Beatriz "I know they called me a lesbian. They actually looked at me and said, oh, you are a lesbian. That just helped me bury it. And of course then after that I was over the top boy. Crazy. Partly because I was boy crazy, but also because I needed to show everybody that No, no, no, no, no. I wasn't a lesbian. I definitely liked boys." Carmen "How did this affect your mental health in those early years?" Beatriz "I hated myself. I mentioned I developed an eating disorder when I was 15. I wasn't diagnosed with anything, but I remember I ate quite a bit and I was overweight. I think now the therapist in me now thinks I was burying my feelings and I was eating my feelings."
Excerpt...
Beatriz
"I know they called me a lesbian. They actually looked at me and said, oh, you are a lesbian. That just helped me bury it. And of course then after that I was over the top boy. Crazy. Partly because I was boy crazy, but also because I needed to show everybody that No, no, no, no, no. I wasn't a lesbian. I definitely liked boys."
Carmen
"How did this affect your mental health in those early years?"
Beatriz
"I hated myself. I mentioned I developed an eating disorder when I was 15. I wasn't diagnosed with anything, but I remember I ate quite a bit and I was overweight. I think now the therapist in me now thinks I was burying my feelings and I was eating my feelings."
100LatinaBirthdays.com
100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It is made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women, the Community Memorial Foundation, and VNA Foundation. Mujeres Latinas en Acción is the series’ fiscal sponsor.
Carmen Marquez:
Hello and welcome to this special episode of 100 Latina Birthdays. I'm Carmen Marcus. We're breaking form with this one by capturing a conversation that addresses taboos and cultural hypocrisy among Latinos around gender identity. For this episode on queer identity among Latinas, I have the privilege of talking to Beatriz Rothstein, who has generously agreed to share her coming out story with us. Owning one's gender identity and sexual preferences can lead to a transformative discovery to experiencing a fluid sexual identity, emotional evolution, and painful isolation that often remains unspoken for decades or entire lives. Latinas are not exempt from these circumstances and due to cultural taboos and undercurrent of secret keeping among loved ones and expectations that put the individual second middle aged Latinas are finally feeling free enough to be their true selves. In this conversation, Beatriz gets candid about powerful transitions shaped by both her personal choices, family tensions and cultural expectations about needing to get away, about building a nurturing community and ultimately fully loving who she is. If this episode touches on sensitive topics for you, consider listening with a friend.
Carmen Marquez
Beatriz, thank you so much for your time. Tell me about your upbringing, your family, your mother, your father. What was it like growing up around them?
Beatriz Rothstein:
Growing up in Ohio was interesting to say the least. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, my father is actually the Rothstein, part of my name comes from my dad. He was born and raised in Colombia. However, he is the son of German Jewish immigrants that they immigrated to Colombia during the Holocaust, which is important to me. I consider my Jewish ethnic identity something important to me. My mother is from Colombia. She's born and raised in Colombia, grew up there, all of that, and my brother and I have talked about how growing up in the town that we did, we were essentially one of maybe three Latino families in the town that I grew up in. We didn't grow up in Kent. We grew up in a town that was next to Kent that was very conservative, very, very more right wing. And here we are, this these Latino Jewish kids going to Catholic school in STO, Ohio, and we had a hard time, I'll be honest, I'm in fifth grade and suddenly I'm hitting puberty and suddenly I'm getting a crush on my best friend who I haven't kept in touch with her, but I know that if she were to hear this podcast, she would freak out.
She has no idea that this app was going on for me. Maybe she suspected because her dad did not like me whatsoever, and I know it had nothing to do with me as a human being. It was because his daughter was friends with a little brown girl. I had this crush, but I buried it. I buried it, and I still also liked boys. I identify as queer and I think technically I'm bisexual or pansexual, but I just don't like either one of those terms, so I call myself queer, but I was burring this part of me that liked girls, even though I knew deep down that I wanted to explore this.
Carmen Marquez:
Take me back to a day in your house with your brother, with your parents. Did you notice your parents being conservative at home? What were those patterns? How did that look?
Beatriz Rothstein:
My dad is very intellectual and very leftist. I mean, we would, my dad and I still will sit down and talk about politics and talk about how crazy the world is and what we need to change. And my mom being more traditional Latina politically, she was still on that leftist spectrum, but socially she was still very conservative. I was taught as all Latinas, you stay a virgin until you're married. Forget about sexual orientation, forget about lesbians. We're not even a thing talked about. Yeah, don't even talk about being attracted to girls. And if anything, I would hear very negative things about the LGBT community. I just didn't feel safe coming out and sexuality was something that was a shameful thing that I just didn't feel comfortable. I mean, I was very curious about it, but any kind of exploration, was this scandal kind of like, no, no, no, no, no. We don't talk about sex. My mom was terrified I would become pregnant and we would talk about that all the time,
Carmen Marquez:
Like many Latina mothers. Was there a specific moment or conversation that made you start questioning these traditional cultural norms? Do you recall? I was this old. I was in a room. Do you have that moment?
Beatriz Rothstein:
I think actually it was high school. I went to a high school that it was Catholic, but it was run by Jesuits. They taught me to think. I remember distinctly being curious about LGBTQ issues. We had to, my junior year in high school, we had to write a term paper every quarter. I remember then researching homosexuality and looking at what it was and looking at arguments for and against it and coming to this conclusion of what's the issue here? And this describes my high school experience in a nutshell. The monk wrote down, this is what the Catholic church says about homosexuality. Very well thought out, very well researched, and I got an A and I was like, okay. At
Carmen Marquez:
What age did you start to express this conclusion that came to your mind?
Beatriz Rothstein:
So it started when I was 12 around just feminism, just because I was probably a little too smart for my own good. I just was kind of an instigator in the family, Cana who drove and I drove my mom. I know I drove my parents crazy with my questions. Oh my goodness.
Carmen Marquez:
I can imagine. Was your childhood outside of your home different? In our previous conversation you told, you kind of went through some bullying at school as a kid?
Beatriz Rothstein:
Yeah, mainly it was called ugly and weird. People would make fun of how I spoke. I spoke very fast. At the time I had undiagnosed A DHD and I was unmedicated, and so I would talk really fast. I was shy at school. I wasn't shy in Colombia or with my family, but school was a place where I just felt very insecure. The
Carmen Marquez:
Trevor Project found that Latina LGBTQ+ youth who feel their race ethnicity is an important part of who they are, have significantly lower odds of attempting suicide. Did being Latina help you in this way? Have you ever had ideas or?
Beatriz Rothstein:
I was very depressed as a teen, very, very depressed. This is actually, that was a very dark time of my life, especially when I was 15, 16 years old. I developed an eating disorder and I did try to end my life. And yeah, I did try to end my life mainly because I just didn't see that I didn't see a place for myself in the world. I didn't know that there was a whole world out there in the United States where there were other Latinos, that there were other people that looked like me where I would be celebrated.
Carmen Marquez:
So let's go into this part of when you found out, take me back to age 10 when you know had a crush with your best girlfriend. How did that look? You walked into the classroom, you always were hanging out with her. When did you find out? Where did you realize you had feelings for
Beatriz Rothstein:
Her? Well, I remember we were in recess, and I remember looking at her and wanting to kiss her and I was just like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't do that. That was a line that even in Colombia we didn't do. And for me, I was like, that's a line that we don't cross. Girls don't kiss other girls. I remember thinking, and I think though that the other kids saw the combination of me just being more physically affectionate than the other kids thinking, yeah, this is how it was in Colombia. What's wrong with doing it here?
Carmen Marquez:
Did you tell anyone?
Beatriz Rothstein:
No, no, no, no. I told absolutely no one. I saw this and I buried it because what ended up happening was boys kids saw this. I remember hearing lesbian was an insult in my school. I remember thinking, oh my God, could I be a lesbian? To me, what I heard about lesbians is they were these horrible people. They were bad. I was like, I'm not going to grow up. I wanted to have kids. I wanted to get married one day, and I thought, I'm never going to get married. I'm never going to have kids. I'm never going to live put on, and this is a 10-year-old thinking or 11-year-old, whatever. How old ever old I was. I'm not going to have a normal life.
Carmen Marquez:
So these kids, they never used any homophobic language towards you. It was just like,
Beatriz Rothstein:
Oh no, they called me a lesbian. They actually looked at me and said, oh, you are a lesbian. That just helped me bury it. And of course then after that I was over the top boy. Crazy. Partly because I was boy crazy, but also because I needed to show everybody that No, no, no, no, no. I wasn't a lesbian. I definitely liked boys.
Carmen Marquez:
How did this affect your mental health in those early years?
Beatriz Rothstein (11:27):
I hated myself. I mentioned I developed an eating disorder when I was 15. I wasn't diagnosed with anything, but I remember I ate quite a bit and I was overweight. I think now as a therapist in me now thinks I was burying my feelings and I was eating my feelings.
Carmen Marquez:
A 2023 Trevor Project found that 44% of Latina lgbtq plus youth had seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 16% had attempted it. Do you know how old you were when you first tried to hurt yourself?
Beatriz Rothstein:
I was 15. Did you try to change parts of yourself to fit in? Oh, totally. Again, what I was showing everybody was how boy crazy I was. I had a crush on a different boy every week and I would tell everybody about my crushes.
Carmen Marquez:
Was there someone who made you feel fully accepted?
Beatriz Rothstein:
Ironically, my religion teachers, the monks were very, very accepting. I remember one of them in parent-teacher conferences telling my dad that, well, I didn't fit in high school, that I just hadn't found my people, that I was just smarter than all the other kids kids and that I was much more critical thinker and that in college I would be fine, that I would find my people, which he was right, actually.
Carmen Marquez:
Did your parents know that you had this experience in school? They know that kids were picking on you?
Beatriz Rothstein:
No, they didn't. Well, I think they probably suspected something, but I never said anything because I felt very ashamed. I felt like somehow I was doing something wrong and somehow there was something wrong with me and I did not want anybody to know. Method.
Carmen Marquez:
At 23, you moved to Chicago and you come out as bisexual. Tell me about what prompted that life change,
Beatriz Rothstein:
Just being exposed to it. Just first of all, Chicago is very different than Ohio, obviously. I was in this urban area. I was seeing people who were bisexual. I was seeing lesbians and I was seeing how people were out about it, and it was just accepted even in the nineties. The other part of it, and this is so cliche, but it really had an effect on me, was in 1997, Ellen de DeGeneres came out on tv, which was a big deal, and I remember watching this show and I was like, oh my God. It just blew me away. And I remember thinking, alright, if she can come out. So did
Carmen Marquez:
You come out to your parents?
Beatriz Rothstein:
I didn't come out to them until my first real relationship, actually it was my ex-wife until when I was 28. I started dating my ex-wife and it became a serious relationship pretty quickly. And I just told my mom, this is a girlfriend. And she was like, no, I don't want to meet her. She can't come here. And I was like, well, then I don't want to come. And our relationship was very, very strained for many years after that, actually, until I got pregnant with my son. So it was about six years where we barely spoke to each other. What's proud of that? With his grandparents? With my parents, it's a little different. He gets along with my parents. My parents, although are just also very high achieving and they have very high expectations. I think he rolls his eyes because every time they talk to him, they want to know how his grades are and he's like, really? And I'm sure at Thanksgiving, well he goes, spends at Thanksgiving with my ex at Christmas, it's going to be about what college he's attending and financial aid, and it's a lot. He feels a lot of pressure.
Carmen Marquez:
Adult queer Latina women have the highest rates of depression, 35% among all Latina groups compared to 20% of non LGBTQ plus Latina women. Describe your initial impressions of being among fellow queer Latinos.
Beatriz Rothstein:
Oh my God. I was blown away. They talked like me. They spoke Spanish. They had similar experiences. They went to Latin America in the summers like I did, and I just felt like I was home in the late nineties, early two thousands. There was a group that, it was very, very revolutionary. It was called Amigos Latinas, which was, it was a social organization for Latina LBT Woman Tric.
Carmen Marquez:
Were talking about specific moments that exemplify the importance of community, a community that you found through queer Latinas in Chicago. Tell me a little bit about that.
Beatriz Rothstein:
I remember once going to a conference, it was something very, very specific for Latina lesbian and bi women who were working in the field of domestic violence. And I was like, oh my God, there's more of us. Oh my God. It was just so powerful.
Carmen Marquez:
A lot of women in middle age who are divorced end up coming out after and going into relationships with women. A 2018 analysis by the UCLA Williams Institute found that 36% of women in their forties in same sex partnerships were previously married to a man. That percentage increases with age rising to over 50% for women in their fifties. Do you see that in your circles?
Beatriz Rothstein:
It's funny. I see it. I see it with other people. I'm the opposite, but eventually I'm not. I was engaged to a guy in college, married a woman, got divorced from a woman, and now I'm in a relationship with a man. I did see it a lot when I was in Amiga, Latinas. There were a lot of women who had kids from heterosexual marriages. There was a woman who was a grandmother who was in a heterosexual marriage. And yeah, I do see it. I do believe that. I didn't realize it was as much as 50% after 50, but I believe it.
Carmen Marquez:
You were married to a woman for 17 years?
Beatriz Rothstein:
Yes. Well, we were together 17 years. We were married were we considered ourselves married for six years. I think we were legally married for about eight. But can you tell me about your relationship? Where were you in your life when you found her? We actually met through Amiga, Latinas actually. We met, we were both founding board members and we were both kind of like these little baby lesbians we were in. I was my late twenties, she was 30 and we were kind of the cute little couple, but at the time we had a lot in common. We were both activists, we were both organizing. It was a good marriage. I think that for myself at least, I outgrew the relationship, but there was a lot of just power differentials on both of our sides. Her parents completely accepted me. I mean, her parents passed away soon after we ended our marriage, but one of the things that I will always treasure about them is they accepted me as their daughter, her dad. I mean, I cry when I think about him because he was just so accepting and so warm and so wonderful towards me. And I remember being just kind of ashamed of my parents because they were the ultimate, they were joining PFLAG and his spine. They were just all into this, and here's my mom not wanting to even talk to me. We didn't talk to each other from the time I was 28 years old until I got pregnant when I was 34.
Carmen Marquez:
When you decide to get married, did you go into marriage with ideas of what marriage should be like?
Beatriz Rothstein:
Our marriage was a lot of us kind of figuring out what marriage meant to us versus doing what marriage is supposed to be like supposed to be. We didn't have models. We just kind of were like, yeah, we're having a baby together. And I was the one that happened to carry the baby just because I was healthier. I was more fertile. She had other healthcare issues and it would just be easier if I got pregnant versus her. She was the one that was up at 3:00 AM with our son more than me. Those kinds of things. We kind of figured out the roles in that way more on practicality, and we would joke that I was the guy in the relationship a lot. And so I think that now being in a heterosexual relationship, it can be jarring where my boyfriend will be like, well, yeah, I'm going to pay for dinner. And I'm like, well, why? I can pay. I make as much money as you do. I can. Well, yeah, I can pump my own gas, thank you very much. But it's also nice to have somebody pump my gas. I think I have a strong sense of what being equal in the relationship is.
Carmen Marquez:
Math. How did your ex-wife shape your understanding of love and intimacy?
Beatriz Rothstein:
I don't think that what we had was a healthy relationship. I remember we would argue about this particular thing where we would agree to do something, realize this is not what we wanted, and it would be like, and it'd be like so, and I had this very easy time being like, no, we're not doing that. And she was like, no. And that very submissive way of thinking.
Carmen Marquez:
After your marriage came to an end, you entered a new face and we spoke about it over the phone. Can you describe what this new period was
Beatriz Rothstein:
Like? I had to give some context. My ex-wife and I had a horrible sex life. Awful. That was one of the things that happened, and I had a lot of pent up sexual energy, and so I dated a lot of people. There was a lot of things that I kept trying to work on that just were never changed. One of them was around sexuality. For her, it was like, why is this a problem? But for me it was like, well, yeah, I want a sex life. But also I felt isolated from Latino lesbian communities and from the lesbian community that I was just kind of like, I don't even want to deal with women because they're a pain in the ass. I hear a lot of people my age talk about how they just wish they could just date women how they wish women, they wish they weren't heterosexual. And I always tell them what women are just as bad women can be worse, and I know it myself. We can be sneaky, we can be vicious. We can be very catty. We can be very manipulative. Men also, I mean no, gender has the monopoly on being assholes of being manipulative, of being abusive, and I feel like women, these lesbian relationships get almost seen as this ideal nirvana when it's like, no, they're not. We're a pain in the ass and I'm a pain in the ass. I own
Carmen Marquez:
It. It was after a casual dating season, you were in an almost 70 year relationship with a heterosexual man.
Beatriz Rothstein:
I was in a relationship with a polyamorous, heterosexual man. Yes, this guy broke my heart, absolutely broke my heart, and we're not friends. We don't, don't have any kind of relationship anymore. What happened was I was dating around and I got involved with this guy and I became one of the women that he was polyamorous, I'm sorry, married man, and I became one of the women he was dating, and our relationship lasted. I think that that relationship should have ended a long time ago. It was keeping me from really dating anybody else because I had him, I don't want to use names because I want to respect his privacy, but I had him, he was, I'm going to call him, I dunno, Nathan or Nate, whatever. I had Nathan, he was around. I would see him, I was texting with him. I would see him every couple months. It was great. It
Carmen Marquez:
Was pretty free, but very typical Latina with a long marriage followed by another long relationship.
Beatriz Rothstein:
Yeah, you know what? Yeah,
Beatriz Rothstein:
Basically. Yeah, I think that's what it was. I felt, I feel like I needed the security of feeling like I was in a relationship to not be in a relationship because I met Matt, my current boyfriend. Very soon after that relationship ended and it was almost like this relief, and it was funny because in my head I kept actually my own therapy. I was like, am I in a rebound? And it wasn't a rebound, it is just, I happened to meet him right after I got broken up with, and I think I was ready for it because had I met him six months earlier, I'd have been like, oh, he's too clingy. Oh, I don't want this. Oh, he's not Nate. And it's like, no, and the reality is this particular person, while as wonderful as he is, probably wasn't a good match for me. Whereas Matt's coming with me to meet my parents for Thanksgiving and he's going to fit right in. He understands his mom is Mexican, so he understands what Latinos are like. He understands that we have breakfast together and that mom makes breakfast. That whole rough and tumble of what a Latino family is like. So it sounds like you, you're living a relationship that you've kind of always wanted so far. Yeah. Granted, it's soon you've only been together five months. It is so far, I think what I've wanted, yeah, what I've always wanted actually.
Carmen Marquez:
What have been your biggest lessons in this journey to self-acceptance?
Beatriz Rothstein:
There's this joke that after 50 you just run out of fucks to give, and I think that I wish I would've run out of fucks when I was eight. You're going to piss off the same amount of people doing what you want and doing what you don't want. You might as well just do what you want and piss off the right people. One
Carmen Marquez:
Last thing, Beatriz, what would you say to a Latina who knows she's different, but fear is acting on
Beatriz Rothstein:
It? Do it. The kids are gone. Go do it. Go have fun. I'm five minutes away from being an empty nester. My son turns 18 in December. He will go away to college in next year. And this is fun. I mean, I always thought of fifties as old and it's not. We're still young. We're still, I feel like so much of my life is ahead of me that we got to take advantage of this time. Nobody tells you that your fifties are going to be really fun, that your fifties can be a time of traveling, of just doing something for yourself. Just enjoy this time.
Carmen Marquez:
Patrice, thank you so much for this conversation.
Beatriz Rothstein:
Thank you.
Carmen Marquez:
100 Latina birthdays is an original production of LWC studios. It is made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women, the Community Memorial Foundation and VNA Foundation. Mu Latinas is a serious fiscal sponsor. Jua is a series creator, executive producer and editor. This episode was reported by me, Carmen Marquez. Mixing and sound design by Florence Barrau-Adams. Fendall Fulton FactCheck it. Corey Duran is our marketing associate cover art by Ena Noriega. For more information resources, episode transcripts and Spanish translations, visit 100 latina birthdays.com. That's one zero zero latina birthdays.com. Follow us on Instagram, X and Facebook at 100 latina birthdays. 100 Latina birthdays is an open source podcast. We encourage you to use our episodes and supporting materials in your classrooms, organizations, and anywhere they can compliment your work and make an impact. You may rebroadcast parts of our entire episodes without permission. Just please drop us a line so we can keep track. Thank you for listening.