COOPER JOSLIN

Yeah, that is extremely accurate. Like, every word you just said, that is just how it is.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

And the parentals, right, all they know is, I'm being bullied for some reason. Administration knows I'm being bullied for some reason. And then they're kind of the first ones to kind of start asking me and they're like, do you feel like a boy? Yeah. Do you like girls? I guess? Because like, I didn't even have like that, like, yet, you know, toward anybody. And then they're like, maybe you're a lesbian. I'm like, so it was like, it ticked some boxes, but it wasn't ticking all the boxes. Like, it was like, yeah, and something else, you know, but you know, back then too, like you really tried to like, shove yourself in that box too. And that didn't work either. Because like, the other lesbians rejected me. They're like, you're a guy, we don't like you. Why won't you let me touch you? Are you stone? I'm like, I guess, I don't know.

COOPER JOSLIN

That is such an interesting period in life. You know, you're just starting to like, you know, you get some language and it's helpful, but it's not, you know, it's not quite there. So did you identify as a lesbian? Like from that point onward? Was that like any help to you? Or was it just like a kind of weird moment?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

I did this really weird thing where I used to talk about myself in the third person, because pronouns sucked. Like nobody wanted to call me male pronouns. So I was like, okay, my pronoun is my name. So I sounded like a pirate. Which led to a really interesting, because I had like, literally two friends throughout middle school and high school. And they're still my friends to this day. And one of them got blindsided and they're like, is that a girl or a boy? And they're like, oh, him? He's a pirate. I love that. That that. That is awesome.

COOPER JOSLIN

That's allyship right there. I was gonna--allyship right there. I was gonna say like, you know, when you find that one person who's just like, chill about things, like that's good. So after high school, what did life look like for you in terms of gender and just in general?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Well, before we get to high school, there's more in middle school that led to high school. Yeah, let's do it. So like a lot of other trans people, I had a couple attempts. I didn't have language, I didn't have support. My dad, the same dad who was like, no, no, bad, tried to send me to therapy. But therapy then, they weren't even up to what a trans person was either. I think that DSM still kind of put it under the transvestite umbrella. And then they were really confused because they're like, but usually that's biological men who do that. So do you want to be a girl? Like no.

COOPER JOSLIN

Just coming all the way back around, kind of full circle.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So and then, you know, at some point, it just kind of felt like an interrogation. I don't want to say it was like conversion therapy, because it wasn't. But it was this really frustrating circle where they're trying to get me to tell them a problem that I don't have the language to express. So then they're like, it has, I don't know, it has anger issues. I'm like, I'm not angry, I'm frustrated. Leave me alone. Let me play video games. I can pick my gender there. "

COOPER JOSLIN

I was going to say, there's always a good character creator.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So yeah, you know, and so, you know, and then there's lots of like family drama and, you know, whatever. So things kind of got really crazy. I had my first girlfriend, and that ended up being a gender mindfuck, because like, I was her boyfriend. And she knew that. And we talked about that. So there was no like, weird illusion stuff. But then she came on really, like, I was like 13, 14, she came on really, really strong and wanted to like, have sex. And I, I was, I was not there. I was not there yet. Like, the spirit is willing, the body is not. And I had a freeze response. And so the next day, she got very upset, and didn't talk to me about it, and instead dumped me for Eugene, who was like, the walking embodiment of a human booger. Like completely unwashed basement troll who worked at like a Hasbro hobby toy store thing in the mall, is like, I'm leaving you for Eugene, because he has a job and a penis. I'm like, ow, okay. Thanks. I I hate it. So I was already having a really bad day. And then the meds they were putting on for me, putting me on for my anger issues, made me sleepy, and I fell asleep in class. And then that administrator called my dad who had a big old cow and came home and didn't talk to me, didn't ask about my day, wasn't interested in me at all. And he just busted in when I was taking a shower and beat me within an inch of my life, and then went to work. So you know, I lost my shit, and I tried to do the thing, unalive, and said friend from middle school called me and was like, hey, how are you doing? I I heard you had a tough day, and I was like, what was that? She called the cops and saved my life. But that became a, and I say that story to say this story, things got really volatile. And at that point, I really started feeling unsafe. So I clammed up, and I stopped talking. So I ended up in a mental institution for a month called Circles of Care. It It was like a children's psychiatric. And they just kept trying, trying to pull it out of me, trying to ask me what's going

COOPER JOSLIN

Yeah, I can hear you. It's still a little, video's a little fuzzy and stuff. But I think I have your audio for now. All right, cool. So So yeah, I'm so sorry. I think, yeah, I think the last thing I heard was, they kept trying to pull it out of you in the mental institution.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Yeah, so I was there for a month, and therapists after therapist after doctor, even other patients were trying to pull it out of me, like, you know, what's up? And again, I don't have the language to explain that. So I have to kind of talk around it and talk in vaguety to try to describe it. But it's kind of like they're wanting a laser and all I got is a shotgun. Like I can't really, you know, tell them what's happening. So they discharged me and said I had anger issues again, and, you know, it became unsafe. So I went to go and after big old fight, I went to go live with my sister. And you know, I kind of bounced around from family member to family member. And it just kind of felt like the world was pushing me toward something like, you know, you were born with X, so you should be this, like you should marry a good Catholic boy and and have babies or something. And it's just like, first of all, I'm not really grokking the sexuality like that like everybody else is like everybody else is getting hit with hormones. And they're just like, that looks delicious. And I'm over here like, so this video game I was playing, you know, and we really didn't have that's another thing we didn't have. We didn't have the concept of asexuality either, you know, and so I just kind of felt like an alien moving around the world because nothing fit. So after high school, and that was, you know, trauma, trauma, trauma, more trauma, high school trauma, more boyfriends, some girlfriends, whatever. I didn't really have a lot of prospects. So I moved halfway across the country, with five minutes notice and my cousin's car, and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, with the one friend from high school because like, yeah, we're gonna get an apartment, they're gonna be cool. We're gonna get away from the adults, we're the adults, we're gonna work our fast food job at Hardee's. Well laid plans, you know?

COOPER JOSLIN

Oh, yeah. Yep. I definitely felt that way moving out of Florida, up to DC. Yeah. Yeah. What was Missouri like?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Miserable.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

That's kind of a tongue-in-cheek joke, but in a way, Missouri was, Missouri was like time stood still, and even though St. Louis is a town, like a city, it really functions more like a small town, but this was a town nobody knew me, so it was easier to like blend in and kind of disappear, and you know, I wasn't around family members anymore, I'm not in school anymore, so I kind of had a bit more freedom to just do what I want. The only problem with that is the designation of other still followed me, so when I would get these fast food jobs, they were like, that person's odd, and they'd want to talk to me, and I would kind of just rebuff, because it's like people getting close to me just equals drama. And I made some friends along the way, and somehow I ended up in, so how do I put this? Goth bars in Missouri are not like goth bars out here in the city cities. First of all, that was like my main hangout, and even though I say goth bar, it was a gay bar with a goth night, and it was like Wednesday in a basement, and you'd walk in, and everybody's wearing like everything, like their closets threw up on them, you'd have the one person trying to walk around like, I'm a vampire, I'm the crow, and then you had somebody trying to imitate Suzie Sue from the Banshees, and you know, you'd have some guy who looked like he fell out of Hot Topic, and you have the random goth juggalo, and then there'd just be some dude in a black shirt just hanging out. Don't know how he got here, everyone's staring at him like, who are you? You know, and then some random large lady with corsets, like spinning burned CDs, and there's like a tray of baked cookies. We're just all gonna dance in circles. But you know.

COOPER JOSLIN

Sorry, I need it to be noted on this, especially because my camera is off now for the internet. This interview is just gonna be me laughing, like, just the entire time, like, you are so funny, I need you to know that. Excellent storyteller, you are killing it.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Thank you, I'm trying my best. That's another thing is like, at some point, hanging out at the goth bars, and I dabbled a little bit in high school with paganism, but I kind of really started getting more into it in like, you know, my early 20s. And I think it was kind of the, not the actual community, but like the concept, the disestablishmentarianism of it, like, no central power, I'm the power, I'm gonna stand in a circle in the woods and eat cake, meh, you know.

COOPER JOSLIN

Sorry, I was just gonna ask, are you still pagan?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

We're gonna get there.

COOPER JOSLIN

Okay, take your time, whatever you need, I am strapped in for this, I'm ready.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

It's kind of a column A, column B. So a lot of those circles of like, goth and alternative and other and gay, and, you know, now we know trans and pagan, they all have this like little Venn diagram that meet in the middle somewhere, it calls other. So because they have that intersection there of other, people kind of move around in the middle of that. And whereas nowadays, it seems like there's a lot of like, defined fandoms and communities. Back then, it was like, all those freaks over there, they're over there. Yeah, there's the one looking like Stevie Nicks, and then the other one talking to a tree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't so segmented.

COOPER JOSLIN

Right.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

And because it wasn't so segmented, there was a lot of bleed through that created opportunities like, one of my drinking buddies over at the goth bar was like, Hey, I know this pagan commune in the Ozark Mountains. You want to come? And I'm like, can you explain the words you just said to me? She's like, there's a place, 180 acres of land in the woods, and we go there and hang out with total strangers. I'm still following you. And we worship nature and get drunk. I'm like, a rational person would be like, Hmm, this probably is a dangerous situation, but I'm a young 20 year old. Let's go! And I did and I went and, you know, now I know it was a cult, but I didn't know it was a a cult then. I spent a good like, five years there. But what I liked about nature spirituality is that it was tangible. And there were things in nature that made a lot more sense than this book with an invisible man is telling me I'm bad because I exist. You know, and in nature, at least the way I grokked it, like nature is a spectrum. You know, there's male animals, female animals, and sort of animals and animals that switch around around and gay animals and this thing and that thing and amoebas like, I was looking at it as a full spectrum. But then I ran into these people who we now call TERFs, they didn't have that name yet. And they were not grokking what I was grokking. So fights ensued and, you know, basically, they put up with me as long as I was chopping trees and being a very strong woman. Even though I told them, I am a dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. It doesn't become real for other people until you grow a beard, until your voice drops. And there is a visceral moment where, well, I'm about to skip a story. Let me go back. Let me go back, back to the main quest. So said TERF lady was like, I want lip balm. Here's money, go get me some. And this place in the Ozark Mountains, the closest, like, town was half an hour away because Missouri. So it's no small thing when somebody is like, here's some money, go to town. You end up taking orders for, like, half the people there and you're shopping for multiple people and you have a little notepad out and, okay, Billy wants Cheetos, Lila wants, you know, and it becomes an all day affair. So you try to, like, grab the money and sneak out before anyone knows you're going to the store. Which is not, I've never been able to successfully do it.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So I go out to the store and this little town was called Columbia, Missouri, and there's three colleges in it. And that's the whole town. Like, when the, like, it goes from, like, 10,000 people to, like, 20, as soon as all the kids leave. Like, that's their whole town, their whole economy is these colleges. So it just so happened that the school was let out. So when the economy and the colleges shut down, some of the stores will shut their main stores down, but then they'll have, like, one location still open. And there was this health food store called Clover's. And that's the only place you can get these hippie products. So I drive into town to go get this lip balm, it was Burt's Bees, by the way. And I get to the store, and this is the tiny little location that looks like a row house. And I get up in there, and there's only one other car parked there, and it had this funky symbol-looking thing on a bumper sticker that said, question gender on it. And I was very confused. So then I went in, and there's no one in this store. There's only one person in this store other than me, and it's the clerk. So I'm going around, and I get the lip balm, and then I'm like, well, I might as well get some carob chunks while I'm here. Everything else looks kind of like supplements. There's no food here. Dried papaya. It looks like shoe leather. I think that's been dried a little too long. So I go up to the counter, and I go buy the thing, and I'm getting ready to leave. And I'm like, hey, that bumper sticker on that car, is that your car? And the dude on the other side got really scared. And I don't know what you would call it. Some people call it seeing auras or something. There was something familiar about him, and it registered to me as gay, but something else. So he starts having a little bit of a breakdown in front of me, and saying that his radical feminist girlfriend put that on the car, and oh, my God, you clocked me, and all this other stuff. And I just kind of grab him by the shoulders. I'm I'm like, what are you talking about? Snap out of it, man. And he's like, I'm trans, and I'm like, what's that? And then he explained it, and I was like, oh, you have the word. How did you do this? And now I'm shaking him down, like, this is a robbery. Tell me your secrets.

COOPER JOSLIN

Give me all your gender.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Pretty much. And then he explained, like, no, there's a word for this, and there's treatments and therapies, and you can transition and grow a beard, and I was just like, oh, my God, there is a God. And I found him in the health food store. So I grabbed this guy, and he gives me his email and a link to a website. Now I'm living in the mountains over here now, so the internet was dial up. So I get this website from him. I thank him. He's still a little freaking out, but whatever. And I get in my car, and I drive back to the commune. And I give her her damn, you know, whatever, her lip balm, and I immediately go to the giant box of a computer that's in there, and I put in the internet, you know, it makes all the nice noises, and I get on that website, and that website was called Transter. You ever hear of Transter?

COOPER JOSLIN

No, but I'm opening a new tab and checking it out right now, see if it's still a thing.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

I don't think it is anymore.

COOPER JOSLIN

No, darn it. That's something brought back. No, Okay, brought back. No, I'm not seeing it. Okay, sorry.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So Transter back in the day was around the same kind of like transitional male when that thing came up, and what Transter was was a for us, by us surgery site. So we would say, hey, this doctor in this state, these surgeries, and I saw them, and here's the picture before and after. And it was searchable. It had like little drop scroll bars, so you could look in your city and be like, okay, I'm in Missouri, I see three doctors, oh, those results look terrible. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna have to go out of state, you know, because especially back then, like we had people doing surgeries who had no business doing surgeries. Like they were, they were hacks.

COOPER JOSLIN

What year was this? Like approximately? That was approximately 2004-ish.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Cool. Okay, cool. The The early aughts. The early aughts. Yep. aughts. The early aughts. Yep. Yep. One at a time. I remember One at a time. And I remember seeing that first photo and just vomiting on the screen. It was so bad. You know, I met the guy later, you know, bless his heart, and he got it fixed, but he had to go through a bunch of lawsuits and stuff. Basically, you know, keyhole and double incision work for only certain body types, yeah. And this surgeon did not take the body type into account and tried to do this like liposuction thing with a larger guy and then try to do a keyhole thing. So basically, it just looked like concave and scarred that way. It was terrible. Oh, that's awful. Yeah. And then he didn't want to refund them or sign his surgery letter because back then, especially Missouri, you had to go through surgery first, then get a letter from your surgeon in order to change any birth certificates or gender markers or anything. It was a whole thing, and it was very gatekeepy. So to be put into this kind of limbo no man's land where it's like, well, you had this surgery and I'm not fixing it and I'm not giving you your letter.

COOPER JOSLIN

Yikes, that's--that is no good.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Yep. So instead, I went in the night, in a blizzard, in winter, to Plano, Texas, and I went to a Dr. Rafael and had my surgery there.

COOPER JOSLIN

That sounds so. It's like the hero's journey, you know, like you're off on this, you know, back to the quest, you know, it's this is your main quest line here. So how did surgery go? What was the experience like?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So I was a very broke, poor person, but I had friends. So essentially how I saved up for it is I rented my friend's couch and kept my stuff in like one of those. What do you call it? It was like public storage things. Yeah, not that I had a lot of stuff, but I was working for like twelve dollars an hour at a alarm dispatch place and like I was eating ramen noodles, like I was so tight with the money. And then the time came and, you know, my friend borrowed her mom's car. We drove up to Plano again in the blizzard in the night. And when we got there, I only had enough money because like you couldn't leave. You you couldn't leave. You had to go in, check in for surgery, have your surgery, stay there for 14 days and then come back for your follow up visit. And then they would give you your doctor surgeon note. So note. So since I didn't have money for two people, I rented a room for one person. For one person, for one person. For one person, I kept hiding the other person for two weeks. And we were cooking food on a hot plate. Like there was a lot of shady business, but, you know, you did what you could do to survive, you know? Right, yeah. You know, and my friend, like she's a saint. You know, we had a falling out years later, but that's a different story. But, you know, I'm out of it. I'm waking up out of anesthesia and she's sitting here. She is squeaky. She cannot handle blood, guts and gore. And she's over here emptying out my drains and going, oh, the whole time. Solidary, that's how that works. You know, and then I got my paper and I came back home and I just kind of settled into my transition, which, you know, I wish I could say, yay, that's the end of the story, but no. That's when things started changing because, like, I had some friends who were solid and stayed with me, but the majority of them, as soon as I started transitioning to them, I'm a different person. To me, I'm the same person. Like, you're finally actually meeting me. So they didn't feel as comfortable talking to me anymore and they didn't want to hang out and do like, you know, bro skinship anymore. You know, I was a dude now and now they had to confront that.

COOPER JOSLIN

That is definitely an uncomfortable situation when you start to, you know, when you transition and then your friends are like, you know, some of them, some of them are awesome, some of them will stay and other ones, they show themselves, you know?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Yep. But, you know, it was that was the disheartening part because, like, I thought a lot of those relationships were more solid and they weren't. They evaporated into the air and. You know, when your family of origin evaporates into the air and then your chosen family evaporates into the air and your spiritual community evaporates into the air, because that's another thing, the the turfs, the dianarchy turfs, they did not like that I was a dude now. So they basically ran me out on a rail for existing. I didn't even do anything. So now, you know, everything that was solid was now vapor and. I didn't know what else to do. So, you know, I went into this little hippie store inside town called Peace Nook, and it was run by legit hippies who opened a bookstore and they had all these books that you would never see. And in their LGBT section, which was like. What, two and a half, three foot long. They had like three trans books in there. And one of them was Becoming a Visible Man by Jameson Green. You ever heard of it? I have actually.

COOPER JOSLIN

I haven't read it, but it's on my list to track that down.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

It's kind of like a little bit Stone Butch Blues-y, but it's autobiographical, but it's that kind of visceral, like, this is the good and the bad and the stuff that happened in my life. And in that really low moment, I was reading that book in a janitor closet, not doing my work like an irresponsible young man. And I got about, you know, I'm reading the book, I'm reading the book and it's like, OK, childhood. All right. Reading the book, reading the book, teenage stuff. I'm like, yeah, reading the book, reading the book, girlfriend stuff, reading the book, reading the book, transition. So I put my bookmark in the book, I closed it, I looked at it. And there was more than a half a book left. So even though I didn't have any like elders or supportive people or community in my life, this book told me there is life after this moment of transitioning.

COOPER JOSLIN

That is so like such an important message for people to get to, you know, especially in key moments like that, like you read the right thing or you see the right thing at the right time and it truly impacts you.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

You know, and that's why, like all of this book banning bullshit, like I just I can't rock that. I'm not OK with that. Because even though it was a tiny book in a small town in the middle of nowhere, like legit nowhere, like banjos nowhere. That moment with that book, again, saved my life. So, you know, I packed my bags and I left Missouri for Virginia. And And that was another-- I moved around a bit. I've been in a bit. I've been in Centerville, Newport News. I lived in Norfolk a little bit with my cousins. Then I lived in Maryland for a little bit a little bit with my cousins. Then I lived in Maryland for a little bit up in Baltimore. Again, moving with the jobs. Yep. Always. Yep.

COOPER JOSLIN

So how was how did Virginia compare? Did you you know, did you enjoy it? Was it it? Was it like more, I guess, diverse, like gender wise? How how was your experience there or is your experience there, I suppose? So with Virginia, it experience there, I suppose?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So with Virginia, it was more of the it's where I could afford to live and my brother was in the Navy at the time, so I went to go live with him. And, you know, we were fine for a little bit, but then he had kids and that became really uncomfortable because he was a little bit older than me. But then he than me. But then he had kids and that became really uncomfortable because, you know, he didn't want his kids being the Baptist young man he is. I'm like, he left Catholicism for Baptists. OK. You know, he's like, don't be gay around my kids. I'm like. Huh. I'm literally just showing them bands, like. You did that for me when I was a kid, so what's the problem? So I don't know, I guess he I guess he thought I was going to trans and gay as kids by just like hanging around. And so me and him had a big old falling out, we didn't talk for like 20 years. But jokes on him because all his kids are gay.

COOPER JOSLIN

That is the best.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

It's not instant karma, but it is karma, and it's very powerful, and I'm the cool gay uncle, so they're like, yay. Oh, that's that's really cute. Yeah. And by gay, I mean kind of like queer rainbow kind of. Oh, yeah. Not like homosexual man who has an exclusive way. I'm talking about the whole thing.

COOPER JOSLIN

I got you. I got you. OK, so you know.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

But. Not too sure where to go next in this story. Oh, spirituality.

COOPER JOSLIN

Yeah, let's let's let's loop back to that, because I'm really curious to see, you know, the column A column B thing you had mentioned.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Yeah, so. In paganism, there's a lot of poly worship of different gods and different deities and different stuff, and. What I liked was when I was there, there was a big emphasis on gender and this group would let me go into the men's side. So I kind of bathed in masculinity and I was like, yes, yes, I love this porn god. Whoo. god. Whoo. Drink me. Yeah. Flirt with the ladies. Sure. Sure. If they're into it, you know, so like that part I liked, but then there would be all of of these like. I don't know, it felt sometimes like they were humoring me and I didn't like that. And. I was legitimately there to connect with these spirits and to connect with nature, but there was too much of like. Narcissistic, I am a special rainbow, look at me, I'm a crow and I bought shiny rocks going on. So it made me question, are these actually my people? Because they don't seem to be into what I'm into. And then with the falling out and the whole thing about me growing a beard being such a to do like it kind of it broke my heart, it broke my heart. So. You know, a lot of us would keep alters around, you know, and that would be our focal point to like pray and, you know, contact whatever God we were praying to and all of them kind of just, you know, got dusty. The whole thing just kind of went dusty and the lights went out, except for one, which was Eris, the goddess of chaos. And you ever heard of discordianism?

COOPER JOSLIN

So, OK, my mother-in-law is a pagan and she has told me a great many things, and that sounds very similar to, not similar, it rings somewhat of a bell, but it's not coming to me. Can you give a solid definition?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

I can give you an amorphous definition.

COOPER JOSLIN

That's perfect.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So during the whole Timothy Leary, let's take a bunch of psychedelic times, there was this non-religion that was started called discordianism. It's in the same vein as like Church of the Dude and Flying Spaghetti Monster, where the goddess that they're worshipping, Eris, the goddess of chaos, is worshipped by creative chaos. So when people hear chaos, they tend to think about like famine and war and like all that kind of stuff. Discordians mostly think of things like playing pranks on people, you know, doing really in-your-face art stuff to make you think about things like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence gives off very discordian vibes. And, you know, it morphed into this other thing called chaos magic and all this other stuff. But the point was, A, the kind of like screw you to the establishment that creative chaos embodies, but also the joy in the moment of trying to spread that creative chaos. So for one instance, one year, I found a bunch of Easter eggs, little plastic ones, and they were like little plastic because Star Wars had just came out with another movie. So they were like Darth Vader heads. So I got all of them that I could find at this like dollar store and I took them all home home and me and my buddy sat there and we wrote poetry and we put them in these little eggs and then we ran around downtown Baltimore and started hiding them. Just so that way, somebody randomly would be like, Darth Vader? Langston Hughes? You know, and that humor, that spark of humor. Started healing me, because if I'm laughing, whatever a bigot is saying to me, if I can turn it into a joke, the sting goes away. You know, if somebody is being super serious to the detriment of everyone else, bringing a little bit of chaos in the room can then balance out the scales and bring joy back. So one day I prayed to Eris, the goddess of chaos, and I'm like, I have lost my job. My boyfriend is an asshole. I hate my life. Chaos, I give this to you.And she completely got me out of that relationship. She got me a new job. It was a new job. It was a stressful, crazy, fucked up job, but it was a job, so I took it. And all of a sudden, these people wearing white and beads started being everywhere I was at. And I'd be at being everywhere I was at. And I'd be at the grocery store, there'd be one. I went to another be one. I went to another pagan commune in the middle of Pennsylvania, right? Like four hours from where I'm at. There they are. And all they are. And all of them were from the same area in D.C. So, you know, when I see it three times, I pay attention. So the So the third time there was this really drunk priest of Obatala, which I now know who that is, and I was like, hey, what's with all these beads? She's like, oh, this is Santeria. You need a consulta. Here's a couple of Here's a couple of beads. This is This is Santeria, you need a consulta. Here's a number. And, you know, in that, I found another Venn diagram meeting another Venn diagram meeting another Venn diagram and having an intersection in the middle. So it's like. There's a lot of Afro-Latino heritage there, and it has elements of stuff I'm familiar with from my childhood, and there's a lot of nature worship going on. So I went and I did that. So in a lot of ways, I'm still a pagan, but I'm not really in that uptight, there's only two genders, you know, but we're going to get drunk and have sex in a tent kind of a thing anymore. Yeah. I'm over it. That was my 20s.

COOPER JOSLIN

Now, that's awesome, though, so you are still in this vein of like offshoot paganism today, you would say.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So the thing is that: Santeria, Lucumí, the Orisha community lets you do is you don't have to pick one, you can be that in something. So a lot of them, like in Cuba and Puerto Rico, they'll be, you know, a Santero and a Catholic. So I'm more like a Santero and a Discordian, so that's where I put those two together. so that's together. That's awesome. I love the, you know, non-exclusiveness to that.

COOPER JOSLIN

That's so cool. So I do want to be respectful of your time. We have reached our hour mark. I can do a little bit longer, but if you need to go, I wanted to give you this opportunity to say so.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

No, I'm still good. Let me just get my water, and if there's any other questions you want to ask me, go ahead.

COOPER JOSLIN

Yeah, totally. So, yeah, how would, let me figure out how to phrase this. Would you consider your gender at all informed by your spiritual experiences or vice versa or neither? Is that just like not an applicable question?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So one of the things I learned from my grandparents and my parents, you know, the Catholics in the family, is when things are dire and dark and you don't know where to turn, turn to God. The problem was, is that the God they turned to wasn't friendly to me, and it may not be God itself. It's probably the church. It's more than likely the fan club being assholes, but it's not welcoming, right? So I had to find another way. Instead of self-destructing, instead of seeing the brick wall and stopping, I had to find a different route.

COOPER JOSLIN

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I've, you know, struggled with, you know, spirituality and stuff myself, and I really like, you know, seeing people being able to find their own thing and what makes sense to them and what works for them. And that's just, it's really beautiful, you know?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

And for me, spirituality was a medicine to get me through mundane life, you know? It wasn't an escapist thing. It was all of the material sources are being denied to me because of who I am. All of the privileges, right, are being denied to me because of what I am. So what do I have to get over this obstacle? And that's what I have.

COOPER JOSLIN

Yeah, that's so cool. I love your perspective on this. This is personally very valuable. I think it's awesome. So you had touched on book bans a little bit earlier. I, you know, both of us coming from Florida, we see what's happening. And, you know, I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on what, I guess, let's structure this as what is your take on everything that's going on now in regards to trans rights? And then I promise I'm going to follow up with a much more hopeful question. So go as dark as you want, because there's light at the end of this.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Well, I think it's straight up fascism. I think that we, that trans people are being treated like the gays were treated in the 1920s, you know, and in the 60s. And we're having our Anita Bryant moment. And, you know, one of the things about my faith with discordianism is laws are for the lawful. You can make a law all day. That doesn't mean I have to listen to you. I'll find a way around it. At the end of the day, I think the biggest problem is that these leaders are not leading. They're saying anything they can to whip up a following in order to keep a job or to attain power. And they're whoring out their own humanity. To other people in order to enrich themselves, and that is deplorable. And, you know. A lot of people are being lied to about many things and it doesn't become real to them until they have to confront it. Living in Missouri, I met a lot of people who had never met a trans person before, and I didn't and I didn't come out and go, hey, I'm a big old trans person. I just hung out and it would casually drop. And they'd be like, you? I'm like, what? Why didn't you tell me? Well, I don't ask about you, so why are you asking about me? You know, like. I don't have all the answers, but. I do think that the gamification of politics and this red versus blue. Is dangerous, you know? We see how people act out for sports teams, put that with the commons and in the same. You know, and at the end of the day, what these legislators are supposed to be doing is they're supposed to be doing our business, right? They're supposed to make sure roads are paved, they're supposed to make sure the lights stay on, they're supposed to like, you know. Do the people's business and instead, they're fucking with the people's minds and making them afraid of a boogeyman that doesn't exist for votes. Why? For what?

COOPER JOSLIN

Yeah, that's it. That is exactly what is happening. So to kind of follow up on that, what gives you hope?

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

Well, let's just say I prayed to some certain gods about it and eventually, I am confident it will be taken care of. And another thing that gives will be taken care of. And another thing that gives me hope is that. A lot of we're seeing a lot of the bad stuff and part of that is to demoralize us to make us not want to fight. But millennials and Gen Z and make us not want to fight. But millennials and Gen Z and Alph, they're not about that shit. You know, statistically, they're getting lefter and lefter and lefter. And just like I didn't have the word trans until I was like 24, because I didn't have access to the information and to the internet, we have the internet. We have the internet now. You know, these people are educating themselves younger from a phone in their pocket, the computing power inside that phone used to take up a city block. You know, we have these literal children walking out, You know, and protesting anti-trans shit. You know, we have them fighting for climate change and suing the government of Montana. Like, I see a world after these bigoted dinosaurs fall off. Being Out numbered, Only getting gayer and browner and more diverse. That's the world I see coming and what makes me feel hopeful is because that's the world they also see coming and that's why they're getting extra bigoted. That's why they're trying to reverse laws. That's why they're trying to push back, because they see the tidal wave coming.

COOPER JOSLIN

I know my camera is off so you can't see this. But I do have a great big smile on. Like, fully agree. I think for my last official question, I used to be a journalist and my interviews always ended with, is there anything else? And that's where I got the most fascinating answers, basically. So I kind of wanted to give you that space to, you know, is there anything else on your mind? Do you have a soapbox you want to get up on? This is your space, so go for it.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

So my soapbox, since, you know, you talked about journalism for a minute there, my soapbox is that there's a lot of bad in the world. There's also a lot of good in it, too. And sometimes the powers that be really want you to focus on the bad, so that way you don't have the energy to focus on the good. Because if you knew that there's something else other than what they've given you, you would choose that. You know, if you are told you don't have to grow up and marry that Catholic boy and have babies, that you can be a rocket scientist, that you can grow a beard, that you can be a hermit in the woods, that you literally can choose anything else, you can choose that, too, but you have infinite choices, then you have to actually sit there and think, what will you choose?

COOPER JOSLIN

So, yeah, I love that. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

VINCENT FOURNIER DIAZ

No, and just, you know, some of the best journalism happening right now, it's not happening on TV. You know, it's happening online. It's--we're doing the journalism, you know?

COOPER JOSLIN

Yeah, no, you're totally right in that, I think, is a perfect note to end this interview on. Like, that's so true.