good decisions early on like keeping soda out of the house or whatever right they they made sure that I was exposed to books really early. They spent a lot of time kind of advocating for me in schools like, my 3:00mom tells me this story about how she was had to basically go up and get them to test me to go into the gifted and talented program because otherwise they were just saying, "oh whatever this is just some kid." And then they got me to take the test and they're "Oh yeah he should totally be in this program." But without her going up and saying "hey, you guys need to test my kid. He's brilliant!" Right? Cause she's my mother of course she would say that, but it wouldn't of happened and I probably wouldn't have gotten exposed to a lot of the educational stuff that I got exposed to in school. So, like that sort of advocacy and support was all kind of part of growing up which is nice.

MYKLEGARD: So how do you identify yourself?

WILSON: You mean like gender identification and sexual orientation?

MYKLEGARD: Mhm.

WILSON: Oh yeah straight and male. And cis male I guess because yeah uh, yeah.

MYKLEGARD: So what was your first exposure to the LGBTQ community? Did it happen 4:00while you were in high school or when you were a young kid?

WILSON: So not when I was young. I feel like elementary school you're kind of exposed to it as a joke every once in awhile. People calling each other gay as an insult or whatever. But you don't really— I didn't interact with it seriously. There was one kid people would always kinda say sidelong "oh, he's totally effeminate, etc.," but no on would ever come out and say "oh that kid's totally going to be a flaming homosexual when he grows up." Right? It was just— it was kind of like coded language in rect with him. He is a she now actually and she lives in Roanoke, so that ended up like kind of fulfilling those coded messages that people were giving. So I was exposed to these things that people were kind of talking around when I was a kid, but they weren't 5:00—they weren't confronting the subject. It wasn't until I was in middle school, or high school where I actually figured out this is what being gay means and these are people who literally identify as gay or these are people who probably are gay and aren't identifying as it. That sort of thing. And yeah I don't know I guess I can just trail off there.

MYKLEGARD: [laughs] When you were in high school do you think that your main clique, were there a lot of LGBTQ community members?

WILSON: So for one, there weren't— in general just as a thing— people who openly identified as gay anyway. In the area it kind of selects against that, it's got a lot of the stereotypical prejudice against that. I do feel like my group of friends included more of the LGDP, LG, LB, LGBT 6:00people than some of the other groups. I was kind of in with nerds and punks and sort of counter culture people. Just you know growing up teenage white angst sort of stuff and that made it really easy to kind of fall in with other people who were kind of quote-on-quote 'outcast' for whatever reason right, and so LGBT was more included in that group than in a lot groups. I would imagine without being a part of those other groups obviously. I don't necessarily know what their experiences where. I know that's a confusing way to answer the question. [laughs]

MYKLEGARD: [laughs] No, that's fine. So when you got into college how did you start getting involved with the LGBT community?

WILSON: Mostly through—so when I was in college my second year I was in Hillcrest which you might be familiar with— a bunch of nerds in one place 7:00and one of those nerds was Bernard Farley who you may or may not have met yet, and if you haven't then you really need to. I'm sure John could put you in touch with him he lives in D.C. He was just one of the guys who would play Smash Brothers all the time down the hall and stuff and we hung out a lot and knew each other through other people. He became a really good friend of mine, and once he moved out of Hillcrest and once I moved out of Hillcrest we were still really close together and you know I would go over and hang out at his place and he threw the best parties and we've been able to remain pretty good friends since then too. He was a big part of my wedding, which I'm not married anymore so you can see how that went, but it wasn't his fault. [laughs]

MYKLEGARD: [laughs]

WILSON: I try to visit him every time I'm in DC, but yeah okay so long story 8:00short basically through Bernard who is gay and who was a big part of the community and who was kind of a big social hub for people both inside and outside of like LGBT identification.

MYKLEGARD: So, knowing him is what sparked you being involved in the community?

WILSON: Basically, yeah.

MYKLEGARD: But what triggered you to stay with it?

WILSON: I mean it's, it's not like a decision to stay with a community right? It's like here's a friend of mine, here's a bunch of his friends who are now my friends too, so it's like 'Lets all be friends!' It wasn't sitting down and saying 'oh, I want to be an ally to people who are in the gay community." It's like "these are my friends, I want to be with their friends." So it was more like that, it was more of a slow falling in than like a decision or anything.

MYKLEGARD: Were you in the LGBTA in your time at Tech?

WILSON: I went to a couple meetings but I didn't spend any time like with the organization really. And in fact 'involved with the community' is a really 9:00weird way of putting it in general because I wasn't being socially— doing any activism work or anything. I wasn't doing all that stuff, I was just basically being people's friends and hanging out with people.

MYKLEGARD: What, when you went to the meetings how did that feel for you being there? Did you feel out of place while you were there or was it just kind of like 'these are my friends and I'm hanging out with them?'

WILSON: Yeah I mean it, so definitely not. For one thing I knew most of the people outside of that meeting context so it wasn't like I was going in with a bunch of strangers. But, on on another it's like you know I'm, I'm in a position where I can be comfortable in a lot of social contexts and not have to worry about it. Like it's the whole straight white male thing. And I definitely felt that that was the case when I was hanging out in the LGBTA meetings. It was just like 'hey, here's a bunch of my buddies. What are we talking about today guys?'

MYKLEGARD: Did you find that sexuality was something that came up often when you were in this community?

WILSON: Oh, yeah I mean, I feel like that's kind of the case in college in general. Like a lot of people are like are learning a lot about sexuality in college both straight and other. It does come up— it probably comes up a lot more in an LGBTA context and it might be that I think everyone just talks about sexuality all the time because I used to hang out with LGBT people all the time. So maybe there's a dissonance there. Yeah so I do feel like among the friends, among the people I hung out with it was talked about a lot in general. Whether that is a part of being a part of the LGBTA scene or whatever, probably is the case. But I wouldn't really be able to definitively say because i was just— I don't really have a lot of context outside of that I guess.

MYKLEGARD: Did you ever experience any backlash within the community? People saying that they thought you didn't belong?

WILSON: Oh no, never. I mean not with these people, they were always just really friendly to me. I didn't, I mean, I guess knowing Bernard makes that easy he's a great connector he's really good at finding people who will like each other and making them meet each other. So it's a pretty good guess that if you know somebody through Bernard you're probably on pretty good terms with them.

MYKLEGARD: When you were hanging out with your friends in the community did you ever witness them experiencing any backlash? Or did they ever tell you any stories about it while they were at Tech?

WILSON: Not so much I mean— I think there's a general kind of cattiness among friends that happens every once in awhile but I wouldn't say it's like a backlash against an identity or anything it just felt like it was always based on a personal thing rather than 'here's your identity I'm 12:00going to reflect against that.' That's just my perception again maybe I just wasn't exposed to the parts of it but that was my perception.

MYKLEGARD: Were you involved in any activism not even of LGBT nature but any activism otherwise while you were at Tech?

WILSON: Yeah I participated in Take Back the Night a couple of times. What else? I don't feel like I spent a lot of time in activism in general so, apart from mostly being kind of on the sides cheering people on who were actually into it, not really. But I would participate if people had events going on I would try to show up and be a warm body.

MYKLEGARD: How did you get introduced to faculty and staff of the LGBT community? Like I know you know John Gray, how did you two meet?

WILSON: So I know John Gray again through Bernard. He was good friends I guess, 13:00I cant remember, no no he definitely wasn't roommates. Bernard was roommates with Quang and that other guy whose name I can't remember. But he knew that whole scene pretty well and and we were all in undergrad together so it's not like John was faculty at the time. I guess he's not faculty right now, really he's on staff or whatever the distinction is. But, [says to himself] where did he live at the time? [end aside] I feel like he was up on Roanoke street or something. Anyway it was really common for people in the community to be roommates with each other just like any other group of, large network of friends. So we kind of all knew each other through that and that was how I met John and pretty much anybody else through that.

MYKLEGARD: While you've been in San Francisco do you feel that you have also—not 14:00sought out but—been a part of a similar community to the one were in at Virginia Tech?

WILSON: Not as much, but to an extent yes because San Francisco is such a famous scene for LGBT people to come out that the friend community is just kind of absorbed LGBT people kind of naturally. Pride is like the best thing in the world by the way if you've never been to a San Francisco pride you've never lived. There's a lot of cool stuff that goes on that's that just happens to be gay affiliated. It it does have— like you were talking about feelings of not belonging it is, it is a little easier for that to be the case. Like you go to a gay bar as a straight person and it feels like a distinctly different kind of environment. It's not like the same 'oh, I'm just comfortable anywhere.' Sort of thing it's like 'oh hey, this is like a space and 15:00I need to either not be here or just be really comfortable with the fact that I'm going to be uncomfortable a lot.' Moby Dick is a great place for that, by the way. That's kind of an interesting experience itself cause the bathroom situation at Moby Dick's is there's one toilet which is behind a door and that's over in some section. The other bathroom is nothing but a trough that's [gestures] this wide and like this long that you pee into. That's the only thing there and there's like no guards or anything. So it's just like oh, hey standing around peeing into something, if you can, if you can manage to with all the openness. So it's definitely a different experience here and I think that that just comes from there being kind of enough LGBT people that it, 16:00creates an LGBT scene that's it's own dictinct thing that doesn't even necessarily involve straight people. And I think at Virginia Tech it kinda has to just because otherwise you're gonna be all by yourself and alone. You get gay scene things going on, and it's there there but it's not like 'this is gay scene and this is our community.' in the same way as it is here. And you know it's just uh, numbers I think.

MYKLEGARD: How often do you find yourself like in quote-on-quote' gay scenes,' while you're here in San Francisco?

WILSON: I mean it's impossible to not be like in, you go to Castro just because it's a fun place right? So you hang out there. I mean as much as I don't go out like I used to when I was younger, it you know probably at least once every couple of months we just happen to be at a place that's mostly populated by gay people.

MYKLEGARD: Do you think that having a friend group while at Tech that was— if not the majority— there was a lot of LGBT community members, do you think that made you more sensitive to issues?

WILSON: I think so. I mean obviously since I haven't experienced the alternative I can't really say for sure but it seems like if you wanted to stick a narrative on it then yeah, definitely having a bunch of LGBT friends made me a lot more aware of kind of the way that people are talked to and the way, and you know grew up in the middle of nowhere and there's a lot of language that's very familiar with people who've watched anything related to gay stuff in the media. And that is just casually talked about where I grew up, and it's definitely less so in college. I definitely feel like having that group in college was kind of a way 18:00of, kind of interacting with a bunch of people that I really didn't get to interact with openly when I was at home and you know hearing about the problems in ways that you don't hear about because nobody talks about it. I do think that I pay a lot more attention because of that. That may be the case that I sought something to pay attention to or something. Obviously you can never tell since you don't get to live two parallel lives and compare them side by side.

MYKLEGARD: Do you think that you would be inclined if you heard someone now or if you heard someone then say some sort of slur in relation to the LGBT community, do you think that you would correct them or defend the community?

WILSON: Oh yeah, I'm kind of an asshole about it really. I don't mind— it's one of the things being aware of kind of my privilege status is that I do 19:00try to take advantage of it on people's behalf. So it's like I can come out and say 'hey, don't be an idiot. Like that's a stupid word don't use that.' I can do that comfortably because I don't have like a status that I'm defending right? So I try to make use of that pretty much as much as I can and I don't mind being a jerk when I'm doing it because it's like obviously they're being even more of a jerk by using the homophobic slur or whatever. I feel like it's an appropriate use of, not necessarily hostility like I don't want to punch the guy in the face or anything, but it's like I want to kind of give with my body language and other parts of me that say 'this is like a thing you should actually be thinking about. This is important, people care about this so shut up.' Right? Yeah I definitely feel like I'm way more likely to do that because of the people I've been friends with..

MYKLEGARD: Did your parents ever talk to you about homosexuality when you were 20:00in their house?

WILSON: Uh, they never talked about it directly I mean [pauses] my parents were good about bringing up like sexuality and stuff early on when it comes to these but the physical parts of it obviously the birds and bees stuff that they're supposed to tell you. They were really good about exposing me to that part, like giving me the books that are 'this is how babies are made' or whatever. When it came to other parts of sexuality they were more laissez-faire, they were very clear that whatever the situation was they were okay with it. They made it extremely clear that if I ended up being gay, which I hadn't given any signaling or anything, but they that they did make it extremely clear 21:00that if that were the case they would be fine with that. They were super careful about that but in terms of actually coming out and talking about it there are some people who love each other different ways or anything, that never really came out explicitly I don't think. It was more like a general acceptance. My mother is a has always kind of had the stereotypical hippie like open and accepting kind of view as far as that goes.

MYKLEGARD: Did you say, I think you mentioned that you grew up in a Christian household?

WILSON: Yeah, so that's interesting kind of set of things too. My parents when we were in Lynchburg were associated with a church that was associated with, like Fall Wells church, they didn't actually go to Fall Wells church but they were southern Baptist and they— we had a nanny who was like actually a Fall Wellian that sort of thing. They retreated from that, basically as I grew up they went more and more to the left in terms of these specific type of church. So they, like when we moved back to Covington it was a Baptist church at first, 22:00and then it was a Presbyterian church, and I think it was Baptist and then Methodist and then Presbyterian and then Episcopalian. It was basically wherever my mother was playing the organ, but that is a track right is like from the most famously conservative sect of Christianity to the most famously 'We love gay people' sect of Christianity sort of thing. I became agnostic when I was in middle school and then atheist when in high school, and my grandfather was also atheist so it's not like I was coming from nowhere as far as that's concerned. We were definitely like Christian, just becoming less and less overtly Christian and my parents becoming more and more, my dad's diest more that anything now it's just like diffusion of God in all things but as far as 23:00the actual dogma of religion he's only interested in it from a historical standpoint. My mother is very Episcopalian she loves the community, but again when it comes to specific dogma she just doesn't tries not to think about it too much I think. So yeah, so grew up Christian and surrounded by Christian things and then I myself stopped being Christian. We definitely grew up surrounded by it.

MYKLEGARD: Did you know any members of the LGBT community at Tech who were very religious when you went?

WILSON: [sighs] that's hard to say, I mean I definitely know, or knew religious community members, but not so many that I would identify with very religious. I mean I do feel like that's a hard thing to reconcile in general. There is Scott Russell who is literally and Episcopalian preacher, but even him I wouldn't 24:00consider religious in the way that I think of as religious—which I guess is actually more dogmatic— I would not consider Scott Russell dogmatic I would consider him, Episcopalian right, which is uh the Anglican light sort of thing. Yeah, I don't know anybody that I would identify as dogmatic, I didn't know anybody who I'd identify as dogmatically Christian I definitely knew people that I would identify as Christian who believed in God and certain like other parts, other important parts of the story that sort of thing.

MYKLEGARD: Do you remember any very significant events that occurred in your time at VT in relation to the LGBT community?

WILSON: I mean, most of the things that stand out are alcohol infused.

MYKLEGARD: [laughs]

WILSON: Like there was this thing that we came up with at some point called no pants o'clock which was kind of amazing. It's basically as soon as the clock struck midnight I would take off my pants and start running around and yelling 'no pants o clock!' Then everybody else had to take off their pants and we'd all dance. It was part of the scene. Bernard really did throw the best parties, he knew all the funniest people and he was really great at finding really good music and their jungle juice was out of this world. Significant events, like historically significant, or you know like significant in a way that isn't just us fucking around I don't, I can't think of anything that stands out in that way. It's mostly just really great parties.

MYKLEGARD: [laughs] Alright , I just have a few more questions. So you're not 26:00involved in any activism now while in San Francisco?

WILSON: Not particularly, no. Apart from yelling at people on Facebook.

MYKLEGARD: [laughs] So in just like a short snippet how would you compare living at Virginia Tech to living in San Francisco?

WILSON: Um, it's a lot harder to get good sweet tea here.

MYKLEGARD: [laughs]

WILSON: I mean it's more open basically. It— in Virginia in general and you know of course Blacksburg in particular you hear one maybe two languages walking around. Here I can get on the train and if I don't hear like five on my way to work it's a weird day. Also you're much more likely to smell weed walking around here. Just a thing.

MYKLEGARD: So being in the professional world, do you oftentimes, do you ever really hear anything about sexuality in the workplace?

WILSON: So there's a couple of sides to that. One is, at our company in particular we're very cognizant of making sure that whatever we say in a professional context is professional speech. That includes not being disparaging of other people for various reasons, including sexuality race whatever. So, in general that just means not bringing up sexuality a whole bunch because the there's a lot of it's a charged subject and when you're talking about it with a group of a mixed group of people you're going to bring up things 28:00that some people are uncomfortable with. So you avoid the subject, which is fine it's work we're not talking about, I mean it's not like we make dildos. Right? The other side of that is we have to spend a lot of time, especially in the Tech Industry is of course famous for being kind of the straight white boys' club. Even more so than other industries, right? There are a lot of discussions among us in particular about hiring and like basically trying to source diverse pipelines and that sort of thing. And sexuality comes up as part of that discussion along with a lot of other things. Like ethnic identification, whatever. So in that context we talk about it a lot and like a whole lot because it's a thorny problem it's hard, it's really hard to hire the very best people we can find but also making sure that enough of those people that we're 29:00finding are not just straight white boys, right? So like, thinking about how to approach that strategically and tactically actually takes up a lot of our time. More than we, want it to in terms of 'why is this so hard?' Sort of frustration but we're still happy to spend that effort because we want to be kind of a model for other companies.

MYKLEGARD: Do you think about your privilege everyday do you think?

WILSON: Oh yeah, pretty much all the time. On purpose, I guess. Because I get exposed to a lot of people who talk about it and, but of course part of that privilege is not knowing all the great ways that it benefits me. So, I might not even be thinking about it 'enough' with big air quotes that the recorder can't see. In that kind of sense, but I do try to monitor like advantages that I have 30:00in comparison to other people for whatever reason and like be aware of them and you know not be ashamed of them of course just like kind of say 'oh that exists. Okay so I can think about this person with that context in mind.' If I'm trying to understand this action that they're taking which seems completely weird and bizzaro to me, like maybe I can think back to why I don't have to do that action and maybe it's for this and this reason. Suddenly that makes a lot more sense. I find it valuable to think about it a lot just because it gives me that better understanding and empathy for talking to people. So I do try to think about it as much as I can.

MYKLEGARD: You mentioned that you try not to feel guilty about it now, but did you ever feel like a sense of guilt when you were at Tech in college?

WILSON: I mean not really. I don't yeah—I don't think it's, I don't think it can 31:00be characterized as not feeling guilty now I think it's like I don't— I've never felt a desire to feel guilty about my privilege and I think that's like a mis-characterization of like especially like when people are trying to demonize social justice in general and stuff it's like 'oh, we're just trying to make white people feel guilty for, you know, colonialism or whatever.' It's like no, no, no, no it's we're not trying to make people feel guilty, we're trying to make them realize that there are different basically levels, like places where you start the race, right? Everybody's going towards the finish line and certain people were given ten or twenty feet head starts, right? It's like you don't have to feel guilty about that, you didn't put yourself there in the race, right? You weren't sitting there 32:00dealing with the referee giving him money or whatever so that you could get there, but you do have to be aware of that when you're looking back and being like 'well, why are these guys like 20 feet behind me? When I'm, when they're also running fast. They obviously must not be running as fast or as hard as I am.' Cause if you don't have the realization then obviously you're going to have a complete misunderstanding of why people are behind you. But again it's like, that's not a guiltiness that's just here are facts please use these facts in context. Not feel bad about it, you should feel ashamed.

MYKLEGARD: So while you were at VT did you have any grievances about the level of acceptance that you felt or that you perceived others in your per group feeling?

WILSON: Not really, I mean of course— again with the caveat that I get the I get to not worry about that most of the time, but no I didn't feel like that was a 33:00factor in the community. I mean from my perception.

MYKLEGARD: So this is kind of a broad question like another one that you can take any way that you want, but what's something that you would like potential historians at Virginia Tech to know?

WILSON: That's a good question. I mean, historians are probably in the best position to know this already but it's a place with a lot of different people and it's like despite the fact that it's kind of this small town in the middle of nowhere in the South, it's still surprisingly full of a bunch of diverse people with very interesting stories that can't be treated as a monolith I guess. And again, that's gonna be obvious to any historian so I don't know why, I guess I'll just want to reinforce that for them.

MYKLEGARD: Is there anything that you thought I would ask during the interview 34:00that I didn't?

WILSON: No not really, I try to come in with no expectations.

MYKLEGARD: Gotcha. Well if you don't have anything else to add then that should wrap it up for us.

WILSON: Awesome.

MYKLEGARD: Yeah, good? Alright, thank you so much!