Jun 24, 2026 · 1 hr 13 min · 14 segments
Proudly On Record sits down with Spencer, who is a non-binary lesbian, YouTuber, and community builder who grew up in a conservative Eastern European country where queerness wasn't visible or…
Yeah, for sure.
So I was born and raised in, I'm not going to say the name of the country because every time I do, if somebody born and raised in that country had a different experience than I do, God forbid.
That's very, very conservative.
So although my own family was not religious, the country as a whole was Orthodox religious to the point where it was mandated in school that you had to take religion as a class.
You had to pray in the morning.
There were pictures of saints on the back wall.
You had to stand up.
do a prayer every morning, do a prayer every time class ended.
It was like a really big deal if you didn't.
You couldn't graduate if you didn't participate in religious class.
So I didn't have religious trauma in my personal life.
But what's kind of interesting about growing up in a whole country that's conservative, as opposed to like... just a family or a community that's conservative, especially in a pre-modern internet era, is that you quite literally just don't know that certain things exist, like at all.
I went through life genuinely just not knowing that being gay was a thing that existed.
Like I did not know that it was a thing that existed, that it was an option, obviously, let alone being trans.
Like that was beyond me.
capability of understanding.
Like that was just not even in my peripheral of anything that I would ever understand.
And I think worse than that, there was culturally, there was a huge cultural mockery of anything that was even a little bit different.
People really made fun of it.
And there was a huge pressure to be with the in crowd, to not be the person that's being made fun of, to be the person that's making fun of others.
And there was no group of people that just chose not to participate in that at all.
It was either you made fun of other people or you were made fun of.
It was one or the other.
It's part of the reason why I'm actually not very connected to my culture anymore presently, because anytime I try, a lot of that cultural need to mock what's different comes out.
Yeah, for sure.
So I was born and raised in, I'm not going to say the name of the country because every time I do, if somebody born and raised in that country had a different experience than I do, God forbid.
That's very, very conservative.
So although my own family was not religious, the country as a whole was Orthodox religious to the point where it was mandated in school that you had to take religion as a class.
You had to pray in the morning.
There were pictures of saints on the back wall.
You had to stand up.
do a prayer every morning, do a prayer every time class ended.
It was like a really big deal if you didn't.
You couldn't graduate if you didn't participate in religious class.
So I didn't have religious trauma in my personal life.
But what's kind of interesting about growing up in a whole country that's conservative, as opposed to like... just a family or a community that's conservative, especially in a pre-modern internet era, is that you quite literally just don't know that certain things exist, like at all.
I went through life genuinely just not knowing that being gay was a thing that existed.
Like I did not know that it was a thing that existed, that it was an option, obviously, let alone being trans.
Like that was beyond me.
capability of understanding.
Like that was just not even in my peripheral of anything that I would ever understand.
And I think worse than that, there was culturally, there was a huge cultural mockery of anything that was even a little bit different.
People really made fun of it.
And there was a huge pressure to be with the in crowd, to not be the person that's being made fun of, to be the person that's making fun of others.
And there was no group of people that just chose not to participate in that at all.
It was either you made fun of other people or you were made fun of.
It was one or the other.
It's part of the reason why I'm actually not very connected to my culture anymore presently, because anytime I try, a lot of that cultural need to mock what's different comes out.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
