Hi everyone, Neil here, my preferred pronouns are he/him/his. I am just beginning my second semester at BMCC, having returned to education later in life. I grew up outside the city in northern New Jersey. I ended up dropping out of high school in my sophomore year to pursue a career as a ballet dancer. I spent a majority of my career dancing with Miami City Ballet, eventually retired at the age of 34 due to chronic injuries. I am tremendously thankful for my time as a dancer, I believe it gave me a sense discipline which I have carried through into my life after ballet. In the four years since I retired I have continued in a creative space. I mostly worked in commercial video production, predominantly producing content for ballet companies, Broadway, and other performing arts organizations. At the beginning of the pandemic, much of my production work dried up, allowing me to gain some space and perspective. I began to reevaluate my career and what I was contributing to society. I realized I wasn’t fulfilled, and felt that I wanted to help people, ultimately leading me to apply for my undergraduate in psychology in aim of becoming a therapist. 

My hope in taking this class (and really in most of the areas I am hoping to study) is to expand my knowledge in ways that will allow me to help my future patients. I would like to serve the queer community, largely because of my own struggles in finding health care providers, in all fields, who are of my community. There is a tremendous comfort and safety that comes from having that common ground, and allows you to cut through a lot of exposition to get to the root of your problem. In this regard I am looking forward to our studies on gender. I recognize that while I have a handle on areas that relate to my own personal experience, there are many issues/topics/experiences that I may fully never have considered, or at the very least would benefit from exploring more. I am most looking forward to engaging dialogues with you all as we make our way through this semester.

And if could recommend a podcast, it would be Cerebro for any X-Men fan. The X-Men have always been a metaphor for minority groups, or anyone who is “other”. The podcast is hosted by a gay literary agent who’s father was a writer for Marvel. In each episode, the host and a guest break down one character, frequently from a very queer perspective. Though writers weren’t allowed to explicitly have queer characters, they created a deep queer subtext. I highly recommend the Mystique (Raven) episode for analysis of the character’s gender fluidity and relationship with Destiny (Irene Adler).