Human Interest

Bend Bulletin: LGBTQ Community Warms to Carrying Guns

Published: April 1, 2017

When Trinity Rae Anderson pulled her Smith & Wesson Shield handgun from her waistband and trained her sight down its barrel, her fingernails’ sparkly pink and purple polish caught glints of sunlight. As she emptied the magazine at a target situated at Coyote Butte, southeast of Bend, the percussive pops blended with those of several other nearby shooters.

Anderson is one of the 13,202 Deschutes County residents who are licensed to carry a concealed firearm. As a transgender woman, she’s also a member of the LGBTQ community — the No. 1 target for hate crimes, according to the FBI — a group that is reportedly increasing its firepower.

“It only take that one bigot who can ruin my life or that of my children,” said Rae, 45, who is the mother of two daughters, ages 11 and 18. A former technical sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, Anderson said she began carrying a concealed handgun after retiring four years ago. Since she began transitioning in 2015, the Bend native said she has found Central Oregon to be “very accepting and accommodating,” although national attacks on the LGBTQ community, such as the 2016 massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orland — in which a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others — alerted her to the potential for hate-fueled, lethal violence anywhere.

“I would rather be prepared than sorry,” she said.

Attacks on sexual and gender minorities eclipse those on Jews; LGBTQ people are twice as likely as Blacks to be targeted, according to a New York Times analysis of the report. In 2016, 27 transgender Americans were murdered, making it the deadliest on record, according to GLAAD, a national LGBTQ watchdog group. In 2015, 21 were murdered.

“The victims of this violence are overwhelmingly transgender women of color, who live at the dangerous intersections of transphobia, racism, sexism and criminalization, which often lead to high rates of poverty, unemployment and homelessness,” according to GLAAD.

In Central Oregon, Sharon Preston, the president of the Central Oregon Shooting Sports Association and Ladies of Lead Group Therapy, a female-centered gun-safety organization, has noticed an uptick in gun training and ownership among the LGBTQ community in the past five years.

“There are so many people and reasons why they want to have a firearm,” said Preston, who taught about 2,000 people self-defense — mostly firearm training — last year through a variety of seminars.

“The saddest thing I see is people who, up until the point of brutality, the brutality of violence was purely academic to them and they could never even conceive needing a force-multiplier like a firearm to defend themselves,” Preston said. “And then it happens and they discover their vulnerabilities. We just believe in giving people the permission to survive.”

Jamie Bowman, the president of the Human Dignity Coalition, the Bend-based LGBTQ advocacy group that organizes Central Oregon Pride, said she hears from many local LGBTQ people who are fearful. Bowman said a “handful” of her LGBTQ friends have gotten guns; those who already had them, she said, keep them closer. Bowman doesn’t own guns, yet when a friend recently offered her one, she strongly considered it, she said. Bowman, a mother of three children under 10 — two of whom are transgender — ultimately declined the gun, fearing a potential accident in the home.

“But it would make me feel better to have some way to protect my kids,” she added. “People are just wanting to make sure they can defend themselves in case they run into anybody who thinks they can say or do whatever they would like to this person because they’re different. Before, it was kind of an underlying fear, but now that there (is) an increase in hate crimes ... there is a need to be able to defend yourself, even if it’s not the way you would like to go about it. I think people are desperate right now to feel safe in this climate where nobody really feels safe.”

Compounding the issue, Bowman said there is a lack of trust in police, particularly among people in the LGBTQ community and “especially if they’re intersectioned with being a person of color.”

The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office saw a spike in concealed firearm applications last year, when 4,252 residents applied. The number reflects a heightened interest in carrying a gun in one’s waistband, coat pocket or purse. In 2015, there were 2,900 applications; 2,732 applications in 2014; and 1,525 applications in 2013, The Bulletin previously reported. The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, which processes concealed firearm license applications, does not inquire about sexual orientation or LGBTQ status.

Nicki Stallard, a 57-year-old transgender woman, is a California-based spokesperson for Pink Pistols, an international LGBTQ self-defense organization with more than 50 national chapters, including one in Portland. Stallard said the core issue is self-defense as a fundamental, natural right and cited the increase in attacks against the transgender community. Firearms are effective self-defense tools, said Stallard, who completed her transition in 2007. She has never been attacked, but she’s not going to wait until it happens to take defensive measures. Stallard recently acquired a license to carry a concealed weapon — a .45-caliber pistol — because she’s “not fooling around.”

“What if you’re facing an attacker that is bigger than you, or what if you’re facing multiple attackers, or what if the attackers are armed?” Stallard said. “Certainly you want to have defensive tools that you know will at least put you on equal if not superior footing. While there is a growing tolerance among the American public (toward the LGBTQ community), the reality is, we still have individuals whose hearts are filled with hate. For whatever reason, they think we are subhuman and it’s OK to injure people of the LGBTQ community. … For many of these haters and bashers, it’s like a sport to them. You’re dealing with sociopathic people. You can’t reason with that.”

Anderson, the transgender Air Force veteran, echoed the sentiment.

“Being retired military, I have seen a lot of the worst people can do to each other,” said Anderson, whose duty has taken her to Iraq, Panama and Peru. “Being home and with my family, I wanted to be able and ready to protect them if I need to.”

After Anderson finished her shooting session at Coyote Butte, she reached into a rear pants pocket, where she’d kept a magazine filled with hollow-point, 9-millimeter bullets. She shoved the clip into her pistol with a click and returned it to her waistband holster, which she concealed with her Harley-Davidson hoodie.

“I never know what yahoos I might encounter,” she said, removing her hunting-themed ball cap and shaking loose her black and green-streaked hair. “If something had happened when I was shooting, I would have dropped my clip of target-shooting bullets and put in my ‘man-killing’ bullets. I don’t take any chances.”

Bend Bulletin: Asexual in Bend

Published: April 15, 2016

Marian Hansell has identified with masculinity for most of his life, even though he was born female. A couple of months ago, the transgender man had another realization: He’s asexual.

When the Central Oregon Community College student befriended a few people who identified as asexual at the college’s LGBTQ & Ally Club, he learned new terms: allosexuality, feeling sexual attraction toward others; and asexuality, possessing a very low or nonexistent attraction toward anyone.

“It’s like I didn’t know I needed glasses until my friend let me wear hers,” Hansell said with a laugh.

Gender and sex had long been distinct in his mind. His own asexuality, which was always there, has now become clear.

Asexuality is not a new sexual orientation. However, the identity has only recently been named in reference to a portion of the population. Additionally, the American Psychiatric Association, in its 2015 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, declassified asexuality as a hypoactive sexual disorder. The change acknowledged it’s a rare — but normal — designation.

There’s no consensus on the percentage of population in the United States or around the world who identify as asexual.

According to a 2004 report published in the Journal of Sex Research, an estimated 1 percent of Britain’s population considered themselves asexual at the time. However, the results aren’t satisfactorily conclusive. The survey data, a touchstone of researchers exploring the reach of the asexual community around the world as recently as 2013, is derived from surveys in the U.K. Researchers debate the accuracy of respondents’ answers since the survey was done in person as well as with questionnaires. Fresh research does not appear to have been conducted in the U.K. or in the U.S.

Soon after Hansell’s epiphany, he joined Bend’s Ace Meetup group. It was initiated by a 21-year-old woman named Katie in September. Katie, a COCC student and part-time medical worker, declined to give her last name. She wants to forge a community without broadcasting her Ace status.

Beaverton resident Sarah Neufeld, 34, who identifies as asexual, said she learned the sexual orientated existed just five years ago. Neufeld started a Portland Ace Meetup group in 2011 that now includes 239 members — some who drive from Central Oregon.

For many new members, it’s the first time they’ve met self-identifying Aces in person, she said via email.

Neufeld thinks there may be so little asexuality research because “it’s the easiest sexual orientation to camouflage.”

For any research that does exist, she gives credit to the Ace community becoming vocal, spreading awareness so others know they are not alone. Neufeld thinks the often-cited 1 percent statistic is accurate.

Katie reached out to Neufeld’s group to ask for advice on how to start her own.

The Bend Ace group has 16 members, although most are inactive. That’s not the case with Hansell, who recently sat with Katie at a local coffee shop.

Fast friends, the two swapped Ace stories. “Ace” is the phonetic first syllable of “asexual”; it’s also conveniently devoid of the word “sex.” They laughed with happy incredulity when the other echoed similar thoughts and experiences.

Invisibility

The pressing issue for Aces is a matter of visibility. The two members who talked to The Bulletin said they would have been spared a lot of grief and confusion if they’d sooner had the tools the Ace identity and vocabulary now grants them.

Each identifies with a distinct notch on the Ace spectrum. Katie is an asexual aromantic, meaning she “wants to live with a best friend forever. She registers platonic love but not romance. Hansell is an asexual biromantic — which means he’s “really down with holding hands, but that’s about it.”

Some Aces compare the act of having sex to performing a menial task, but they will do it to please a partner. For extreme asexuals, the idea of having sex or even kissing is repulsive, according to the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. AVEN counts 81,000 global members.

Coming-out stories

Hansell doesn’t want his parents to know he identifies as asexual, even though they were supportive when he told them he wanted to transition. Hansell began hormone-replacement therapy two months ago to become more masculine. While he said his parents would also accept his asexuality, he feared they might be disappointed — they want to be grandparents. He hopes his older sister will grant them that status.

Katie has read some Aces’ online accounts of coming out. She describes them as “horror stories.”

Some commenters reported being accused of not knowing what they were talking about because they’d never had sex.

“If you said to a gay person that they’re only gay because they haven’t met the right straight person, people would say that’s awful and homophobic,” Hansell said.

While Katie is adamant her parents wouldn’t disown her, she doesn’t want to have the conversation. “But who knows! They might have a good reaction,” she said.

Get in where you fit in

Hansell and Katie regularly attend COCC’s weekly LGBTQ & Ally Club, where they said they feel welcomed by members and Chris Rubio, the club’s faculty adviser and an associate English professor. While supportive, Rubio declined to comment for this story. She wrote in an email she knows little about the asexual community. She recommended Karen Roth, director of the COCC multicultural center. Roth said she’s familiar with the concept of asexuality, yet she’d not heard of the community’s Ace moniker and was glad to learn there is a local Ace Meetup group.

At COCC, Roth is a member of the school’s Safe Zone program, which connects LGBTQ students with supportive faculty. In hearing about Hansell’s asexual revelation, Roth said, “When you can find a group that reflects what you’ve been feeling, that is so self-affirming.”

Since Roth moved here 10 years ago, she’s been aware of strong local organizations that support LGBTQ community, including the local chapter of PFLAG, a pro-LGBTQ group that allies parents and friends, and the Human Dignity Coalition.

“I think for a while there has been recognition (of Aces) among LGBTQ advocates in our community,” she said. “Sexual orientation, gender identity are broad terms in which individuals express themselves.”

Another such group is Stars & Rainbows. Founded by Cliff Cook, the former Central Oregon Pride Festival director and current treasurer of the Human Dignity Coalition and secretary of the local PFLAG chapter, the group enjoys 757 members.

Cook said he’s very pleased that Hansell and Katie have been welcomed by the local LGBTQ community. When Cook moved to Bend 24 years ago, he was struck by a sense of tolerance of “people who are different,” even by the area’s more conservative population, the product of a “you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone — what you do (or don’t do) in your bedroom is up to you” brand of libertarianism.

Broader horizons

Hansell and Katie wonder where the other Aces are in Bend. If the study published in the Journal of Sex Research is accurate, roughly 800 Bendites may be asexual. And they may or may not be acquainted with the term.

Hansell and Katie, for separate reasons, are moving to Eugene later this year. Hansell has applied to the University of Oregon. Katie will continue working in the medical field while she contemplates further education.

There is not presently an Ace Meetup group in Eugene, but six Meetup users have indicated they’re interested in joining one, should someone take the initiative. Hansell and Katie said they will want to connect with Eugene Aces, though Katie says she’s a lousy leader who’s shy about holding meet-ups. For the sake of visibility, she wears a black ring on her right middle finger, the Ace community’s signifier. Hansell said he wants to get one for himself.

Bend Bulletin: Central Oregonians Love Trucker Hats. How Did They Get Here?

Published: Aug. 28, 2018

Foam and mesh-paneled trucker hats are everywhere in Bend. They’re perched on the heads of bike mechanics and marijuana dispensary clerks. They grace the brows of the wealthy Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van types and die-hard paddle boarders, shuttling their cattle dogs on the Deschutes River.

By accident or not, trucker hats’ ironclad — if technically adjustable — grip on Central Oregonians’ heads seems long lasting.

Gwen Duke, the co-owner of Style IQ, a personal stylist company in Bend, first noticed trucker hats in the area in the early 2000s on the heads of people in the music industry.

“From there it just grew,” Duke said. “Rockers and hipsters were wearing them, and then it became the norm. Now you see everyone across the board wearing them, even older people. It’s a better look than tight baseball caps. Fashion ­wise, I think trucker hats are here to stay.”

But how did trucker hats go from being promotional freebies that accompany agricultural products to becoming the unofficial rough-and-tumble cap of Central Oregon? Not everyone has the same answer.

“It’s a snowboard-skateboard-surf thing,” said Guy Young, who wore a mustard Boneyard Beer trucker hat during a recent visit to Tactics, a downtown board shop. Young, 49, has sported a trucker hat since 1991. But golfers are “starting to wear trucker hats now, too. They’ve become popular.”

Young has seen surfers wearing trucker hats bobbing in a lineup, waiting for a wave. The hats keep the sun off their faces, and the mesh dries quickly. Surfers customize their hats by adding a drawstring that goes under the chin, Young said. Growing up in Southern California, Young was a competitive surfer sponsored by Quiksilver, whose surf team was managed by the man who would soon found the brand Volcom, Young said.

“He put one on my head,” Young said, describing the all-white trucker hat with a black logo. “I said ‘Oh, my gosh, this is not the ball cap I’m used to wearing.’”

Beyond fitting his head well, Young likes that his trucker hats, which are stamped with logos, allowing him to represent his friends’ local businesses, such as Boneyard Beer and Phantom Farms, a marijuana operation.

“It’s all about who you want to represent,” Young said. “There are some really good companies out there, and I like to represent my friends.”

Indie rock credential

The trucker hat has surfed several channels to mainstream popularity, and Thomas Morton has followed the trend. Morton, a veteran writer and producer at Vice, a Brooklyn, New York-based media company, has dedicated his career to sifting through the world’s subcultures, including fashion.

Morton, 35, views trucker hats as a mix of working-­class, indie rock and tacky Hollywood excess.

Trucker hats’ earliest popular culture appearance Morton can pinpoint is Guns N’ Roses’ 1987 music video “Welcome to the Jungle.” In its opening scene, Axl Rose steps off a bus with a suitcase. He’s wearing a flannel shirt, a white Bob Seger trucker hat and chewing a long piece of grass. He’s playing up his prefame self as a country bumpkin who’s arrived in the big, bad city. At that time, the trucker hat had already solidified its symbolic place in America’s social strata.

In the 1983 book “Class: A Guide Through the American Status System,” author Paul Fussell refers to different clothing items tied to particular classes. He singles out the mesh-backed cap as a lower-class piece of fashion, Morton said.

“Fussell attaches particular significance to the fact that the trucker hat is adjustable. When you’re (traditionally) buying a hat, you want to find one that is your size and there are elements of tailoring to it,” Morton said. “To have something that is one-size-fits-all was very (proletariat) at the time.”

Morton grew up in an Atlanta suburb a short drive from Appalachia, where he first glimpsed trucker hats at 1990s monster truck rallies. Later, Morton noticed some of his favorite indie bands’ members and, soon, the fans, began wearing trucker hats and bootcut jeans.

“That’s why I think ­indie kids in the late ’90s, and then New York hipsters in the 2000s, get accused of working-­class affectation,” Morton said. “A lot of that originates from indie rock in that it was a dressed-down version of punk. People were experimenting with country and these once-verboten forms. And bands are touring — they’re constantly on the road. You know, you go into any truck stop and the first thing from the door is the little circular rack with all the hats. Those were kind of travel accessories, and they fit a certain aesthetic. They went well with a denim jacket; they looked good when they got dirty, and they were a subtle f--- you to the fact that a lot of kids interested in indie rock were middle-class suburban kids.”

But Morton doesn’t know exactly who is responsible for integrating trucker hats into the masses. It’s too easy to pin it on Ashton Kutcher for wearing them in L.A. in the early 2000s. After all, models wore trucker hats at Vice’s fashion show during the fall 2003 New York Fashion Week.

“That must have been the last year of trucker hats’ acceptability,” said Morton, who joined Vice in early 2004. By the next year, trucker hats were panned in the magazine’s notorious “Dos & Don’ts” fashion column, he said.

At some point in the aughts, $100 Von Dutch trucker hats became an indispensable, if gauche, status symbol.

“That was once the wave had crested, let’s say,” Morton said. “If you want an example of the classic, bogus trucker hat, Von Dutch is the go-to example. That’s when they broke the mainstream, became less a symbol of membership in the indie-rock community and more of a ‘poseur fashion.’”

Ventilate the underground

If a trucker hat is the mark of someone who doesn’t belong in New York City, there are other places where trucker hats never fell out of favor — the skateboard world.

Ryan Henry, the managing editor of San Francisco-based Thrasher skateboard magazine from 2000 to 2013, chalks up trucker hats’ enduring popularity to the skateboarders who grew up in the mountain and farming towns of Northern California.

“There was a certain time in the early ’90s when I noticed skaters from rural/backwoods areas co-opting the opposition — hicks — by wearing mesh caps, Wranglers and packing chaw,” Ryan said, adding that the opposite of the hip hop-inspired “fresh” aesthetic that was earning a place in skateboarding culture. Surfing and snowboarding followed suit, Henry said.

“Then girls started wearing them — kind of the cutest thing ever,” he said. “The deal was sealed.”

At Tactics, about 50 varieties of hats line the shelves. Trucker hats rub shoulders with crisp, cloth snapbacks and curved-brim, floppy-­crowned “dad hats.” But trucker hats are the rule. Tactics manager Adam Gerken has sold trucker hats throughout his various posts in the outdoors industry for 20 years. At Tactics, a best-selling hat is a shop-branded trucker with a badge depicting Mount Bachelor.

Aiden and Aaron Mc­Cormack, brothers and clad in overalls, consider the trucker hat a nonverbal way of expressing local belonging.

“Bend recently became a cool town, but it used to be an old logging town,” said Aiden, 17, and a senior at Summit High School. “I just feel like trucker hats are a piece of Bend’s history, like subconsciously. I don’t know if it’s specific to Bend, but the trucker hat is connected to the Pacific Northwest look.”

The McCormacks keep trucker hats in their cap rotation, which also includes vintage snapbacks.

“Trucker hats are the only other hat I can wear,” Aiden said. “They fit well, too, because they just sit on top of your head.”

But not everyone in Central Oregon loves the trucker hat.

On a recent evening, six long-haul semi-trucks idled outside the Madras Truck & Cafe. Sharon Kintrea worked the counter. She said truck drivers wear mesh-paneled caps about half the time.

“They wear all different kinds,” Kintrea said. “Some are rough and scruffy. Some are military or captain hats. One trucker came in wearing a fish hat. It had a fish head sticking out the front and a tail sticking out the back.”

In a nearby booth, Reno Hegler, 84, sat with his grandson, Jade, 25, and a friend. The elder Hegler wore a green cap with white mesh paneling. The logo for Stihl, a chainsaw maker, stretched across the crown and along the heavy-duty yellow suspenders he wore. Now mostly retired, Hegler worked as a timber trucker and lumberjack in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. He only became aware of trucker hats about three years ago.

“I got this one for free when I bought a chainsaw,” Hegler said. “Before, I only wore stocking caps. I didn’t like wearing hats with bills in my truck. If I looked over my shoulder it would bump against the window and go crooked. I’d get so disgusted, I’d fling it across the cab.”

And how does Hegler refer to his mesh-panel cap?

“I just call it ‘a hat,’” he said.