Hi, y'all, welcome to coming out pod. Okay, I'm almost surprised
that I have not yet gotten to this particular queer root. Shout out it
is. You'll be shocked to find out one that is close to my heart.
Shout out to you if your queer root is Piper Parabo, an actress
who unfortunately is a straight lady as far as I know. But Piper Parabou
has been in three movies that are extremely important to the queer community. They
are, of course, Coyote, Ugly Lost, and Delirious and imagine me
and you three very different films, but all just I don't know, really
really pivotal works. So yeah, shout out to you if Piper Parabo and
her canon of cinema played any part in your queer awakening. Folks, my
guest today has an absolutely gorgeous French name that I fear I am about to
butcher. Spoiler alert she is. She is, in fact French. She's
coming to us from Montreal. I am here today with author Julie del Port.
How did I know on that, Julie? Would you like to say
your beautiful French name for us? Juliet? Wow, I was really so
close. Yes, So if you are listening to this episode on the day
that it has come out, Wednesday the seventeenth, that means that just yesterday,
Tuesday the sixteenth, Julie's latest book is out and it is available for
sale. It is called Portrait of a Body and it is it's truly gorgeous.
We were talking off Mike and uh uh, Julie thinks that the best
you know way to describe the book in English is a graphic novel, but
I honestly don't even think that does it justice. It's uh. Julie has
done all of the illustrations in the book herself as well as the as the
writing, and it's it's truly, it's just really beautiful. I I loved
reading it. I was I was very moved by it. And yeah,
as someone who doesn't have a ton of experience reading graphic novels or books with
illustrations at all, I the the interplay between what you drew and and your
writing is just it's it's really powerful, truly gorgeous. Julie, is there
is there anything that that you want to say about the book before we sort
of dive into it all about about the form of the book. Maybe it's
a graphic novel and it's also a bit of poetry, a bit of essay.
So I say it's a queer book. Like the form of the book
is queer. It's between different genre. That's that's a perfect way to describe
it. Am I right? I know very little about Am I right?
That their colored pencil sketch the medium is it's it looks like colored pencil drugs,
if I'm right. Yes, yes, it is with like the kind
of colorp pencil we used to use when we were kids, except they are
a bit more fancy, you know, the one I use. But there
is something connected to children drawing very deep in what I do. Yeah,
I'm just I'm so excited to talk to you about as an author added illustrator.
But before we that, Julie, for the folks at home, how
do you identify? I identify as a lesbian, also as queer because it's
larger and I think more and more, I identify as a non binary person.
But it's pretty new. Actually, I'm still like, I'm still thinking
of it a lot, but yeah, still fluid a bit, but it's
around this and I'm always curious when I have guessed who's whose first language isn't
English? Is there is the word is like the English word queer used in
French or is there an equivalent French word? And then since pronouns are so
much more prominent in French, Spanish, Italian languages like that, how does
how do people's pronouns sort of? How does that all that work? In
French, we use the word queer like if it was a French word,
but some people would not know what it means because it's not a French world
at the beginning. I mean, once I wrote it on my Instagram and
my mother asked me what does that mean? Like she pronounced it like it
was a French word, But for the pronounce it's kind of tricky. I
think we use mostly there is a different pronounce that pronounce then you can use
to replace the e or the she. But the most common is yell,
which is a mix of ill and L. But some like the queer people
use it for sure, but the society is not ready yet for this pronoun.
It's pretty rare, and so that would be like a quiver and to
say them it sounds like, yeah, that's really all I love that.
That's cool. So it's like a combination of the male and female pronouns.
That's very cool. So okay, So Julie's book is essentially it is a
coming out story. So it's you know, it's impossible to I think,
to talk about one without the other. So we'll sort of weave the book
into our conversation. But yeah, in terms of your coming out story,
Julie, where does it all begin? Yeah, it's so complicated, I
mean the story, the story is so complicated. I think that I wanted
to write a book about it to find the real story. But well,
for me, it happened late. That's one of the things I'm talking about
the book. I mean, the concrete coming out was around thirty five years
old, which is not so old, but it felt so old for me
really, and yeah, like for a long time. Well, I grew
up in countries, in a village in the countryside in France. I mean
I never I don't think I saw a lesbian before I was maybe eighteen nineteen
at that time. On TV, we didn't see any I mean sure,
I remember just watching a French comedy very bad with all the stereo tips.
You don't want to see about butch so it was not an option really for
me. And then I grew up, and it's a letter that I started
to have friends who were queer, but maybe around twenty five years old,
and I remember I was just thinking one of my lesbian friend who is doing
comics too, and I was just thinking, she's so lucky. I wish
I was a lesbian. And it's all my story. It's like I was.
I started to make a book on Tove Jansen, my former book before
a Portrait of a Body. It's called this Woman's Work, and it's the
story. It's it's a story of I go to Finland to study Tove Jansen,
which is a Finnish author who wrote she invented the mooming creature. My
mom used to read me though, Oh yeah story, yeah when I was
little. Yeah, finn family movementarial was and I had no idea until I
read your book that she was queer. Yeah, so it was really exciting
to learn that the other day. Yeah, I I went to study and
wanted to write a book about her. And I started to read the all
the autobiography, well all the biographies were written about her life, and I
was just in love of her life. She was so independent, she would
camp on highlands and I want. It's the first time I remember. I
was with my therapist and I was talking about the way I wanted to be
like Tove Jansen, and it was like, oh, so she's your model,
like the idea of having a model, and I was okay, yes,
Like never before I had met a woman figure who I wanted really to
identify. So I discovered she's my model. And then I'm like, wait,
but she's a lesbian, so yeah, and all this there was like
something like I was tucked because I had this idea that if I was a
lesbian, I should fall in love deeply with someone, and all the stories
I've heard about letter in life lesbian, it was like, oh, and
I fall in love. I fell in love with this girl, but that
didn't happen. I just fell in love with lesbian in general. And yeah,
yeah, and I mean I'm not someone. I'm not someone like.
It's something I tried to explore in the book. Also, I'm not super
connected to my body and to my sexuality because of trauma and because of culture
and my family and everything. So yeah, I needed to open a way
so that desire come. It didn't come to me like that, I had
to make pace, and once I've made it, I was like, Okay,
this is it. Yeah, I'm so glad that you're talking about this,
and was equally glad to read about this in the book, because I
do think that the idea of realizing specifically that you are a lesbian, in
kind of queer folklore, it does get very glamorized as what you're saying,
where it's like you fall in love and it's like I never felt this way
before with men, and like, oh my god, my world has opened
up and I'm seeing the sun for the colors or brighter, like it is
very which is beautiful and which many people do feel, but not everybody,
and it doesn't have to be connected to a lot of later in life.
Lesbians, it is true, do realize because they fall in love with a
specific person and then in many cases that person ends up being their partner for
the rest of our life. That is definitely there is precedent for that,
but not everybody. And it's also I think that for some people who are
maybe realizing it just more generally or more slowly, it might feel you maybe
question it because you're like, well, I'm not feeling it as like fireworks
are glamorously as I've heard, Does that mean I'm not really a lesbian and
it's like no, everyone, Yeah, I do think we do sometimes have
a reverence for it that not everybody is going to feel. And it's still
totally valid to not like feel those flowery you know. Does that make sense?
I was just really glad to hear somebody talk about it in a more
sort of I don't know, I relate. I feel like, Okay,
that's a lot of what you were talking about. Yeah, yeah, in
terms of the well, first of all, have you always been an artist?
Did that sort of go hand in hand with your writing or how did
that evolve for you? I started to be an artist pretty late too.
I'm someone who is late in life. So I used to when I was
a kid, I used to not to draw, but to write a lot.
I wanted to be a writer, but it was not really like I
needed to find more a job. So I studied in journalism, but didn't
like the news so much. So yeah, and then I studied in cinema.
Maybe I wanted to be a teacher, I didn't know. And then
I studied to draw and write and to magazines and it became better at it,
and I felt that, Yeah, for a long time I was working
in bookstore and still doing books, but no, I can write and draw
full time. Yeah. God, that's incredible. Yeah, And I guess
my question about the drawings is, so some of them are very literal in
terms of what is being spoken about in the book. I love especially like
you draw, you know, like a little image from the movie Go Fish
like things that stuck out to you. But then some of the drawings are
a lot more abstract or it's like it's an image that maybe doesn't necessarily link
up directly with the text. And I'm wondering, how how did that as
somebody who doesn't draw, how did that work out? Is it just like
you felt like, ah, this paragraph wants me to draw starfish? I
don't know why. I just like, how did that happen? No,
I am. I wrote the text separately. Then Okay. Then I did
all the images like for for maybe two years in total to make the books.
And I did a lot of drawings, and I was trying to have
some fun enjoy while I was drawing, which is not easy all the time.
So then I told myself, Okay, you're gonna just draw whatever you
want to draw, and it happened to be a lot of things from nature.
I started to draw flowers, starfish, and I was working also my
text, and at some points I had a lot of drawings and my text
and I just did the mortage. Kat I would say yeah, yeah,
like an experimental movie a bit, and my text would be the voice over,
and you could see like these images, yeah are sometimes connected to the
text. Sometimes they are not, but they still give a mood like,
yeah, that's so you wrote all of the text first. That's so interesting.
Yeah, okay, I love knowing that. Not maybe not first it
was in the same time, but not like, for instance, the morning
I would draw for three hours and the afternoon I would do like some drawings,
but I didn't know which drawing would go with Oh gotcha, okay,
which part of the book? Yeah, that's very cool, And I love
how at the end of the book you, I think the right word is
you annotate all of the drawings, so you really explain what they all are
and what they mean. And it looks like a lot of them are based
on photographs. Yeah, are and are those photographs that you took that you
were actually like, yes, I was like several times during the time I
was doing the book, I was lucky to travel to some places by the
Salver or like different places in Quebec, and it was like a bit of
artists residency of just visiting friends. Uh, and I would take long walks
on on the near the river and to start to take details of what I
like from what I see. What I saw so like picture of alg ho
would you say seaweeds? Picture seaweeds? Yeah, yeah, you said better
than me, and these kind of things detail. So it's it's a bad
picture. It's just like reference when and then because I need to be more
well set up at my desk to draw. So then I would draw at
my desk looking at the little picture, try to the idea was like out
the the text was so so yeah, yeah, it was not easy to
find out to illustrate it, like I am, there's nothing really to there's
no That's what I was wondering. You just how you're just like feeling what
you want to. It's not it's not dictated. The text doesn't always dictate
the exact illustrations and more creates like a mood yeah like that. Yeah,
and it felt like there was a lot of like like water imagery, like
see imagery like you were just talking about. Yeah, so yeah, yeah,
And I didn't do it on purpose, but the more I was drawing
from details of nature, the more you could you could project some body parts
in the drawings, like you could see some skin or even some organs like
in the flower it's crazy, like you can see like some sexual organs.
Yeah for sure. Yeah. And then I didn't know her really, but
I discover Georgia O'Keeffe the people. Yeah, but you weren't doing that consciously
like you you found out. Yeah, so interesting. I thought it was
maybe like an homage to Georgia. No, that's so cool. I ended
up to draw drawing like an homage that I put it in the book because
when I discover her, I was like, oh my god, that's that's
what I'm trying to do. Like, I mean, yeah, drawing is
different, but that was the same. So cool. That's so cool.
Yeah. And another question that I had was, so I have a friend
right now who with her therapist, they do art therapy. And because you're
an artist and because you know your therapist does get mentioned in the book and
like dealing with trauma and healing all that is. Is art therapy something that
you ever did or are those things separate for you in terms of like,
yeah, I'm just curious, I never did the art therapy in my therapy,
sum how do you say that in my Road your Journey journey? Yes,
so I never did, like forma art therapy. Sure, but I
think I use my art, which is a professional way of doing art,
also as a therapy, like it's part of it. Yeah, it's not
less serious because it's therapeutical, but sure it's connected the Yeah. Yeah,
I feel like for anyone who's creative, it's sort of impossible not to process
through I mean, I think comedians process trauma and pain through their jokes.
I think obviously authors do it through their writing, and I think artists it'll
pop up even if you're not consciously doing it. But yeah, yeah,
I'm not that surprised. It seems like the therapist mentioned in the book was
not the greatest therapist in terms of the guidance. No, yeah, yeah,
I'm not saying im anymore good. I don't think you were. I
have a very good type. Now, yeah, I need therapy a lot
like this is something same. But I was a bit harsh with with him,
with this trapist who would with not with a bit of morphobic but without
knowing it or without Yeah, but because he helped me. It was also
a good Trappist for our years, and we know I expected maybe more.
And also it was not the good Okay, that's complicated, maybe to explain
approach for me, like it was an anactic, analytic, analytical, yeah,
analytical approach as opposed to a more sort of emotional yeah, and like
discovery yeah yeah, and yeah, I'm not into an a political therapy anymore.
It Yeah, it's true. I don't know. Sure, yeah,
No, I'm a huge therapy fan. The podcast is very pro therapy.
So I'm glad that you found somebody who is more. Uh. Yeah,
I didn't. I didn't love the his take on no yeah, yeah,
yeah, And so I don't know. In terms of being a I tend
to say later in life lesbian as opposed to late in life because exactly like
you said, thirty five is still it's still young. But I also want
to validate the fact that it feels like, oh I lost so much time,
or like it feels old but in the general scheme of things is not,
so I try to use the word later. Okay, so yeah,
that's just me personally. Late in life is the term. I just think,
like, thirty five is not even that late. I used to facilitate
a coming out workshop, and the first one I ever did, I had
a woman who was sixty five and her name was Anne, and so for
years I used to say, if you're not older than Anne, you're not
late in life, because Anne was sixty five. And that worked for a
number of years, and then one day someone raised their hand and was like,
I'm seventy and I was like, oh, yeah, you're late in
life. You get the title. But yeah, so do you want to
talk a little bit about since it wasn't directly connected to a person for you,
like we talked about and you just I love the way you describe it
in your book, just in terms of being sort of enamored with the concept
of lesbian even before you knew it was just like the cultural or I don't
know, there was something that do you want to talk about that? And
then meeting somebody as opposed to a lot of people meeting somebody and then having
to figure out all of the cultural elements. It's like you reverse engineered it
is I guess what we would call it. Okay, so what can what
can I say? But there's the things that I tell in the book.
There's described in the book. Honestly just read them. But I would there
was this well before, like when I allowed myself to to tell myself,
Okay, I think I might be a lesbian. I should try. Then
I was very conscious about, you know, not hurting anyone by trying,
like you know, that's I felt a shame of Hell, I'm thirty five
years old. I think I need to try because I think I'm a lesbian.
You know. That was not a comfortable position. But I had for
this time. I had so much crushes, Like I would just like,
yeah, some of these people, they still don't know it that I had
like huge crush on there and I had. At some point I had a
friend. I was talking about her about my doubts and my question and she
was, yeah, I have the same doubts, the same question. And
she told me, but I don't think I'm a lesbian because I don't the
world in French is erotic, eroticiz okay, gotcha? I don't eroticize women.
And then I was like, oh, well, I don't neiser,
but I don't really eroticize men easier. What I'm doing that is very naiva,
I don't know, disconnected, I think, And yeah, people have
different relationships to their bodies, and not everyone is going to feel this like
overwhelming lust for women and that's how they know they're lesbian. Like that's not
everybody. That's a lot of people, but it's not everybody. Yeah,
what I was So, it's so maybe there is like you know, I
don't have any official maybe that's close to I'm not on the spectrum, but
you know, maybe my brain has some particularities that makes the story like that.
And when she said that, like I remember I saw her maybe a
few years after. We were working face to face on our computer and she
made like a very simple movement and on our shoulder, so like just scratching
your shoulder, and I saw a shoulder and the shoulder was really nice,
and I was like, Okay, this is I think I'm doing it,
like isizing that part of our body you're around sizing her shoulder. I love
the way you describe that in the book because it is such a specific I
think it's so relatable, those tiny little moments that you remember so vividly,
where it's literally just someone like moving their shirt and you see like a little
bit of their shoulder and that just sticks in your mouth, like and that
clicks something like. I just I loved how you describe that. Yeah,
it's like I needed to be allowed to do that, or to be introduced
to the possibility of doing that. I don't know. Yeah, maybe I
was too like, yeah, I've been abused in my childhoods. That's part
of the book or so, and I think it's for me, it's very
important not to abuse anymore and to be respectful. And I'm it's it's not
like it's complicated also the concept I'm trying to say. But I think for
a long time, maybe I have struggled between maybe evoticization was too much connected
to abuse, or so I was just not going not going there something like
that. Maybe maybe it's one of the options of why, Yeah, that's
really it comes from a tragic place, but it's really lovely that you were
taking other people's feelings into account so much in terms of now wanting to hurt
anybody. That's just like really, that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I've read them during that moment. I've read a lot of books written
by queer women, and I also had friends who were queer, and I
heard so much about the story about them being hurted by aterosexual women who were
curious and played with them. And I don't know how much it happens,
but I was so cautious. I didn't want to do that. Love of
you, I wish everyone put that much care into all of that, not
just relationships where it's like maybe their first queer relationship, but I just wish
everyone put that much care into every interaction that they have. And for folks
who listen to the podcast a lot, they have certainly heard me say this
before, but maybe this is someone's first episode. So I my point of
view on that because as someone who does facilitate, like I said, coming
out workshops or just general social groups where people are newly out female identified people,
there is a really big fear about that from a lot of them because
we have heard that narrative not just in TV and film, although it's in
TV and film a lot, but in real life of somebody falling or getting
involved with a quote unquote straight woman, and then the woman quote unquote goes
back to men. And I'm not even going to broach the topic of bisexuality
pan sexuality. We've talked about that so much in past episodes, but I
will say, like, sure, there are some women who maybe they really
are straight and they just wanted to experiment, or maybe they are by but
they're like ninety five percent they lean more towards men, And no one should
ever be purposely playing with somebody's emotions or anything like that. All of that
being said, it hurts me that so many women in your position are scared
to try to discover things about themselves because they're so afraid of falling into that
narrative of the straight woman who breaks the heart of the poor lesbian. Like
it's just it is. And I always tell people like, you can be
as upfront about that as you like, a lot of people are like I
shouldn't say that I've never dated a woman before, or no one's gonna want
to date me, Like they'll they'll stay away from me. Some people do
have trauma with that and will not want to date somebody who's never been with
a woman before. But you want, you don't want to date those people.
They're not the right people for you because they have their own trauma and
that's okay. They're not bad people because of that, but that's not gonna
be a good match. I swear on my life though. There are so
many women who are okay with people, And if you're candid and you say
I haven't been with women before, they'll be like, thank you for letting
me know that that's okay, and they're not going to like storm out of
the restaurant, like, and those are the people that it's healthier for you
to be with anyways. So I just it hurts my heart when women are
afraid to quote unquote admit, especially if they're older, that they've never been
with a woman before, because they're scared that they're gonna like get these reactions
from lesbians, which are it does happen. But I promise there are a
lot of women out there who are understanding and they know that everyone has to
have a first time and some people have it a little bit later, and
like, I think as long as both parties are grown ups and communication and
honest with their feelings, then that can that can work. So I'm glad
that you talk about that in the book, because it's just it's so hard.
It's yeah, turky situation. It's a bit part of the why of
the book or so it's the to tell people who want to try yeah,
just try it, please, yes, exactly. Oh my god, how
are you supposed to know if you don't like it's just it's a catch twenty
two. It's yeah, And if you do things honestly and carefully, I
mean exactly, someone can Like, if you were a lesbian forever, you
could also break the art of another lesbian. I mean, that's what love
is. Oh my. I've been on so many rants about that, because
if a bisexual woman breaks a lesbian's heart, a lot of lesbians are like,
that's it. I'm never dating another bisexual woman ever again. But if
a lesbian breaks a lesbian heart, then ever, go, that's it.
I'm never dating another libera. It's like people break hearts. It sucks,
but it happens. And I do think there's a real double standard there in
terms of the fear of men in the patriarchy. It's like so ever looming.
Yeah, yeah, but I love the way you address that. Yeah,
I have it in myself too. I know that I was when I
started to have It's not very true actually, because I had crushes also on
women who were questioning like myself. But in terms of wanting wanting wanting to
be with a person in a relationship, I knew I wanted to be with
a lesbian because I so much wanted to be part of this world that it
was not as much I could have maybe fell in love with whoever, but
I was more attracted to But you know, it's bad, but we can't
help ourselves. Like a bisexual woman, I would have been less attracted.
That's terrible what I'm saying. But no, it's honest, that's okay.
Like I used to have my co host, Nicole, who used to it
she's better about talking than this about this that I am, But like she
was so good at speaking to the fact that, like we, we shouldn't
feel guilty about a fundamental thing like attraction as long as you're not blatantly being
biphobic two people. But if if your history and your experiences tend to make
you more attracted to lesbians, that's okay. I predominantly I'll balance you out
because I almost always date bisexual women. I am more attracted to bisexual women.
So I feel guilty about that for not being more attracted to lesbians.
So like we all carry this guilt that we're supposed to be equally attracted to
everybody and that's what inclusivity means, but like that's not how it really works.
Like attraction is this weird ethereal thing that we don't really understand. And
as long as we are treating people kindly and respectfully, it's okay. If
you're not equally attracted to every human being on the planet, Like, it's
just not a realistic model. And I think especially for someone who has a
lot of a lot of trauma with men in their past, Like, of
course, I think it makes sense that you would be more attracted to women
who have only been with women because it takes men out of the equation.
And oh yes, I mean I'm guessing, but like I don't think there
should be any guilt associated with feelings like that. Yeah, I needed valide
Can you say that in English? Like validation? I needed validition from the
queer community. I think that's why. And also it's all the it's I
feel like sometimes it's not it's not in terms of love and desire, it's
not women, but I like, if it's lesbian, it's the Yeah,
it's sure. There is a bit of that in the text of moniquviting about
not being like about the fact that women, no, lesbian are not women
because there are another category, another social interesting so all that subcategory. Yeah,
it's it talks to me with all the default that it does. It
talks to me a lot. Yeah. Sure, So you had had experiences
with women prior to meeting you're now partner. Because you were, you did
find people to explore it, and so I knew by the time you met
your partner you did feel solidly like, I know, I'm a lesbian and
I'm looking to enter into a relationship and all of that. Yeah. I
didn't feel confident because I had few experiences, not sure before, but but
I was sure that I wanted that. I mean, yeah, I was
like, Okay, this is it. Yeah. I think she didn't realize
at first I had so few experiences because I I told her but didn't really
insist on it because as we talked about it, I was ashamed, and
then she was. I think she was a bit like, Okay, that's
that's kind of a new thing for you like and but we actually was maybe
at some point of being afraid of that, but then we get along so
it kept on walking. Does in French? Is there any sort of label
like demi romantic? Is that or demi sexual? Is that something that feels
at all relevant to you? Or I'm just curious just because what we've talked
about in terms of not necessarily leading or the sexual feelings weren't necessarily the driving
force of you realizing that you were queer. I'm wondering if if there is
anything there perhaps what I wrote about the missexual but maybe I don't know it
so much. Is it's not It doesn't it doesn't seem to correspond to me
so much. Sure, curious, there is a probably and you can feel
it in the book. Something in my story who can be related to some
assexuality spectrum. Sure that's what. Yeah, Yeah, I don't feel the
need to identify to it so much because I'm more trying to dig to make
the difference between the trauma trouble like what comes from a trauma and it.
For me, it's very intense, it's very important this part of the thing.
And there is also the fact that as I was telling that I'm probably
a non binary. It's also I realize it because I'm really uncomfortable with some
part of my body and that doesn't help either in this in having like sexuality
yeah, which is yeah, I don't know, so I am Also I
think I try to what I try to say into the book. It's all
the culture, all the contemporary culture, of the modern culture, of the
liberated woman, the modern woman. But it's so much pressure. It was
really a blind spot. We said the expression in French blind spot when something
is good but you forget some part of it. So sexual liberals and great,
but put it it put it really a lot of pressure on young women
to be sexual, to be a great. So if you want to be
cool, if you want to be feminist, you need to be you need
to have a lot of libido, you need a lot of section drive.
I so agree with what you're saying. So I was just trying to copy
that when I was young, like to emulate myself to be in love with
boys and to have experiences, experiences, But I didn't find what I liked,
and I was there was a trauma before, and I think I added
more trauma being like that, like really, really really realizing it. So
no, I feel like my story makes more sense if I consider all this
and make it political. But in a way, it's sure that I can
also think of myself as on the a sexual spectrum. I don't know sure
if I explain it, well, you were explaining this to me perfectly,
and I feel like, honestly, I was asking that question as like a
clumsy way of getting to what you just spoke about, which is that.
And I am someone who, as far as I know, I've never had
any sort of sexual trauma or any abuse or anything in my past, but
I happen to, don't. I don't consider myself like an overtly sexual person.
I'm someone who maybe demi romantic or demisexual might make a little sense for
me. And I do feel like sometimes there is a pressure, even in
the queer female community. Oh yes, I do think there is a lot
of emphasis on sex and sexuality for all the reasons you're talking about, because
it's a reclamation of being repressed and of you know, of only being for
the male gaze and all of these things. And that's and that's great,
But I do think that sometimes those of us who whether it's because of trauma
or just because of our personality or whatever it is those of us who might
not feel like that sexual or like aren't into all of the different Like I
do feel sometimes like it's like is there, where's where's the place for me?
Like just a boring, vanilla kind of person. And I do.
And I just really like the way you talk about that in the book as
like, Yeah, I don't know, it really struck a chord with me
because I do sometimes feel a little out of my element or like not cool
in terms of all the focus on sex. And it's so funny because it's
like it's like why are we I feel like we're taking a little bit of
the patriarchy bit where the emphasis is on sections and putting it in lesbianism.
And it's like, no, don't do that. But but I also recognize
it's for some people that is very liberate. I just want there to be
space for all kinds of people. Yeah, And I just I don't know
how it's struck a chord. Yeah, I as as women are we we
work consider it's it's always wrong our relations our relationship with sexuality is always ye
are too much else It's like you what's the perfect balance of like, yeah,
but I feel like it can be Yeah, you can get side eye
of like not being sex positive and it's like no, no, no,
I'm fine with you doing it. I just might not like that might not
be me And like, is that okay? Am I still like cool and
progressive? Yeah? And I do. Yeah, don't know. That's something
I feel sometimes I feel out of my elements sometimes, yeah, and the
the Yeah, the spectrum is interesting. But the a sexual definition it would
say I have no sexual attraction for neither women or men, which is not
right. Actually yet I have just I have some sometimes a low sex drive.
But sure is it? Maybe maybe it's actually normal. Maybe it's just
because of fictions, the movies. Everything is so much based on sex and
because sex is cool, Rush, And I really agree with you. I
remember do you have okay Cupid and that do you know that in sight at
all? Yeah? I was. I was on it for a bit way
back. But I remember one of the questions that you could fill out was
like, like, my sex drive is lower than average, average, higher
than average, And every single person who, every woman whose profile I read,
said above average. And I was like, well, if everyone's is
above average, then that's just average, Like how can everybody be in love?
And it made me feel bad because I was like, well, then
do I have to put lower than average? If everyone saying above average?
Does that make it a curve? Like it was so Yeah, and it
made me feel like bad about myself. So it's just weird how sometimes we
inadvertently copy the things we're trying to get away from. Yeah, and I
just your book spoke to that so beautifully and I really appreciated that. Yeah.
Well, I just I cannot emphasize enough how beautiful for this book is,
just in terms of the writing and the illustrated It's just it's a really
gorgeous book. Yeah, I don't know. I was really moved by it.
I really recommend it. It is now available, So, yeah,
Julie, where can people find the book? Where can they find you?
If you'd like to be found, if you're on social media, you have
a website, anything like that that you want to that you want to plug.
I think you can find the book in every independent bookstore in the in
the anglophone world. You can. Just if it's not there, I think
you can order. You can ask the bookseller to order it for you.
And if you happen to be in New York City, I will be there
for a festival in March, the Moca FESTI is. That's what I can
say, and I'm there. I have an Instagram you can find there.
I'm not very active on it. I tend to sometimes remove it from my
phone, but you can still see throwing awesome. And what is your Instagram?
What's the handle the name of the Instagram. It's just it's my name.
It's Julie Delpot Okay, perfect, perfect with on the score at the
end. But you I'll put it in the in the show notes so that
people can find you. Yeah, and I'll put some information about where you
can. And the book is published by Drowning quite early. I don't know
if you if we have said yeah, no, I'll put I'll put all
of that in the show notes. Say okay, And as for me,
I am at Lauren Flans on Twitter, Lauren Underscore Flaws on Instagram. The
podcast is at coming Out Pod everywhere. The hashtag is hashtag coming out Pod.
Shout out to my incredible patrons, Thank you too. Carmel kaz Simone,
Cayenne, Michelle l Adri, Tanya Pooh, Tia, Kieran Smiley,
Aaron Mitchell, Diego Hernandez and beyond Clexa dot com. And also, if
you would like to help out the podcast for free, a really wonderful way
to do that is to rate it five stars. You can rate it on
either iTunes or Spotify, and on iTunes you can even write a little review
if you would like to. I think thats about it, Julie, this
has been such a pleasure. I'm so thank you also for doing this full
conversation in not your first language. Your English is a billion percent perfect.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You're greatly to meet you.
Thank you for Tony read my accents. Oh my god, you're gorgeous.
Act accent. Tolerating your accent. That is the most like modest way I've
ever a French person described their accent. No, thank you so much.
All right, y'all, I will see you next week. Bye,