K: So, lately I’ve been thinking about what it means to be tolerant and moderate, and what it means to be tolerant and moderate as an expatriate living in a host country. And what it means to be tolerant and moderate in the United States. Because I find that being tolerant and moderate in the United States – something I never was; I’ve always been an activist. I’ve always been really outspoken. But I find that, since moving to Japan, the first decade we were here, I want to say, I was really tolerant and moderate and slow to criticize. And, now that I have permanent residency, I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel like, kind of like, the shackles are off, and I can return to being who I really am.

C: Yeah, I feel the same way. I don’t know that I’d say, “shackles” just because like that might offend somebody, and I grew up being taught to be super inoffensive. Just super anodyne. 

K: Just because you’re white, you can be shackled. You can be white and shackled.

C: Yeah, see, that makes me uncomfortable because

K: Really? The thought of being – well, the thought of being shackled

C: Well, yes. 

K: Well… I was going to say makes me uncomfortable but not always. 

C: (laughs)

K: I like being oppressed sometimes in certain situations. 

C: (laughs)

K: Blue humor. Blue humor is like porn humor.

(laughter)

K: I’m looking at Chad, and I’m like, “hmm. Do I really want to send my sexual partner the message that I don’t want to be shackled?” And the answer is “no.” And it’s so funny because he’s not kidding about it being really uncomfortable, and this is going to make him even more uncomfortable, but some of the things I’m into make him uncomfortable because he’s white, and he doesn’t want to be my oppressor. And there are times that I am asking him to oppress me, but we worked it out over 20 years.

C: We have worked it out, yes. 

(laughter)

K: That was like TMI into our bedroom a little bit. Looking behind the curtain.

C: (laughs)

K: Into Oz and its wonderful. So, as a white man, you can be shackled. You can be oppressed.

C: Yes. But I just feel like… that language is so often appropriated. And this is part of what I struggle with. So, what I struggle with is that I know I was socialized to never… kind of be the rebel. Never be the activist. Never complain about how things were.

K: Mhm.

C: But I also know that, by not complaining about how things were, sometimes I was… taken to 

K: Upholding.

C: Yeah. Taken to be support for that. And I think – like, the time I remember just definitively saying, “just fuck no. You’re not going to use my name in this” – is when the Mormons, secretly because they were fucking ashamed of it as they should be, supported Prop 8 in California. 

K: Yeah.

C: And that took me from, “well I’m technically Mormon, but I don’t go to church and I don’t talk to anybody” to writing a letter demanding that they take my name off of that because I would not cosign 

K: And that was a decade-long journey. 

C: Yes.

K: They fought tooth and nail to – against taking your name off the rolls.

C: I think it took them like nine months once I sent them the letter. Because there was a website explaining the letter. They had lost a lawsuit. It had gone all the way to the Supreme Court that they had to let people off the rolls.

K: But your journey took a decade.

C: Yes, it did.

K: So, finding out how to say it in a way that they would legally have to uphold it and respect your wishes.

C: Yes, correct.

K: So… see, that, again, was you being moderate. 

C: Right.

K: Because you’re like, “no, no. I don’t want to say that it was the Mormon ch