ASM157 Outside the Lines with Mihee Kim-Kort

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well hello everyone it's another no theme song week on the program i'm doing another interview so this is not a normal episode of ask science mic been trying new things and experimenting with the format of course we're always going to have ask science mike live episodes we're always going to have the normal question and answer format episodes of the program i've got another one in production right now but sometimes there are conversations that i'd like to have and like you all to listen in on we did that with bart campolo and of course it was one of the most popular episodes we've ever done on the program so i'd like to do more of this over time although don't worry ask science mike will never be an interview show so before we get to the conversation and the guest that i'm so excited about this week do you want to let you know a couple of things and the first thing is a couple of friends and i are doing a science and faith and philosophy conference get together thing called the cosmic campfire the lineup is not announced yet tickets are not on sale yet so why am i telling you because you can sign up to be notified via email when the event happens to do that just go to cosmic campfire dot party i'm not kidding that's the website cosmiccampfire.party you can learn a little bit about what our vision is and sign up to be notified when tickets go on sale and when we are able to tell you who all is going to be there going to be in november in rally durham uh tons of fun i'm preemptively calling it saying it's going to be tons of fun of course july 27th i'm going to be at the skylight festival in ontario canada so if you'd like to see me there just go to asksciencemike.com click on the events button you can learn all about that event we'll have some more liturgical gatherings announced in the next couple of months but nothing to say there so mihi kimcourt is a presbyterian minister a phd student in religious studies at indiana university a mother to three and is married to another presbyterian minister her new book outside the lines how embracing queerness will transform your faith hit store shelves this week this book just came out it's absolutely incredible i think you should read it i think no matter where you are in your understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity and what how that relates to faith that this book will be illuminating and it will be helpful and it will be useful and it's also moving and well told so without further ado let's jump into my conversation with mihi about her new book outside the lines [Music] uh if you could just tell me what you want to make sure is in your bio and how you'd like me to introduce you miki kim court presbyterian minister phd student in religious studies at indiana university mother to three spouse to another presbyterian minister yeah that's pretty much it enneagram seven i don't know if that's helpful to some of your listeners my my audience is exactly split on loving and despising the enneagram oh man that sounds like our family it sounds like my marriage i prefer well actually no i'm split two when it comes to marvel versus dc now after seeing like the marvel movies i usually am more of a dc person but um i don't know the movies haven't been that great except for wonder woman wonder woman you know wonder woman was amazing but don't even bring a wonder woman because i'll we'll just spend the whole interview talking about wonder woman like i like that movie so much that when i hear that [Laughter] i get totally weepy too like i get really fired up and weepy and like all my kids love it and my um oldest son is um we've watched it a couple of times together my daughter hasn't sat through one whole sitting because she can't sit still for that long but yeah oh my gosh we love it i think it speaks to the the hunger in our culture for powerful women in story and in media yeah yeah which is actually a tremendous tremendous transition to you and this book i'm accused of uh frequent hyperbole and that's that's completely justified i'm very enthusiastic as a person but this is one of the most powerful things i've ever read and so all of you listening just just go ahead and be ready and be prepared i'm going to spend the duration of this interview trying to convince you to buy and read this book so just just buckle your seat belts this is one i think you should read and that i think is important uh i'd want to start with why this topic for a book and why right now at this moment in history you know queerness has has been something that i've um been thinking about for just a few years honestly so my family and i we moved to bloomington back in 2011 and it was shortly after we had just given birth to our first babies twins we'd moved here for andy's job he's also a presbyterian minister and i was a little lost and a little just uncertain about everything you know and so i think you can talk to any parent there's something super mentally and emotionally traumatic about that first child uh your whole world is totally turned upside down it's completely disorienting and so then we had moved to this new place and uh i decided that i wanted to make the most of where we were living which is in bloomington indiana home of indiana university which has i think this is what i've heard and i can't remember i can't verify it right now but i'm sure you could google it is the university that actually has the first gender studies department and they're also home to the kinsey institute which has done a ton of research around sexuality so i thought okay i can audit some classes while i'm trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life and while i'm raising these two babies and so i did and they were life-changing and transformative it was the first time i'd really delved into queer theory and queer of color theory and critique and some of the history around queerness not just in the u.s but what is happening globally and so it's interesting to see how it arises in different cultures and everything from the topic of marriage to identity to to drag theory everything around race and ethnicity and trans theory i mean just just everything so just a fire hydrant of information but these these classes and these seminars these conversations first of all i was super thankful and grateful that they allowed me to sit in on these conversations um but it was it felt like church to me every time i went um there was just something so liberating there was some some sort of message that kept on resonating with me and i realized that it was um a space that allowed me to claim a particular kind of identity it gave me permission to wrestle with some of those questions that i'd had as a child as a young person as somebody in college and in seminary but never wanted to broach didn't want to to even consider asking about my gender identity or about my sexual identity and so there was something about the season of life in terms of being a new mom and a new parent and struggling with a lot of questions about identity and vocation and not really having a space to reflect on that and then coming into this sort of very queer space and then being exposed to all these incredible theories and writing and conversations and then people who are really involved in an activist work around these these issues and then i finally realized okay i'm i can do this i can be this i for some reason this phrase keeps on coming up in the last um in the last couple of weeks but just just let's get free you know why don't we tell the stories and encourage the kind of spaces uh that allow for people to get free and to be more fully who they are to be more fully alive and to be more connected to who they are in their communities and so queerness did that for me and i really wanted to write a book for fortress that was academic and so i wrote a couple of chapters sent it to them and they were like nope this is not what we're looking for at all because they wanted to do this kind of trade uh line or series or whatever and so then i thought okay i think i need to do something i'm gonna have to confront some of these issues and questions a little bit more like in a personal sort of way and so this is this is sort of what came out like literally i came out through this writing um and discovered more about myself about my history um and more of the questions that sort of compel me to be alive and compel me to work and compel me to um be a part of communities that i feel like are working for justice um in the world so so queerness was was sort of the thing that blew open the doors for me and it always feels like it's irrelevant because it is the message about breaking boundaries and dissolving lines and categories and normative sort of definitions and giving people space to be themselves and figure out who they are so for the people who are listening to us right now there's a there's a lot of queer people and there's a lot of people who are maybe in the middle of a faith transition involving an exit from evangelicalism or they still identify as evangelicals but are wrestling with that theology so it's kind of a strange intersection that happens without science mike and there's other people who might have what i'd call very recently affirming so sometimes the last 12 months they've made a theological shift from being non-affirming to affirming and so some of these terms may be very new and not clear to them so would you uh mind maybe telling us a little bit about what you mean when you say queer when you say queer theory when you say drag theory so that uh you know everybody can kind of come along with us for the rest of the conversation yeah i mean queer theory really um probably i think scholars and activists began to kind of take a term that was super pejorative and negative sometime in the 80s took on this label that uh and trying to rehabilitate it and take it on as as a sort of mantle of not just reformation but like revolution and and so it definitely has more social and political connotations i think there was even a sense of wanting to address some of the other intersecting realities that are not always addressed when people are talking about lgbt issues or lesbian by uh gay transgendered sort of issues and so i mean there's just so much scholarship out there right now and it's super overwhelming but it's really wonderful you know it's really rich you know trans theory is anything that has to do with uh people who identify as transgendered drag theory um has any i talk a little bit about it in the book um thinking about it as a as a way to talk about vocation and and talk about specifically for me to think about what it was like to enter into the ministry and see i mean everything could be potentially read as queer everything from the vestments to the robes i sometimes joke with some of my episcopalian friends that if you really really want to be queer the best place and the funnest place to be is in the episcopalian denomination you know because the robes and the vestments and all the accessories are are amazing they're fantastic um the presbyterians are pretty boring we just have like the black robes and the tabs you know and the white collars once in a while and so so drag theory really comes out of more of a gender identity representation i mean sexuality is always going to be present in some form or another but to think about men usually cisgendered men who dress up as female presenting in really wonderful shows and really sort of provocative kind of shows and so there's there's great articles about what does that do to the representation of women and then just a sort of playful expression of what do we do with identity so i'm trying to just gloss that as much as possible so that people can look it up later but there's yeah there's so much there i i i feel like i would probably misrepresent it if i try to talk too much about it some those are some of the things that i try to hit on in the book because they were so provocative and useful for me in terms of thinking about my own life and what queerness does in my own life so this is a pretty not pretty it's deeply intimate as a book it's a coming out story and that's not even a story of how you came out it is the act of coming out like as an as a book which is incredible what was it like to be that open and vulnerable what was what was your emotional experience like over the arc of writing the book um it was hard i mean there were days where i felt like i couldn't do this because i i just didn't want to i didn't want to deal with the questions and the explanations and the justification um you know that i felt like we're sort of looming on the horizon um so even after the book did come out you know there were a lot of messages and emails concern about what this meant for me and what this meant for like my marriage and for my family and for my vocation i knew that that exposure was inevitable but i also didn't want to have to actually go through it um i felt like every time i i wanted to stop or kind of quit i just kept thinking about what it was like when i was a young person in elementary school in middle school or high school you know if i had one or two or three moments where i would have the space to be encouraged to ask the questions that i had in my brain about certain feelings you know whether it was about what i was wearing or how people were were were interacting with me um emotions i felt towards other girls towards boys that i i think that it would have made a difference you know it would have made a really big difference um in terms of some of the choices i did end up making that i felt like were to avoid those other those deeper questions and they ended up being you know that avoidance ends up being really kind of harmful you know so i kept you know thinking like okay this is important not just for myself but potentially could be meaningful and helpful for other people um and all my writing i feel like is super experimental and always in process like i feel like even after you know this is this is bound and it's here in my hands but i feel like oh my god there are so many things i wish i could go back and change or revise or fix and so i i think like all my writing um i hope all my writing is just one part of the conversation and if somebody else picks up the thread um then i'm so super happy about that you know like i i don't know like i mentioned that i feel like i'm uh i take on the label of being a blue collar writer someone was asking about that and i got that from another friend who's a musician out of nashville and she said that she called herself a blue collar musician and it's more about just like no i'm not going to be on a new york times bestsellers list or on oprah's book club it's just going to be like i'm going to be grinding it out every day because it's part of like my survival and it's part of what i need to make meaning in the world and make a difference not just to others but to myself so a lot of the writing really was you know writing myself into a deeper and more fuller existence and and i could feel that when i was um you know trying to put these different ideas together but you know there's always going to be whether it's people who are close to you or people who are strangers there's always going to be those moments where you know someone will ask a question in a certain way and you just think oh [ \_\_ ] what am i doing you know [Laughter] you know it's inevitable right that's also inevitable i think in general i can say i feel pretty happy like i vacillate between like i feel like i'm gonna throw up at any moment or um i feel pretty just like okay i did something it's gonna be out there i'm just gonna trust that uh god's spirit is in it because i was trying to be as authentic and faithful as possible in the writing um it's not perfect by any means i definitely um am still working out a lot of ideas in terms of all the stuff around queerness and purity and but you know these are lifelong projects right this is just one chapter it's not like my manifesto what is the reception been like i mean you're a minister you're a mom and i think maybe the the popular conception of coming out involves people maybe earlier in life or less attached or coming out later in life and that being destructive in relationships so what has what has the reception been like for you what's your experience been like yeah i mean i think in general people have been either sort of confused about just kind of what this means for my marriage or people have been really super affirming and excited and hopeful about um the kinds of conversations this maybe will open up um in terms of queerness and spirituality and theology and thinking really expansively about who god is in our lives and how that impacts our relationships and i think to the first point yeah it's been hard i mean just trying to navigate some of those conversations with andy and i've mentioned this a couple of times with different folks that he i think was super nervous and anxious in the beginning you know when i first you know came out to him and i began to ask and wonder and say like you know what is this going to mean for us as a married couple to identify as queer for you to be a cisgendered heterosexual man married to a queer woman and i know that there are folks in the queer community that don't think that it's queer enough you know for me to be identifying as queer and still um yeah i mean i totally claim like straight passing privilege for sure and i think passing is a very complicated and and can be sort of problematic um kind of kind of thing that we have to deal with and talk about but i think that's just a part of um just sort of the complexity of of these relationships and our identities so so we've we've talked about it and we continue to talk about it and what it does is it gives us it pushes us to think more creatively and honestly and intentionally about faithfulness what does it mean to be faithful in this way um and then again how do we orient ourselves to each other with this so honestly i mean like not that much has really changed i just obviously have crushes on a lot a lot more people kind of thing um to even like realize that um that attraction uh whether it's emotional or sexual or intellectual that that is always present and so that i think queerness at the very least has given us language to acknowledge that and then so what do we do with that and how do we deal with that in our marriage in a way that is respectful and holds up the dignity of each person in the relationship and we take it one situation at a time so it hasn't been pretty or easy for sure but it feels like i don't know i have like a much i mean i didn't expect this at all this is not this is not the script that was given to us you know when we first got married that this is what marriage would look like 15 years into it but i feel like i have a much better appreciation for the institution of marriage because of this i mean normally i would like [ \_\_ ] marriage marriage is just another state regulated um category and another way to prevent certain people from having certain benefits and privileges we base the patriarchy like the patriarchy is totally rooted in the institution of marriage and all that but i do feel like that there is something really hopeful and beautiful about the commitment that people make to one another and so you know we're trying to live that out every day right it's hard so hard i so reflect and experience that the last few years i've had this real crisis of how i relate to the institution of marriage like a deep-seated antipathy towards marriage institutionally especially in like a heterosexist context because of the complexity it creates for people navigating their identities which are fluid and change over time and adding this like heterosexual expectation monogamous government enforced institution like it doesn't just act as the foundation for patriarchy it also acts as like a straight jacket for people discovering and navigating who they are and so as you learn more about yourself because of the expectations of this institution that can have tremendous emotional fallout for your partner but at the same time i have that antipathy toward the institution i have this great affinity and affection for my particular marriage i actually i'm finding that i value my marriage more because i don't view it institutionally anymore i feel like as you said like this commitment this fidelity that we are entering volitionally and then continuing to choose to do so on an ongoing basis not to prop up a system but because it's something that works for for both of us but one thing i think is so important about your book and getting people to wrestle with queerness in the context of marriage and marriages that began with a cis-het sort of context is for marriage to survive and for marriage to be useful we've got to learn how to partner with people as people and not as expectations of identity that are culturally reinforced yeah oh i love that yeah that's why like there were parts of the book and i was reading you navigating this and it it brought me to tears i've always kind of self-identified as very like cis hat but i became aware of like the way that's like an oversimplified story of my life experience as i read your book like if you even in small ways begin to to to consider that and contemplate that for your spouse that can be boy that could just be terrifying yeah you know i'm a i'm an older man and i've talked about this publicly and and she's been in part of those conversations uh and i so i have relatively low libido and almost like i just sex this is not a thing i'm super interested in anymore yeah and so the the revolution of talking about queerness to being more open about sexuality creates a healthy conversation in my home about the role of sex in our relationship that would be impossible in a strict traditional heterosexual relationship dynamic where if the man is not the one who desires sex all the time he's not a man if the woman desires sex too often she's a [ \_\_ ] and and there's been this gift and i hope i hope you all are listening my straight cis listeners there's been this gift to straight people through the freeing work of queer people queer advocates and queer scholars like it's not just we don't participate in this revolution just for the benefit of people who have been marginalized because of their identity that freedom ends up opening things for all of us so that kind of sets up the next question i have for you why is it important for you to get people to consider a queer conception of god oh that's good um i think a lot of things were happening sort of at the same time just thinking about my identity thinking about marriage thinking about my faith you know i had when i was in seminary and after seminary you know like picking up all those uh liberation theologies and black theological um like uh this that sort of hermeneutical approach to reading the bible and um the even the womenist and the queer asian american feminist theologians um and i think that i mean i i'd pick up uh read really later in seminary marcella altas reads indecent theology and queer god and i use some of her work in the book as well um so she you know just super provocative but i think i wasn't ready at that point and i think in the last five years or so so like you know again strangely timed with the birth of the children five to seven years um i think i was longing for and hungry for a fresh encounter with god that wasn't um just rooted in these theological um perspectives that were very straight and heterosexual and you know for the most part white european not you know not counting the liberation theologies and the black theologies and that sort of thing but but there were still some really normative views around sexuality that still sort of grounded then our understanding and experience of who god is and so like to say that god is oriented towards us in a queer way in a loving way to me um starts to again dissolve all those boundaries all those sort of categories those containers and those boxes and i think that oh man the love god has for us is is even wilder and more capacious than i could even that i i've been imagining up to this point and so there was just again something about queerness that just kind of blew those doors wide open for me not just in terms of my identity and my relationships but understanding who god is and how god is god's posture toward us and so then all those stories in the new testament to read how jesus interacted with the canaanite woman or the this the cyrophonician woman um you know the woman who who came to him begging for healing jesus makes that snarky comment about um you know i care for the children of israel you know that sort of thing and so to see that interaction in terms of jesus and his queer interaction with her and then her even to read that in sort of this queer hermeneutical way felt like i was encountering who god was in a new way um and same thing with jesus with the woman at the well that whole i mean that whole interaction i just um just spending so much time with that with that passage and rethinking the possibility of who that woman was at that time and in that moment and then jesus said i mean every question was this sort of this kind of crashing through the boundaries um how is it that you are a jew asking me for a drink of water so all these questions around identity you know and so and that's where i think awareness i think is um also useful because it isn't just about gender and sexuality it's about race and ethnicity it's about economics it's about ability uh nationality all of that and so just that it's such a broad open space for people to play and experiment with i think is super super exciting 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