Ballroom historian, storyteller, and producer Sydney Baloue joins NatsHoney to trace the histories that get left out, and the people who refuse to disappear from them. From ballroom’s deep ties to sex work to the erasure of trans men and masculine people, Sydney challenges respectability politics and asks who actually gets a seat at the table.

They explore chosen family, Black culture, spirituality, and the importance of letting communities tell their own stories. Along the way, Sydney connects ballroom to generations of collective resistance and creativity, reminding us that liberation doesn’t happen through a single hero: it takes all hands on deck.

Watch/Listen as you read. 

*This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors.* *This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors.* Begin transcript after opening credits.

NatsHoney (00:04)
Hi everyone. Hi, everyone. Welcome to our recording for this month’s for YAS Podcast. Our guest Sydney is in the building. Before we get to anything, we’re going to intro our little doodad. My name is NatsHoney, and I will be your host today on Yes Podcast. Thank you for being here with us. Before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to remind you that Yes Podcast is produced by YesWork.

NatsHoney (00:32)
A nonprofit organization dedicated to changing public perception through media. If you love our podcast, please consider donating. Donations like yours keep this project going. Head to yeswork.org/slash donate. Today’s episode is about Sydney and all the wonderful things he is up to. And let me go ahead, Sydney, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Sydney Baloue (00:59)
Sure. well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be on the Yes podcast. I should have brought my little fans so I could clock that for for Pride and June teen today. yeah, I mean I wear so many hats. My name is Sydney Balou. My pronouns are he, him, his and girl. I always say that. So you could girl me. and yeah, I’m a storyteller, I’m a producer, T V writer.

Sydney Baloue (01:28)
and a historian of ballroom culture and yeah also a practitioner myself as a voger. So we can get into so many different things around all of that.

NatsHoney (01:39)
We’re gonna get into all of it. We’re gonna get into all of it. And first I want to tell everybody kind of like how our relationship came to be because I really feel like it ties into this interview. so we were introduced a few years ago during the circa festival, and I was working with stripper co-op. we brought they brought you into there were thinking of how could strippers and ballroom mesh and work together, and that was our first introduction, and now

NatsHoney (02:07)
Which leads me into my first question, okay, ’cause at that circa festival you had a documentary that laced me with so much information. I I couldn’t retain it all, but I knew it was I was stepping into a world that I knew nothing about and it correlated with sex workers so closely and I had never realized that before. So we’re gonna get

Sydney Baloue (02:29)
Mm.

NatsHoney (02:30)
into that at the very end. So every it’ll all tie in, everyone. I trust, trust, trust, trust. but first things first

NatsHoney (02:37)
Recently I saw you at International Horr Day along with Stripper Co-op and a few other organizations like Strippers United and you were hosting. Please

Sydney Baloue (02:47)
Yeah, it’s

NatsHoney (02:48)
tell me what was that experience like for you?

Sydney Baloue (02:51)
it was so amazing. this was an event held by the One Institute, the LGBT Center, Stripper Worker Center with Antonia Crane and Kayla Tong, aka Coco Ono, and of course Tony Venezuela, the One Institute. basically just like held the first first International Horse Day event for the One Institute, also for the LGBT Center, which is kind of crazy when you think about it, because it’s like

Sydney Baloue (03:21)
Hello, sex work and queer life and history that have always kind of gone hand in hand, but that’s a cop that’s a topic we could get into. and yeah, I was doing not only social media work for them as far as promotion, but Antonia was so kind enough to reach out to me to ask if I could host that event. And basically it was we held it at the LGBT center here in LA, where the Rembberg Theater is.

Sydney Baloue (03:47)
There was a an incredible keynote speech from Sydney Rogers. We had an incredible panel of folks who do not only sex worker advocacy, but people who are sex workers. again, just like talking about what life is like from the ground and also talking about the real issues from a you know very real first person perspective. And we had some incredible performances. We had a drag performance from Miley Key Fawcett. We also had

Sydney Baloue (04:16)
Farah who did this incredible poll, my god, performance. She absolutely slayed, like everybody was incredible. and it brought together all the folks who do incredible advocacy work around sex work, ’cause there were a lot of different organizations tabling. And, you know, I think it was just a day that was so powerful to kind of kick off pride. It was on June second and

Sydney Baloue (04:38)
We got to just again really center the people who are the most vulnerable in the world right now and who are especially vulnerable in the LGBTQ community, which are sex workers.

NatsHoney (04:49)
Is that what the day means to you? Like for International Horrors Day, what does that day like represent to you? Is it exactly what happened? do you see something else? Like what does it mean what does it mean for you?

Sydney Baloue (05:00)
You know, it’s so powerful because I have to admit, I you know, how do I say this? International Wards Day, like when I learned the history of it, you know, that it started out with literally hundreds of sex workers in France in Lyon in nineteen seventy-five, who stormed a church and really fought back. I mean, it really centers the the conversation about what it means to have human rights, human dignity.

Sydney Baloue (05:28)
to, you know, live a life without shame and really to demand that. And it’s kind of interesting that like, you know, one, this is like one of the first time for the center and, you know, for the one institute to do something like this. And it kind of speaks to, I think, the conversation in the LGBTQ community, which has been, there’s always been this tension between respectability politics and those of us who are on the fringes or on the outside.

Sydney Baloue (05:56)
And in many ways, this is even kind of the conversation right now about like the gays and the lesbians versus trans and non-binary folks who have, you know, often more often than not been left out because we are seen as less respectable. And when I think of the origin of pride, you know, and the famous moment where Sylvia Rivera at the Gay Liberation Front in New York City s takes the mic and reads the shit out of everybody, right? She says, you know, liz it up, you faggot.

Sydney Baloue (06:25)
Right. She was like, I’ve been raped. I’ve, you know, these things have happened to me. And she really was calling attention to like, hello, you all lost the fucking plot that this movement was about, you know, really sticking up for people who are vulnerable because she was a street worker, Marcia’s a street worker, so many people in the community were people who are poor, who are black, who are brown, who are undocumented, again, who are people who are the most vulnerable who are sex workers.

Sydney Baloue (06:54)
and they didn’t fit into this model of, you know, assimilation into society in a certain way. And, you know, it’s not because necessarily people weren’t trying, it’s also just like people were left out. The the movement became about white cis, you know, heteronormative gay men. And we see the effects or the sort of legacy of that of as far as like who has gotten a front row seat at the table. So to bring it back to International Horse Day, it’s really

Sydney Baloue (07:24)
I thought it was really powerful, especially for a first time event. This was the largest attended event for the One Institute. We had 200 people, apparently that was the official tally, show up. It was their biggest attended event ever, which says volumes and also speaks volumes to Kayla and Antonia. you know, their kind of community organizing and commitment to community because a lot of the folks that they’ve built enormous relationships with have were there.

Sydney Baloue (07:52)
but I think it also, you know, again, really highlights kind of like, well, what is pride actually supposed to be about? Again, this question of like who are the people who are on the front lines or often still on the front lines who are speaking up. and I I personally think like we’ve been hearing more of this conversation in the LGBTQ community. Like, for example, I think about this incredible movie that my friend Zachary Drecker did a couple of years ago called The Stroll, which was about the history of

Sydney Baloue (08:21)
14th Street in New York City, which was a a location in the meatpacking district where a lot of trans women who were sex workers worked for decades in New York. And what was nice about the documentary, it’s on HBO, you know, you can stream it. number one, it was co-directed by a black trans woman who like actually worked on the stroll. So again, it was like putting the narrative back in the you know perspective of.

Sydney Baloue (08:50)
somebody who’s actually lived it and done it. and

NatsHoney (08:52)
Mm.

Sydney Baloue (08:53)
two, it’s like they talked to people who were part of that community who were there, you know. and you see in the documentary how, you know, through the decades, right, it’s like who ends up getting their rights, who ends up, you know, it’s like when the gay marriage discussion or gay adoption was being discussed like, you know, 15, what, 20 years ago,

Sydney Baloue (09:16)
I I always remember the conversation was like, okay, what about trans folks? What about black folks? What about poor people? Like, who is this stuff actually for? So I feel like International Horrors Day for me was not only like a way to support my friends who are sex workers and then really you know, learn more too for myself, because it’s not necessarily an area that I’m especially well versed in.

Sydney Baloue (09:41)
but it was also a way to really recenter the conversation around, you know, what is pride about in a way, you know, because if if pride is about, you know, being proud of ourselves and, you know, taking off the stigma and there’s been all this, you know, progress in certain ways, it’s kind of like, okay, yeah, where are we falling short? And to me, that conversation right now in 2026, like a large portion of that has to do with sex work.

NatsHoney (10:10)
I love that. Thank you. Yes. I feel like I need to learn more about what you’re doing. if you wanted to learn more about what I’m doing, that’s how we continue to make bridges and things will continuously get better. I absolutely love that. Now you mentioned marginalized people being left out. And I know that when it comes to history, that’s something that we’re continuously fighting. But you yourself are identified as a historian. Like, how did you fall into that? Like what tell me more about that.

Sydney Baloue (10:40)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, so, you know, with my history of the many things that I do, I’m a ballroom historian. So I’ve been in the ballroom community now for fourteen years. my journey started in Europe. I was living in Berlin, Paris and London and I got involved in ballroom there, started walking balls, joined a house. When I lived in London I used to throw balls, I used to DJ as well in the community and then I moved to New York.

Sydney Baloue (11:08)
And also it was, you know, hosting balls, walking, you know, winning trophies, all of that kind of stuff, voguing. And from there I really it was actually when I was in London I started doing oral histories with members of the community, with elders in the scene. because I was really afraid about like losing these really important stories, you know, just kind of like what will happen, you know, when people pass away, ’cause they are the carriers of the knowledge really. And a lot of this stuff is

NatsHoney (11:37)
Lost so many

NatsHoney (11:38)
stories because of that. So yeah.

Sydney Baloue (11:40)
Exactly, exactly. And so I started doing oral histories as part of my master’s thesis, and that has evolved into this book that I’m working on today. but in between that time, it’s like I’ve written articles about ballroom for publications like the New York Times, Vice, Them. and I also worked on a show called Legendary w for two seasons and I was a coexecutive producer on there, sort of like

Sydney Baloue (12:10)
translating this knowledge to the screen. but I sold this book four years ago and I’ve been working on it. I got a lot of a grant for the New York Public Library and have been digging into their archives. And so for me, this question around sex work, it really obviously is like central to the narrative around ballroom history because ballroom was started by trans women mainly. there were also, you know,

Sydney Baloue (12:38)
What we would consider male impersonators or drag kings, possibly trans men by today’s definition, but some of this gets complicated. but a lot of the you know folks who were doing this stuff were you know, people who were sex workers. and so there’s a very large portion of the history that is like deeply informed by the trans women who were, you know, doing sex work in different forms. And

Sydney Baloue (13:05)
There’s a whole history of that too, specifically related to ballroom as it relates to New York City. And in a number of my interviews that I collected, it was really beautiful to hear these stories of trans women who, you know, especially trans women of color who helped shape the culture and history and were telling me about, you know, what that was like in New York City in the nineteen eighties and nineties, you know, and even two thousands to some extent. yeah.

NatsHoney (13:32)
Was there a lot of time before the nineteen eighties that ballroom existed? And if so, like what did that look like? Like, how far back are we talking?

Sydney Baloue (13:40)
Yeah, so you know, for context, Balm has been around for like over a hundred years. really it started in the nineteenth century with fraternal societies in New York City. basically they used to host these masquerade balls in New York and they were fundraisers. And because it’s a masquerade ball, that means that people could cross dress and kind of get away with it. so what ended up happening, it’s like you would have people cross dressing

Sydney Baloue (14:08)
And this started to become part of the interest for middle class people. Cause if you think about it, this is like kind of, you know, Victorian era, Edwardian era, sort of, you know, button up type people who are, you know, can’t even show an ankle, let alone wear a decadent gown and a wig. but that’s the kind of magic of a ball, is that it’s it’s this free space where you can be who you want to be, especially if it’s a masquerade ball.

Sydney Baloue (14:36)
Now, the thing is in New York, they’re the most prominent of this one of these fraternal societies, or black one, was called the Hamilton Lodge. And so they were based in Harlem, and they, you know, like these other organizations, hosted a really famous ball that grew in popularity. So by the early 20th century, they were known as like the biggest ball in New York City. And people would come from all over to go to this event.

Sydney Baloue (15:06)
And you know, really it was like a whole dinner soaree. You know, you’d have like live music, dancing, and then at the end of the night there would be what they call the Grand March, where you would have the most decadent queens and kings march, and you know, eventually there were like judges who would judge, okay, who’s the most beautiful queen or who’s the queen of the ball, who’s the king of the ball. and this tradition, it’s you know, it’s gone through so many phases, but it lasted, you know, through the twentieth century, right? Like

Sydney Baloue (15:35)
Basically, really in the nineteen thirties is what what we have what’s called the pansy craze, which is really just like there were other balls being held, like smaller functions throughout the city, and the appearance of queer people sort of started to become visible. And so it’s interesting because in a lot of ways it created heterosexuality because before then there was no term for like homosexuality. So

NatsHoney (16:00)
Paul.

Sydney Baloue (16:01)
there was, you know, kind of this moment of like, wow, there’s an option. There’s something else that you can do or be. And a lot of like gays and lesbians started hosting their own balls. in Harlem, there was this guy who he started hosting his own functions, Phil Black. He was kind of like a precursor to RuPaul in a way, where he was like this prominent black drag queen who co-hosted the biggest ball in New York with

Sydney Baloue (16:28)
the Hamilton Lodge and called the Funmakers Ball. And it was like an event that was right before Thanksgiving Day or like the the night before. so what ends up happening is kind of this tradition of like events where people would, you know, transgress gender lines started to grow

NatsHoney (16:47)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (16:48)
and then it became a competition circle within itself. So by the 1960s, this is where we have

Sydney Baloue (16:56)
really like a kind of watershed moment where in New York there’s other forms of like, you know, competition or sort of like transness that’s appearing in different ways. But really the ball competition circle starts to emerge where we end up having people who were competitors, they start grouping off to have their own kind of clicks. And by the 70s, all those competitors who competed in that scene

Sydney Baloue (17:23)
they start hosting their own functions. And the the thing was by the 70s, these were mainly like black and Latina trans women or, you know, in some cases people who did drag, maybe still identified as a man, but you know, would basically be what we would consider drag. they hosted their own functions. And so the first of them really like who’s the prominent mother who emerges is Crystal Labeja.

Sydney Baloue (17:50)
And there’s a documentary that you can watch where she’s featured called The Queen that came out in nineteen sixty-eight. And you’ll see there’s like kind of this pageant version of a ball that she competes at. And she was somebody who had a following of like other trans women who passed who were beautiful. because La Beja basically it’s like a bastardization of Spanish. There’s a lot of origin stories to her name. La Bella, you know, said with like a Puerto Rican accent could be the beautiful.

Sydney Baloue (18:19)
but then there’s also this story that like she was so exotic looking, they called her La Asia, so La Asia turned into La Beja. Either way, like the story goes that she had a group of people who are trans women who are beautiful, who were the beauties, and because if you hung out with Crystal, you were. And eventually their house ends up being kind of like the first house of ballroom, which was kind of like a chosen family. And

Sydney Baloue (18:45)
at the balls this started to grow where there were other houses that started to merge, other people creating them. And basically they would compete at these events again in Harlem where they would win trophies and cash prizes for a variety of categories that related to like fashion or, you know, their own beauty standards like face or realness,

NatsHoney (19:05)
Right.

Sydney Baloue (19:06)
which is about like being able to pass as like a cis person if you’re trans or pass a straight if you’re gay.

Sydney Baloue (19:14)
but really the origin story is like the community was started by the mothers, and these were all people who were former competitors of that ballroom scene in like the fifties and sixties. So if you’ve ever seen the documentary Paris is burning,

NatsHoney (19:30)
Mm.

Sydney Baloue (19:30)
it’s the mothers of that movie. So Dorian Corey, who is interviewed, Avis Pandarvis has like a minor appearance, but she’s one of the mothers of the scene.

Sydney Baloue (19:39)
Pepper Labeja is also considered a mother in many ways, even though she comes later after Crystal.

NatsHoney (19:45)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (19:46)
but another person who is really important and probably one of the most important people is Paris Dupree. And Paris Dupree is the person for whom Paris is Burning was named because that was the name of her ball she used to throw in New York City. Her annual

NatsHoney (20:00)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (20:00)
ball was called Paris is Burning. And so, like,

Sydney Baloue (20:03)
When you see the movie, it’s actually it’s shot over two summers, nineteen eighty-seven and nineteen eighty nine. And basically, it’s like I forgot what volume it is, but it’s like you know, like volume seven or whatever. Paris is burning. So it’s just like the seventh year that she was doing like the the ball. But she’s important because she’s the one who c who’s really considered kind of like the founder of Vogang, really. and there’s

NatsHoney (20:29)
Mm.

Sydney Baloue (20:30)
a whole

Sydney Baloue (20:31)
History and lore I can get to around that too, but I don’t want to tuck your ear off.

NatsHoney (20:34)
There’s layers to it.

NatsHoney (20:35)
I like not I like it, I love it. There’s layers to it. There’s layers and there’s

Sydney Baloue (20:38)
Ya.

NatsHoney (20:39)
people and sometimes some of the names that you’re saying, some of the images are popping up in my head and I’m like, That’s right,

Sydney Baloue (20:46)
Yeah.

NatsHoney (20:47)
that’s right. So I’m gonna after we finish this recording, once it’s released, I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna take take paper and pen. I’m gonna write down everyone I need to research ’cause I definitely want to put more faces with names and understand everything on a deeper level. Like it’s

NatsHoney (21:03)
It’s quite magical. Sounds like community. Sounds like fun.

Sydney Baloue (21:07)
Yeah.

NatsHoney (21:08)
Sounds like inclusion. And for me, especially for the the last thing we were talking about, Paris is burning like the 80s is a is a very it can be looked at as somewhat dark. So it’d be really interesting to see that light on display, and on full display. That would be great to see.

Sydney Baloue (21:26)
Yeah.

NatsHoney (21:27)
yeah, so one of the other things like you

NatsHoney (21:30)
You mentioned it a little bit earlier when it comes to trans visibility.

Sydney Baloue (21:35)
Mm.

NatsHoney (21:36)
Вот <unk>сіа<unk> лай.

NatsHoney (21:41)
What is the biggest obstacle right now being trans and existing? I I know the list is probably very, very, very, very, very, very long. What’s

Sydney Baloue (21:52)
Mm.

NatsHoney (21:53)
the biggest one for you? What do you feel like is the biggest obstacle right now?

Sydney Baloue (21:57)
Ooh, well, I mean, it’s so it’s so interesting because I think sometimes when folks talk about trans, their immediate thought is trans women. and that’s for better or for worse, because in some ways trans women are truly some of the most vulnerable, sp excuse me, specifically black trans women. You know, every day on trans day of visibility in November, we read the names of people who have been murdered, who are trans and

Sydney Baloue (22:27)
you know, it’s so sad that every year, like the overwhelming majority are black and Latinx trans women. And what’s even more devastating, like if you read the full list globally, it’s like there are like pages upon pages in Brazil specifically. so it’s really tough because on the one hand, you know, for trans women, they’re and again specifically speaking to like black and brown trans women

Sydney Baloue (22:57)
There is, you know, it’s incredibly difficult, right? Like it’s already difficult being a woman. then you’re trans on top of it, and then you add the other like marginalized oppressions if you’re poor, if you’re undocumented, if you’re black, if English is not your first language, right? Like all of these things. and at the same time, you know, in terms of like media, like in the past what, like 14 years, there’s been different strides, right? Like

Sydney Baloue (23:26)
We’ve seen Laverne Cox on television. Pose was on the air, my show that I worked on, Legendary, was on the air. but I would say the biggest place where there’s a lack of visibility really is around trans men and trans masculine people. And this is a major issue in our community and something that rarely ever gets discussed. Because whereas homicide is a massive problem for trans women, and mind you, there are some trans men who are also harmed.

NatsHoney (23:57)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (23:57)
either by police or otherwise, you know, and again, a lot of trans men of color. there’s also this major issue around suicide because for a lot of trans men, what’s so tough is we bear this burden of for some people unfortunately in our community, they think that we have it easy.

Sydney Baloue (24:23)
Right. And I’ve heard this sometimes. I know. That’s my that’s my reaction too. Like, huh? Say that, read that again, you know?

NatsHoney (24:26)
yeah, seriously.

Sydney Baloue (24:30)
yeah, ’cause there’s this idea that, you’re a man now, or you pass, or you’re a masculine person. And because of your masculinity, it’s a walk in the park for you. And it’s like, Okay, first of all, as trans folks, we should never be comparing our experiences, right? We all live intersectional lives. You can’t reduce anyone down to like one aspect of themselves and

Sydney Baloue (24:52)
make any real comparisons, you know. but second of all, I think what’s really tough too is it’s like, okay, I was a black woman and a black lesbian woman at that for like 27 years of my life. And I dealt with all the things that black women deal with, you know, like of being oppressed, of not being taken seriously, of, you know, whatever being considered the angry black woman or, you know, all these stereotypes and things like that that I’ve dealt with.

NatsHoney (25:18)
those trucks, yeah.

Sydney Baloue (25:20)
Right. And then it’s like you transition and then now I get all this new stuff because it’s now now it’s like, okay, I’m dealing with transphobia, which means like dealing with bureaucracy in our healthcare system, which means, you know, dealing with I mean, for me, what’s been interesting with my own transition is like, wow, I have a new empathy, deep empathy for black men that I did not have before. Because I see what it’s like to be really afraid to be, you know, around cops or

Sydney Baloue (25:50)
To be in certain neighborhoods where you don’t know if you’re gonna be safe, you know,

NatsHoney (25:53)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (25:54)
being in certain situations where you really have to like, you know, be aware of like who’s around, who has my back, where, you know. So it’s

NatsHoney (26:02)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (26:03)
really tough and it can be really isolating. Cause there’s I know for a lot of trans men, trans masculine people, we feel like nobody cares about us. You know, we’re not on TV in the same way. in the LGBTQ community, unfortunately, there’s a gender hierarchy.

Sydney Baloue (26:18)
And it’s it’s truly something that doesn’t get discussed enough where it kinda it basically is like the people

NatsHoney (26:23)
Yeah, let’s talk

NatsHoney (26:24)
about that more ’cause I’m like, what does that look like? Like this let me see that. You

Sydney Baloue (26:27)
Yeah.

NatsHoney (26:28)
have to explain it to me ’cause I c so I can see it visually within these brain cells.

Sydney Baloue (26:32)
Yeah, so this is where this is like the real tea too, because I don’t think I’ve ever talked about any of this like on a podcast for real for real. And again, it’s like I’ve dealt with this in different capacities, like work-wise, life-wise. So, you know, really the people with the most privilege and power in the LGBTQ community, definitely cisgendered people, but especially gay cis men, right? Like their proximity to white supremacy or patriarchy, right? You’re one, two degrees away.

Sydney Baloue (27:02)
You know, their whole campaign over the past couple of decades for liberation was about not only a certain type of assimilation and respectability politics, but it was, you know, this whole thing of like, you know, let us decorate your house and like fix your life so you can like us straight people and look the other way to our completely, you know, transgressive lifestyle or whatever. and it’s like that was the model of

Sydney Baloue (27:31)
you know, what

NatsHoney (27:31)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (27:32)
was seen as like upliftment. And

NatsHoney (27:34)
Yes.

Sydney Baloue (27:34)
to be fair, it’s it’s really interesting, you know, for especially for today being Juneteenth, like and thinking about so many different social movements, like for black history, like that was a big thing. Du Bois, Booker T Washington, it was about respectability. It was about, okay, if we can, you know, be respectable to white people, maybe they’ll like us. And I feel like a lot of different movements adopted that feminism, like women’s re you know, liberation.

Sydney Baloue (27:59)
Again, it kind of goes back to our conversation about sex workers, right? Because like sex workers were not seen as respectable people. But

NatsHoney (28:05)
Mm-mm.

Sydney Baloue (28:06)
I think it’s also important to know that like for the longest time, trans people weren’t considered respectable people. And that was again on purpose by people who are running these like gay liberation front mov movements. So like for example,

NatsHoney (28:19)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (28:21)
there’s a really good book, The Deviance War. Highly recommend.

Sydney Baloue (28:25)
Just like if you read it with a critical eye, it’s written by this guy, Eric Cervini. And it basically is about f this guy, Frank Kameny, who was a rich white, cis gay man. He was caught cruising in a bathroom in DC. He was a government worker. And basically, he this is kind of what’s he lost his job, was kind of like blacklisted.

Sydney Baloue (28:47)
And basically started this movement, you know, what one version of like the gay, you know, what was what later became the Gay Liberation movement. And, you know, it was just like him and a bunch of like what rich white cis guys. And it’s

NatsHoney (29:01)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (29:02)
interesting because they kind of clash with the people in New York who were way more progressive, who were like, you know, really demanding rights for everyone, or, you know, just kind of more inclusive in certain ways. And

Sydney Baloue (29:16)
Not into this respectability politics. like for example, the the group that was sort of like the early group from Frank Kameny was the Manachine Society, which was actually started here in LA. There’s like these historic steps that you can go to around this. But again, their whole thing was like you know, freedom for some and not really for all. And it’s interesting because I remember when I first came out as a lesbian in college in 2007, and I remember

Sydney Baloue (29:45)
like my queer friends who were on campus, like one of my friends who was Dominican and queer and gay cis man and another one who was African American and queer, like they were like, Yeah, all of that rainbow stuff is not for us. Like, you know, it’s for like the rich, white, gay, gay boys

NatsHoney (30:04)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (30:04)
who, you know, live this other life that doesn’t really talk to poor people or brown people like me.

NatsHoney (30:10)
They don’t see it. They don’t

NatsHoney (30:11)
see it within themselves. Like we’re not being represented. So therefore that’s not I’m not with that. They’re not representing me. They’re not including me. Yeah. I feel that today. I feel that

Sydney Baloue (30:17)
I’m not with that. Yeah, and to be fair, even the term

NatsHoney (30:23)
today.

Sydney Baloue (30:24)
yeah, it’s still very felt. I mean, it’s and in LA I it’s even more geographically felt, if I’m quite honest, because we know the city is like so redlined and segregated in a certain way that like South LA is like the black part and the east part is like the Latinx part. but yeah, I mean the the T really is though that like

Sydney Baloue (30:45)
basically for the some for so long it’s like certain people had access to power. And so okay, it was the gay boys, maybe some lesbians, but even then it’s kind of marginal because women don’t really have access to power in the same way. But still like cis people versus trans people do. and then for those of us who are assigned female at birth, it’s just kind of like overall, and you know, that’s lesbian included, like

Sydney Baloue (31:12)
We’re kind of left out in a lot of ways. And as trans men, we’re especially left out. And I would even venture to say, like, a lot of the progress that I see oftentimes it’s like gay cis men who get an opportunity, whether it’s creating a TV show or having some sort of platform or whatever, they’re able to help the trans women, right? ‘Cause they’re seen as the most vulnerable, or you know, sometimes there’s kind of this very binary black and white way of thinking in our community that, these are the people who

Sydney Baloue (31:41)
are more deserving and trans men or trans masculine people somehow are not. And we get

NatsHoney (31:45)
Mm.

Sydney Baloue (31:46)
shut out of the conversation all the freaking time. We are not taken seriously. Like basically all of the misogyny and sexism that happens between straight gay or straight men and straight women is kind of what happens between gay, cis men, trans women, and trans masculine people. Like as a trans guy, I’m infantilized, I’m not taken seriously.

Sydney Baloue (32:09)
I’m seen as you know, expendable or disposable. There’s kind of this attitude of like you should be so grateful to be here or whatever. And there’s also just lack of visibility. Like we’re often erased in these like really painful ways sometimes, where you know, for a lot of us we’re looking for refuge, you know, this is part of our like queerness and transness, and then you’re

NatsHoney (32:32)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (32:33)
just like.

Sydney Baloue (32:34)
thinking like, okay, well, my own community doesn’t care about me. It’s not including me in things. And mind you, you know, just to give you some examples, like I remember back in 2020 I was in New York and I was covering the Brooklyn Liberation March. This was like a march for black trans lives that happened kind of like during the pandemic and there, you know, everyone was wearing white and we met outside of the Brooklyn Museum. And you know, he had certain

Sydney Baloue (33:01)
Trans organizations that were led by black trans women, there wasn’t a single trans man who spoke on that stage that day. And I remember, like, I was with other Black trans men who do a lot of community work. And

NatsHoney (33:15)
Mm.

Sydney Baloue (33:15)
I remember just going, like, you know, I really want to be happy. This is an incredible moment, but like, why didn’t my sisters think to include me? You know?

NatsHoney (33:23)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (33:25)
and we see this a lot. Like you

NatsHoney (33:26)
Any any

NatsHoney (33:27)
of us. Any any of us.

Sydney Baloue (33:29)
Literally,

Sydney Baloue (33:30)
literally. And it’s so sad, but it it literally happens so often. And, you know, it’s tough ’cause it’s like, okay, is this like a crabs in a barrel thing? You know, where people think there’s only so much for so many. again, some of it’s just like this insidious lie that like we somehow have it easy or our lives are somehow not in peril like everybody else. But, you know, abortion rights affect

Sydney Baloue (33:54)
Trans men and trans masculine people, like our bodies are also under attack in a very unique and specific way. some of us are doing survival sex work, you know, we’re hyper marginalized. Like, you don’t flip a switch and you become a man and like life is hunky-dory. It’s like, girl, I had to like fight, you know, like in you know, when I was a black woman, black lesbian woman, like I had to do all of this work to get to this stage of life.

Sydney Baloue (34:22)
as a black woman. Like it’s not like I was like, you know, man, just like having everything easy. And you know, I think that’s kind of what’s really tough for a lot of people. And to be honest, I’ll be I’ll be square with you. Like people are afraid to talk about it because there’s this fear. And to me this is where we get like these parallels between social movements. Because I feel like a in a lot of ways the way the civil rights movement and black power movement centered on the men.

Sydney Baloue (34:52)
Right. Like

NatsHoney (34:52)
Mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (34:52)
there were certain men you always saw, whether it’s Martin Luther King and Malcolm X or Stokely Carmichael. And then now we’re finding out, actually there were all these black women who were actually doing the grunt work, where it’s like, you know, it turns out Ella Baker was doing all this stuff. And turns out, like, I don’t know, this like crazy percentage. What was it like over 80% of like the Black Panthers were actually women who were doing like so much emotional labor behind the scenes? it’s like

Sydney Baloue (35:19)
I we’re in that moment truly right now when it comes to transness. Where it’s like the people you see are all the trans women who get these platforms and and this is not to belittle because you know, trans women who are doing the work because there are a lot who are, but there are so many trans men and trans masculine people who are on the ground doing so much emotional labor and real labor and who have are getting absolutely little to no credit for the work that they do. And it’s just so

Sydney Baloue (35:49)
Yeah, it boils my blood. It really, really, really har hurts me.

NatsHoney (35:53)
So when we’re talking about like and just to go back ’cause I want to see how this kind of like how you plan on connecting it. As a historian, how are you going to make sure that trans men are represented? Like what are what are you exact like what are you gonna do? What do you see as like, you know what, I’m everybody else may be coming up short. I’m not. What you gonna do?

Sydney Baloue (36:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (36:15)
It’s so interesting, Nats, that you raise this question because you know, when I first started doing the research, I told you like I started with oral histories ’cause I was like, okay, the thing that frustrated me, this is back in like two thousand sixteen when it was just my master’s thesis and my thing was I was frustrated about how in gender studies, women’s studies, a lot these critical studies programs, people were writing about ballroom, but they never went to the source. They never

Sydney Baloue (36:41)
Talk to anybody from the community. Oftentimes they were just like, you know, citing gender theory articles, you know, a Bell Hook’s critique of Paris is burning, or you know, a critique from Judith Butler about Paris is burning. But I was like, I would rather talk to the people who lived it and like, you know, to hear their experience and like center their stories so that they get to tell their own narrative and we get the real truth, right? for me as a trans guy, I feel like in a lot of the work that I’ve done and that I continue to do.

Sydney Baloue (37:11)
One, I’m centering my own story of like what it you know what it has been like to be a trans man. Cause even in ballroom, I deal with some of these the these gender politics too, where it’s like trans men are underrepresented, we’re not taken seriously. you know, there’s also this whole thing, it’s fascinating because in Paris is Burning, they actually cut out Butch lesbians from the film. Yes, there’s like the story that like, you know, and I don’t know if it’s like after Jenny Livingston stole the rights to Mirmax.

Sydney Baloue (37:39)
But basically butches who were part of the community, people who were like male impersonators, they

NatsHoney (37:45)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (37:46)
were left on the cutting room floor. And so like even within ballroom, there’s this like collective amnesia around like the importance of butch lesbians and trans men, because a lot of butches ended up transitioning. you do have certain people who are prominent members, but again, we haven’t always been given a seat at the table.

Sydney Baloue (38:08)
And in my interactions with some people, sometimes they look at me of like, who are you to do? This work that you’re doing, or you know, who do you think you are? You know, this kind of thing of somehow I’m not worthy of like documenting my own culture and my own history. So the way that I’m changing that is not only like speaking up about it, telling my own story through the memoir history research that I’m doing, but also

NatsHoney (38:32)
Mm.

Sydney Baloue (38:32)
stepping out that lineage because my research has taken it’s really interesting, like

Sydney Baloue (38:38)
You know, when I went to the archive at the Schaumburg in at New York Public Library, which I don’t know if you know the history of the Schaumburg, where basically it’s like a cultural archive for African diasporic history, especially with an emphasis on African American history. I remember I looked at the archives for Stormade de Larvarie, who was super famous, this black

Sydney Baloue (39:04)
male impersonator, she was a butch lesbian, you know, identified as a butch till the end. Yeah. This is where it kind of gets funky because I’ll put it this way you know, gender terms they change so much through time. And you know, you’re always it always feels like you’re gonna offend somebody. I mean, I always joke that I’m like as a trans man who uses he, him pronouns, I’m like the iPhone 5 of transness, because it’s like I’m so outdated, and I’m sure in the future the kids will be calling me something that I probably don’t agree with.

Sydney Baloue (39:34)
but, you know, whatever. It is what it is for now. This is what it is, you know. But

Sydney Baloue (39:40)
yeah, she was so what’s so interesting for Storma, she was a huge female or a huge male impersonator. So this is what they called kind of what we would consider drag kinging before drag king, because that term actually comes later. it’s

NatsHoney (39:54)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (39:54)
a term that kind of first appears in print in nineteen seventy two, but then kind of becomes more of a term in like the eighties, nineties.

Sydney Baloue (40:01)
and this is kind of what I mean of like terminology and stuff like this change. but sh she was part of this traveling troupe called the Jewel Box Review. And basically they were cabaret performers where it was like the female per and performers were female impersonators or what we consider drag performers. And then she was the like male host, and she was very well known. Also in New York, she used to be the bouncer for

Sydney Baloue (40:30)
Like Cubby Hole, which is like a famous lesbian bar in New York and the village, and then also for Henrietta Hudson’s. She’s kind of

NatsHoney (40:36)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (40:36)
like part of the Stonewall generation. There’s this myth that she was one of the she was the first person to resist arrest at Stonewall, but like the she was not there. And this is like something that she’s talked about in her life. But even

NatsHoney (40:47)
So you’ve looked into that and you can

NatsHoney (40:49)
dispute that, you can put that rumor to rest.

Sydney Baloue (40:50)
absolutely. I mean,

Sydney Baloue (40:52)
there’s a whole thing I could get into about Stonewall, because there’s I I think what’s so crazy is like right now there’s this race to doing LGBTQ plus history, right? Of documentation. But what’s kind of annoying, I personally find about it is it’s so patchy because what ends up happening is like people will do like a deep dive into like their person who, you know, like for example, Tormaline, who is an incredible historian and I love

Sydney Baloue (41:19)
The work that she’s done, she’s a black trans woman who has done a lot of research on Marcia. Like the kind of like shadow effect of this is that because she’s done all this work, it now seems like Marsha did everything in the movement. And it’s like it’s almost like turning into kind of like Martin Luther King, right? Did he do everything in the civil rights movement? Because baby, when I saw Malcolm X the movie, I remember being like, Who are you? And like, why did I never learn about you? You know?

NatsHoney (41:48)
You

NatsHoney (41:49)
mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (41:49)
Yeah,

Sydney Baloue (41:50)
and then and then again, l like now we know even more stuff, right? We know about Ella Baker, we know about Angela Davis.

NatsHoney (41:55)
‘Cause it’s never just the one individual.

NatsHoney (41:56)
It’s always the team behind them and then the team behind that gets yes, it’s never the one individu.

Sydney Baloue (42:01)
Exact

Sydney Baloue (42:02)
exactly. And it’s weird because then you’re like, okay, why do we keep doing history in this way where we’re trying to like find some sort of savior or silver bullet person who allegedly did everything? And I swear to you, this is like it doesn’t only grind my gears. There’s like other trans historians who are with me of like, you know, not only around like specifically pride and it’s all about Marcia, but also like, you know, even within Star the Street.

Sydney Baloue (42:28)
Trans Vestai Action Revolutionary, like the organization that Marsha and Sylvia were part of. There were other trans women who were also doing a lot of like important collective work on this. and some of them were white. And like here, what I think is really important when it comes to telling these stories about this history is you have to acknowledge the truth. Because if you like spread these myths and these lies, first of all, it kind of like destroys the credibility of

Sydney Baloue (42:57)
us as a community, right? And second of all, I think it really like how do I say this? It kind of deactivates people because then they think,

NatsHoney (43:05)
I was gonna say it does more harm

NatsHoney (43:06)
it it causes more harm than good.

Sydney Baloue (43:09)
Yeah, because here’s what happens. Then you got like white people thinking, Well, I shouldn’t do anything. Actually some black person’s gonna come save the day. And it’s like, no, girl, like we all did this together, you know? And like the part

NatsHoney (43:22)
Como

Sydney Baloue (43:24)
yeah, but and you know, and I I and I also truly have like we were to me this was always kind of like the shadow side of Black Lives Matter was that like I I like obviously that it was like, let’s put the focus on black people, let’s

Sydney Baloue (43:37)
you know, recenter the conversation. But then I think we needed to like literally tell everybody else what they should also be doing too. Because I think what ends up happening is then it seems like, well, you know, who am I to do anything and my privilege will get in the way of XYZ is like, no, no, no. Utilize your privilege to be an advocate or an accomplice and go and like, yeah, talk to your grandma, talk to your uncle, like go to your job, like advocate.

Sydney Baloue (44:07)
you know, because that’s what so many people actually did before you. And, you know, and it’s not just gonna be, like, you know, black people or, you know, sex workers or whoever’s like the most vulnerable population will like only emancipate themselves. It’s like this is not how this works. Like, you know, these are like systems of oppression that were put in place and literally systems. Like they’re so intricate

NatsHoney (44:30)
Yes.

Sydney Baloue (44:31)
and like, you know, almost like invisible in certain ways. So

Sydney Baloue (44:36)
you need all hands on deck to do the work of dismantling. And to be honest, like, you know, especially since it’s Pride Month, like when it comes to Stonewall, I remember my friend Shane, they used to be at the New York Times. They did one of these like, you know, demystifying Stonewall. Like they were looking into the mythologies around it and interviewing people who were there. And apparently like the one thing everyone can agree upon, there’s like so many contradictory stories about like what happened that night.

Sydney Baloue (45:06)
The one person who resisted arrest that incited everybody to start fighting back against the cops was an unknown Butch lesbian. Okay. And it wasn’t Storm A. It’s just everybody saw this one Butch resisting arrest. But then what gagged me was when you watch the video, Shane’s like, but it doesn’t matter.

Sydney Baloue (45:28)
It does matter that

NatsHoney (45:30)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (45:30)
first of all, that tells us, guys, anybody can be the person who fights back. It’s not some mystical trans woman who’s gonna save the day, which I think is like a reparative narrative that people really want. And again, I I could see where that comes from because it you know, like I said, trans women, trans women of color are under attack in very real ways. But instead of turning people into these like mythological, like superheroes that instead of just like regular human beings.

Sydney Baloue (45:58)
Who were

NatsHoney (45:58)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (45:58)
part of a collective movement, now you’re making it seem like, everybody else isn’t important, right? Because they don’t fit the reparative narrative that you’re trying to put out in the world. And you know, this isn’t to slam anybody, but do you see what I’m saying? Where it’s like, no, just spill the real tea about what happened and like let’s celebrate that. You know, let’s celebrate, like, not all lesbians are TERFs. Okay. So, like, and so many lesbians like have done so much collective work.

Sydney Baloue (46:27)
Literally, you know, during the AIDS crisis, like that’s the reason I don’t know if you know this, but like the reason why we say the L first was to honor the fact that lesbians were the ones who were taking care of like gay men and trans people as they were dying of AIDS. Like this was like a way to honor their work.

NatsHoney (46:44)
realize that it was also tied to the AIDS epidemic. I didn’t realize that part. I I I

Sydney Baloue (46:49)
Yeah.

NatsHoney (46:50)
was told previously why they were first and it was something about them being like the priority and they always looking out for everybody within the community. But I did not hear that last line. So that’s that’s yeah.

Sydney Baloue (47:00)
Yeah, yeah, that’s like a major

Sydney Baloue (47:02)
reason. but you know, that’s the thing is it’s like Audrey Lorde, hello. We’re like quoting all of these like super important lesbians, people who have like done super important work. Let’s just like honor them, you know. And to me this is kind of what gets into the weeds of like the PMS situation, as my friend Moby Dick likes to say, which is the patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism.

Sydney Baloue (47:24)
That sadly runs rapid in the community. And it you know, and here’s the thing, right? Like you and I know there’s contradictions in like every community, which is, you know, part of human nature, right? It’s like there are power dynamics. There are gonna be, you know, people doing shady shit. There’s gonna be, you know, like even in the ballroom, like ballroom to some people has this like veneer of utopia. And I’m like, girl, you’re not gonna get a bunch of people who came from

Sydney Baloue (47:52)
difficult backgrounds, broken homes, you know, broken dreams, who are gonna like build a utopia, you know,

NatsHoney (47:58)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (47:59)
in a nightclub at four AM, bitch. Like that’s not gonna happen. Like, you know.

NatsHoney (48:01)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We we need a couple

NatsHoney (48:05)
more resources and tools in order to pull that off. Yeah. Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (48:08)
Right. And and it’s

Sydney Baloue (48:09)
kind of interesting because ballroom I think in a lot of ways kind of reflects like it’s so fascinating ’cause like the way family dynamics are, you know, people are in therapy and or in recovery and like, you know, you see some of this also happening in ballroom in certain ways. Obviously, in some ways, unfortunately not, but like I do feel like my generation of ballroom like the millennials and stuff, like I see like there’s more of an attitude towards like how to build like a healthy family system.

Sydney Baloue (48:38)
because unfortunately, you know, for so many of our elders in the community, one, a number of people passed away from AIDS related causes. Two, a lot of people, you know, were part of nightlife and, you know, partake in substances or abuse in that kind of way or, you know, have a lot of mental health issues. So it’s kind of like it’s yeah, very complicated. It’s like, you know, as above, so below, as within, so without, as within ballrooms, so in the real world kind of thing, you know.

NatsHoney (49:09)
The way tied all of that in. All of that. I think we’re

Sydney Baloue (49:12)
Ha ha ha.

NatsHoney (49:13)
going to that was excellent. okay, so this is like our halfway point. So I’m gonna switch over to this other page and I’m gonna say some stuff, and then once I come back, we’re gonna go into spirituality, hoodoo, storytelling, you know, all the good jazz. So I’m gonna count down with my hand since I want to be able to see myself. We’re gonna act like

NatsHoney (49:37)
It’s like a stop, record and start, but it’s not. Okay, and let’s go.

NatsHoney (49:44)
Way.

NatsHoney (49:49)
Producer will pop in in about 15 to 20 minutes into the interview. This is your cue to say, here we go. Let’s take a quick break. We’ll be right back.

NatsHoney (50:01)
And we’re back.

NatsHoney (50:05)
Think I aced that. Okay, and now back to recording. Okay, so so I’m gonna ask you a bunch of questions at once because I feel like the conversation is very, very flowing. Okay, so you listed hoodoo alongside ballroom and black culture. How does that thread connect to the rest of your work and identity? Also, is spirituality something that you bring into your storytelling practice or is it more personal?

Sydney Baloue (50:36)
Mm, I love this question. Ugh, especially because this is something you and I w had talked about quite

NatsHoney (50:42)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (50:43)
a bit. the idea of conjuring. So it’s so interesting. I mean, I’ll just say straight up, I’m very into astrology. That has come to be like my an aspect of spirituality that I’ve accessed out here in LA, which has really brought amazing community and really supportive folks in my life.

Sydney Baloue (51:05)
And only astrology, but this past year, I started recovery in Al Anonon, which is like for friends and family of alcoholics. I neither of my parents were alcoholics, but it’s like in our lineage. Like my grandfather, especially on my mother’s side, I know is like an alcoholic. And it’s interesting start like being in the program because it’s a spiritual program, right? It’s like you, you know, whatever the god of your own understanding is. And

Sydney Baloue (51:33)
For me, that’s like a deeper understanding of the universe, my connection to nature, my connection to ancestors, spirit, you know, astrology as a tool as well. And it’s just been really interesting because it really helped me understand not only in a deeper way, my connection to all of this, you know, especially like

Sydney Baloue (51:56)
You know, I already am kind of doing ancestral work by not only the oral histories, unfortunately s you know, some of the people I interviewed passed away. I think ballroom as a practice, it is so deeply rooted in like African American culture, in a very particular way. you know, so much of it feels like the black church. It’s literally like goes on for hours. You

Sydney Baloue (52:21)
You got a fan, it’s hot, girl. You know, there’s like fried chicken being sold on the side and you know, and it’s like incredible displays of creativity and, you know, exuberance. and then it’s interest Sa say that again.

NatsHoney (52:35)
Community and togetherness. Yeah. That’s the and together

NatsHoney (52:38)
community and togetherness, yeah.

Sydney Baloue (52:40)
Community, togetherness. I mean, people bring the black church with them. And I also have truly believe like the black church, you know, controversial, right? ‘Cause like historically for in different sects of the black church has not always been accepting of LGBTQ plus people. But that first of all has never stopped us from being in the choir or attending a service or

Sydney Baloue (53:03)
You know, and I’ve also just felt like just generally from a cultural perspective, the black church is like its own in cultural institution that like, yeah, it’s about you know Christ and all this stuff, but it’s like if you really know the deep history, this was like the merging of like African spirituality with like European colonialism, right? And

NatsHoney (53:24)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (53:25)
so it was a way for the Af Africans who were enslaved in this country to express themselves, right? And

Sydney Baloue (53:32)
Since I look at it from that deeper lens, I see exactly where ballroom kind of fits in that, right? There’s so much whether it’s like the idea of the DJ being similar to the organist or the MC, similar to a preacher, you know, again, there like you could even argue that like voguing or walking any of these categories is a form of testifying, you know, because you’re literally exposing yourself.

Sydney Baloue (53:59)
the spirit is moving through you in a particular way, you know? And like with us as like black people, there’s also like a whole thing around like circ, you know, the circle and not only like ring shouts, but like that’s the cipher. That’s that’s the kind of beauty that comes from that. And and the pageantry, you know, that’s like peak black church, right? Big hats, big hair, big everything, right? yeah, Sunday’s best. And

Sydney Baloue (54:28)
And that’s what I mean is like I look at it from this deeper perspective. And I’m on my mom’s side, I’m in Indian and Caribbean. My mom was from Trinidad Tobago, but on my dad’s side, we’re African American. And I feel like I’ve always kind of held these identities, being West Indian and also being African American. And especially as you know, living in Europe, I feel like you like for me, I was really how do I say this? I feel like you really become American when you leave America, obviously.

Sydney Baloue (54:57)
And I think really understanding how special African American culture is, like, you know, and I don’t wanna b say that we’re better than everybody else, but I do think like there’s that let’s I know I know

NatsHoney (55:10)
It’s okay. I you’re in good company. You’re in good company.

Sydney Baloue (55:14)
but you

Sydney Baloue (55:17)
Because you know, there’s there’s special things everywhere, right? But

NatsHoney (55:20)
Yes.

Sydney Baloue (55:21)
but that but I will say this there was a real transformation in the transatlantic slave trade, like in the middle passage. We became something else. And this is kind of one of my theses as far as my book goes, is that like African American culture, it is something else because it’s not.

Sydney Baloue (55:44)
100% European. It’s not 100% African. It is truly the melding of so many things. It is, you know, the the like you know, not you know, turning lemon into lemonade. It’s it’s all this kind of stuff. and that’s also what makes it so unique and beautiful. You know, to me, when I see voguing, I see the lineage in Harlem of jazz. I see how jazz, the improvisation of John Coltrane.

Sydney Baloue (56:13)
And Miles Davis can get you to Laomi Maldonado, who’s one of the most incredible vogers. I literally told her once, I was you’re the John Coltrane of Vogue. Because sh her level of virtuosity and movement, right? The way she whips her hair and you know can do these incredible moves and express herself. It’s it’s it’s you won’t we will never get that anywhere else, right? And there’s a reason why it’s here.

Sydney Baloue (56:39)
And like not only her, but you know, it’s like again, we could talk about the music. You could talk about, you know, the the aesthetic, like all of this stuff is unique to our experience in this country of being

NatsHoney (56:49)
Nice.

Sydney Baloue (56:50)
both like insiders and outsiders to our own country in certain ways. so when it comes to like a deeper spirituality for me, like I’ve always been really connected to my roots as far as like being part of the African diaspora and knowing that like

Sydney Baloue (57:08)
you know, I carry this lineage. I walk with my ancestors. But I think like at this point and kind of what we were talking about once around hoodoo was like I

NatsHoney (57:18)
Mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (57:19)
just got really well one, I’ll just put it this way. I feel like a versus I got into astrology, you just start meeting people who are really into all this kind of like, you know, esoteric stuff, whether it’s tarot or, you know, medium, psychics. Also we’re in LA, so like there’s tons of people doing this amazing stuff, which I love.

Sydney Baloue (57:36)
I to me that’s part of the magic of LA is that it has this history of like being, you know, very magical,

NatsHoney (57:41)
We’re very magical. We’re very magical.

Sydney Baloue (57:44)
very magical. We’re the city of angels. but I I think also with that, like I noticed another a n a a number of my friends do witchcraft. And I was always kind of looking for like, you know, I kind of see like witchcraft as like being a language because so many cultures have their own

Sydney Baloue (58:01)
version of that indigenous people like people do husantaria some people do you know epha there’s like so many different versions but I was kind of like I wanna you know I wanna find the one that’s mine and so that’s kind of how I was like started to look at hoodoo and I started to look at again these deeper understandings of African spirituality as it relates to like the Africans who came to the United States

Sydney Baloue (58:27)
And that’s where I started to see the connections between like ballroom and all of this stuff. Because I’ll put it this way, for example, in Sinners. So there’s like a great that’s like that’s like proto-era ballroom in a way, right? The juke joint, right? Because a juke joint

NatsHoney (58:42)
Okay, okay. Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (58:46)
is at night, right? It’s like after you know, you’ve worked a day or whatever, you go get your little drink on, connect to the spirit, right? Like

Sydney Baloue (58:57)
That is literally what we do with ballroom. It’s like 4 a.m. I’m in a, you know, gymnasium in Harlem and I’m waiting for my

NatsHoney (59:04)
Yeah, that’s what I’m

Sydney Baloue (59:05)
category and waiting for the spirit to, you know, move us or being

NatsHoney (59:09)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (59:10)
in a nightclub. And and, you know, like when I looked at the history of that, I was like, wow, this goes back to you know, there’s this other practice where I’m trying to remember what was it called, but

Sydney Baloue (59:22)
Basically there were like these church houses that were on the plantations and basically like at night again people would go and worship, but in the way that the Africans wanted to, which was like, you know, shouting and doing, you know, ciphers and you know, ring shouts and things like that and and connecting to the culture in that way. So, you know, to me it’s this thing where it’s like even though we’re like so many generations removed from

Sydney Baloue (59:50)
Not only like anti-belling slavery, but like the Africans who first came here and like, you know, their culture is getting all mixed up together and stuff. Like, it’s still within us. And I think that was the thing that I f I I personally think is kind of ironic is like, you know, I was at first approaching this work in a very academic-y way, because I like left a PhD and I was like, you know, you’re in this objective, like, and then now the work is like.

Sydney Baloue (01:00:17)
No, no, no, Sid, it’s about centering. Like, who are you? Like you, Sydney Baloo, the person in the world.

NatsHoney (01:00:24)
Mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (01:00:25)
because there is a way that my West Indian-ness connects to Barham as well, as far as Carnival, and you

NatsHoney (01:00:32)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (01:00:32)
know, because like, you know, there’s a whole history there too when it comes to like freedom and expression and spirits and spirituality. and then there’s also, you know, the deep history of like,

Sydney Baloue (01:00:44)
what it means to be African American in the culture. Cause I will say this, what’s interesting, especially since Ballroom it was like really the the Mecca or the, you know, founding places, New York and specifically Harlem, there is a whole history of like West Indians and also African Americans being in that space who end up creating the culture that we know, you know, especially when it comes to black culture in America.

NatsHoney (01:01:14)
You’re saying all the things, you’re doing all the work and you’re bringing all of it to light so that others can learn from it. I I I love it. It’s fantastic. and yes, I agree with you. We may not be better than anyone, but our resilience and the trauma that we’ve had to endure, like, give us the stripes that we deserve. You know, it’s not too many people

Sydney Baloue (01:01:41)
Yeah.

NatsHoney (01:01:41)
that can

NatsHoney (01:01:43)
That can say that they’ve had to endure the pain that we’ve had to endure for these amount of generations. However

Sydney Baloue (01:01:48)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:01:49)
Yes. Well, I was gonna say Nats. Can I can I add one thing to that?

NatsHoney (01:01:53)
Please.

Sydney Baloue (01:01:54)
You know, one of the things that I found through my exploration, right? Like, you know, talking about astrology and, you know, tarot and hoodoo and all of these things, I also have really gotten into alchemy. And, you know, with alchemy, like I only knew it as like, you know, what f well philosophers or I guess scientists in the

Sydney Baloue (01:02:18)
you know, medieval period where they were trying find gold, right? But the true alchemy is about like a deeper spiritual transformation of self. And that idea of taking like a base lead and turning it to gold through a series of steps is actually like the idea the philosopher’s stone is actually about the self and about transforming the self. And one thing I realized once I got into that, I was like, the African

NatsHoney (01:02:45)
Mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (01:02:46)
American experience

Sydney Baloue (01:02:48)
is an alchemical experience. Like literally, we took literally lead chains and like all of the truly deplorable, deplorable, deplorable conditions of of the the transatlantic slave trade, and we turned it into fucking gold. Like it’s in it’s kind of insane in a way. Definitely unprecedented in the history of humanity.

NatsHoney (01:03:13)
Yeah. Yes.

NatsHoney (01:03:17)
Mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (01:03:17)
but I think about it all the time of like, yeah, nobody else will ever have a Whitney Houston. Like that is some, you know, I know, I know, we love you, Nippy, wherever you are. but like I think about it all the time. Maybe there’s like my millennial mist of my s of like black girl memories of like, you know, like her voice, she you know, she grew up in the black church. She was also queer. She was

NatsHoney (01:03:43)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:03:44)
Somebody who had such a power, but like that’s what I mean. It’s like her voice and her talent was like so unique and special because it came from this lineage, you know?

NatsHoney (01:03:57)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:03:58)
And and and and and again, she was like the fusion of so many things. Like literally her mother growing up in this like prominent black church in New Jersey and all this stuff, right? And the training she got, like the 10,000 hours that she did as a kid, and then

Sydney Baloue (01:04:13)
You know, the talent she brought, you know, this like pop that she did with it. And then of course, like putting her stank on the music. Like, it’s kind of crazy when you think about it because like obviously there’s so many incredible singers, particularly of like soul music, you know, Retha Franklin, Shaka Khan, etc. But to think that like, wow, there is like this other inflection point that could still be made that was her legacy is like

Sydney Baloue (01:04:43)
I don’t know, for me I I’m that person who’s going back and watching the YouTube videos. I’m like I’m I’m like, you know, I’m like singing, you know, waiting to exhale songs and watching the old clips and you know, yeah, I mean, you know, but y

NatsHoney (01:04:55)
Same, same. Yeah, I I I I

NatsHoney (01:04:59)
keep that soundtrack in the playlist for sure.

Sydney Baloue (01:05:01)
We’re

Sydney Baloue (01:05:02)
the bodyguard forever, you

NatsHoney (01:05:03)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:05:04)
know? And and it’s crazy too, because especially I don’t know, sorry. This is probably a tangent. You might to cut this. But I feel like, you know, I I don’t know if you saw the documentary. There were like two really good documentaries that came out, but like the way I will always love you has like, you know, lived this like crazy legacy beyond her, right?

NatsHoney (01:05:25)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:05:26)
Like, again, it’s like who else? Where else?

Sydney Baloue (01:05:31)
Could you ever get that level of talent, of quality, of like, you know, and again, just adding something new to

NatsHoney (01:05:40)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:05:42)
the culture. Like, you know, anyway, I could go on forever, but I’ll just say on that note, with all of this stuff, like that to me is kind of what is so special, the alchemy, the like, you know, again, we we came from nothing, right?

Sydney Baloue (01:05:59)
I mean but not to say nothing, ’cause like a lot of you know, some of us were kings and queens or you know, doing other stuff. But it was like there was this

NatsHoney (01:06:05)
We were forced to

NatsHoney (01:06:06)
leave what we were already know to be power and familiar, and we had to adapt to an environment that we had no idea how to adapt to under harsh, violent conditions.

Sydney Baloue (01:06:17)
Extremely harsh and violent conditions. And then again, you know, because here’s the thing: what do you even do with all that grief? What do you do with all of that pain? You know, because if it metastasizes, we see we see what’s going on, right? If it metastasizes,

NatsHoney (01:06:32)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:06:33)
you get what’s going on in the White House, you get all this hate and bullshit with these like cis men on podcasts, right? You get ICE detention centers and fucking criminalizing sex work. That is what happens when you metastasize.

Sydney Baloue (01:06:47)
Grief and you don’t deal with it and you don’t transform that pain and you don’t heal, right? Because we know hurt people literally hurt people. Right? So, like that to me is also like the larger message of all of this is, you know, how do you move through it? How do you transform it? How do you turn that lead into gold? You know? So

NatsHoney (01:07:09)
Okay, so you mentioned that you’re you’re into T V and screenwriting, you’ve did some things. What specific

Sydney Baloue (01:07:17)
Mm.

NatsHoney (01:07:18)
story or project outside of the book right now that you maybe want to see? Like what’s going on? What are you thinking? Like what needs to happen? What would you like to what art project are you like? No. This is also on the back burner that’s coming out too, ’cause we need it to exist.

Sydney Baloue (01:07:34)
my gosh. because I feel it’s funny you say this because I’m I’m such a jack of all trades where I have like multiple projects going on at the same time. I am working on a ballroom unscripted project. I’m looking like I’m working with my producer on this. I also have a well, I will say with my book, I’m actually looking for support on that because unfortunately, like two years ago I lost my book deal.

Sydney Baloue (01:08:02)
You know, I’ve amassed all this information. So I’m actually looking for a new agent. I’m looking for a new publisher. I’ve been working with this amazing group called the Unicorn Authors Club, and it’s it’s for BIPOC and marginalized writers. Highly recommend them. They’re kind of like hibernating this summer, but they have these incredible book coaches who will help you write your book. And so that’s kind of like what I’ve been doing to produce pages, but

Sydney Baloue (01:08:28)
I mean, I’m truly looking for a benefactor. I know this sounds, listen, everybody’s looking for a sugar daddy, but I’m looking for folks who can support all my research and work on ballroom culture and history. Cause I have so many digital archives, I’ve amassed so much knowledge. I just need the like financial support to, you know, again, share these stories, keep doing this work. And and

NatsHoney (01:08:49)
Continue she yeah. Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:08:52)
it’s it’s interesting because it’s like I told you, I’ve been working on this project now for 10 years and

Sydney Baloue (01:08:56)
It’s taken on so many different forms. You know, at first it was a master’s thesis, then I, you know, tried to expand it as a PhD, but I was like, I want I want this language to be accessible. And I have tons, I have like over 50 oral history recordings. And so I’m looking for a podcast producer who can like help me flesh out a show. and and actually what’s really exciting, I’m actually working with my friend Moby Dick, who is a drag king extraordinaire.

Sydney Baloue (01:09:24)
Mo does the Drag King History Archives

NatsHoney (01:09:28)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (01:09:29)
website, which is actually paired with the Library of Congress. And we’re gonna be launching a new book club that centers on the history of male impersonation. So definitely

NatsHoney (01:09:38)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (01:09:39)
folks can look out for that. because you know, to your question of like how do we get more knowledge, or like, you know, how do we repair this kind of lack of visibility for trans men and trans Muslim people?

NatsHoney (01:09:50)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (01:09:51)
You know, for me, I see it as just like educating, as like taking up space. It’s it’s about talking to people. and I think now, especially like as I’ve gotten older, I see it really as being what’s the word? As being kind about that. Like I don’t have to kind of come out gun guns blazing and be like, why did you include me? It’s like, no, it could be like a hey, like, can we talk on the phone? Hey, is there any way that like

Sydney Baloue (01:10:21)
You know, you can, you know,

NatsHoney (01:10:22)
The the gentle nudge.

Sydney Baloue (01:10:24)
yeah, yeah. Just having a real conversation ’cause also, you know, that’s the thing is like everybody’s under pressure, everyone’s going through it. Last thing I want to do is come at somebody sideways and be like, You’re a bad person for something you probably don’t know, you know, or you may not be aware of. So that’s kind of my thing right now is like how do I build bridges, not walls?

Sydney Baloue (01:10:45)
and how do we, you know, truly build like movements that last and that support everyone. so that’s kind of like where my attitude, where my mind is at right now. and also I will say for me, generally speaking, like, you know, as you noted, like I do a lot of work, both in terms of like DEI consultation or you know, consultation around trans issues, but also like

Sydney Baloue (01:11:12)
I have experience as a writer, as a T V writer and you know, I love working with people if they’re looking to like develop their work or need a producer or just somebody to teach them how to do screenwriting. A lot of people have ideas and they don’t know where to start and also I love as you can tell, nerding out about ballroom and like teaching voguing workshops and you know

NatsHoney (01:11:35)
It’s awesome. Yes yes.

NatsHoney (01:11:38)
Yes.

Sydney Baloue (01:11:38)
Yeah,

Sydney Baloue (01:11:38)
hosting hosting balls or, you know, like last year it was really cool for Pride. They flew me out to London and I was you know, doing some vogue workshops at the University College London for Pride as well as like keynote speech or and talking about ballroom history. So I’m always down to do that at a university or, you know, any location where folks wanna learn about the history and culture.

NatsHoney (01:12:03)
I mean you just wrapped it all up into a beautiful little bow. Mlaah just like that. Like this fantastic. I had a question about the connection between and I guess maybe it’s you you’ve already addressed it. So it’s like I don’t need to ask it, but I I kinda want it let’s present it to the people that are watching this so that they can just summarize it in in one one good go.

Sydney Baloue (01:12:28)
Mm.

NatsHoney (01:12:28)
So the yes audience is

NatsHoney (01:12:31)
We we’re at the intersection of sex work and community. We have the pole dance community. There’s a lot of attention right here. And

Sydney Baloue (01:12:39)
Mm.

NatsHoney (01:12:40)
what do you want all of them to know about the relationship between ballroom culture and sex work that they may not already know? That they either didn’t get in this conversation earlier, like what tell them.

Sydney Baloue (01:12:54)
Yeah. Well, first of all, Ballroom was founded by many people who were sex workers. That it literally this culture wouldn’t exist without those folks. And many of those people, as I said, were trans women who were doing street work, who worked at 42nd Street in Times Square. You know, if you’ve seen Pose and you know the Angel character, she works at a place called Show Palace. It’s like Show World.

Sydney Baloue (01:13:20)
And it was a place in Times Square where you know you put in the coins and the girls would perform. Yeah, I

NatsHoney (01:13:24)
Okay. All right.

Sydney Baloue (01:13:26)
you know, did interviews with folks who talked about that and and you know and loved it, right? Like had such an incredible time. there are other spaces and places in Times Square like that, like Sally’s Hideaway, which is also like a very famous location. But it’s important to know that because these were the people who were again living on the margins, many

Sydney Baloue (01:13:48)
you know, a lot of folks either some not all, but some people were doing survival sex work. And they were also the people who, you know, really informed the culture, the decadence, the outfits, the aesthetic, again, voguing. Like, you know, these are all things that have come become part of the culture. And even in terms of language, so much of the language now, I mean, can I just say

Sydney Baloue (01:14:13)
Every day I hear a new ballroom term that gets picked up in the mainstream, and I’m not mad about it. Some people are like, you know, you’re not cool enough to use that. But the fact that I hear people calling stuff cunt these days, or you know, slay was a big thing for a while, or what’s the tea, or even clocking, like all of this

NatsHoney (01:14:31)
Mm-hmm.

Sydney Baloue (01:14:32)
stuff is femme queen language. And by femme queen,

NatsHoney (01:14:35)
Yes.

Sydney Baloue (01:14:36)
I’m talking about the trans women in the ballroom. Like I said, many of whom.

Sydney Baloue (01:14:41)
were and or are sex workers. So you’re speaking the language of people who are oppressed. They are the ones who are shaping and informing the culture on such a massive level that you are literally speaking those words without maybe even knowing the origin of it. And this isn’t to say, you know, again, I feel like language,

NatsHoney (01:15:00)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (01:15:01)
culture, it evolves. We know you and I, especially Nats, as black people, when it comes to like what is American culture,

Sydney Baloue (01:15:08)
A lot of it, like a huge chunk of it, is black culture that gets picked up in the mainstream.

NatsHoney (01:15:14)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:15:15)
but even beyond that, who’s informing the black culture? it’s the black femme queens, you know, like it’s like they’re the ones who are like these like masterminds of kind of again being creative, right? Turning lemons into

NatsHoney (01:15:28)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:15:28)
lemonade, turning lead into gold. And I think like it’s really important for people to understand that even can I say the mother of ballroom, Crystal Labasia.

Sydney Baloue (01:15:38)
She was a dominatrix. I did an interview with a guy who was recruited by her to be part of ballroom, John Mosquino, this incredible icon in the community Hall of Famer. And it was hilarious because he told me this story. my God. And of course it was like when I turned off the recorder, which I was like, ugh. But he was

NatsHoney (01:15:54)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:15:55)
he was like, he because he was like, yeah, she was a dominatrix. And I like, what? How how? And he was like, well, cause because basically a place where the girls used to

Sydney Baloue (01:16:06)
like pick up their Johns or hang out was a place called Gigi Barnum’s, which was like a circus themed club in

NatsHoney (01:16:12)
Okay.

Sydney Baloue (01:16:12)
New York in Times Square. And and literally had like a whole canopy and like people doing trapeze work and stuff like that. And he was like, Yeah, you know, I’d see her with her date and he’d have a bruise on his face. And she’d be like, sit over there You know? And apparently he would like walk her Johns over to the Waldorf Astoria and she would pay him

Sydney Baloue (01:16:35)
A cute coin, you know, 75 dollars, which was a lot back then. So, you know, it and there again, there’s no shame in this. It’s it’s

NatsHoney (01:16:43)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:16:43)
it’s just like people making a living. And also, you know, I think really when I was in the archives too, can I just say like the overlap again, because of marginalization, because of so many of these things, where we’re talking about, especially trans women, but just like trans queerness.

NatsHoney (01:17:01)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:17:01)
Sex

Sydney Baloue (01:17:02)
work goes hand in hand. And it I’m really glad that we’re able to like put those pieces together because I think because of the respectability politics of the way the LGBTQ movement has gone, a lot of that has fallen to the wayside. So

NatsHoney (01:17:19)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:17:19)
to be able to recenter the conversation and say, Hey, this is yes, raise it all up, let folks know like

Sydney Baloue (01:17:28)
We we’re human too. We matter too. Actually, we don’t have to like conform or you know do XYZ things for you to see us as worthy of human rights and dignity. Like

NatsHoney (01:17:40)
Our existence is enough.

Sydney Baloue (01:17:41)
our existence is enough. It is so enough, you know? And can I say, I think especially on this conversation of sex work, like this is the thing. With transphobia, there is yes a level of like, what’s the word?

Sydney Baloue (01:17:58)
like white supremacy, heteronormative patriarchy, right? Like of like, you know, you know, men are like this and women are like this, right? That’s

NatsHoney (01:18:07)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:18:08)
that’s allegedly the Christian conservative ideology, right? But also part of the transphobia that’s there, what I’ve realized over the years, is also the fact for a lot of people, especially these Bible Belt people,

Sydney Baloue (01:18:25)
Their only interaction with trans people is through porn online. It is through sex work. It is in this hidden, shameful way. So part of their like hatred of trans people is also heavily related to the criminalization, the stigmatization around sex work. Because to them, trans equals sex worker. And therefore, trans is bad. Sex worker bad. Do you see what I’m saying?

NatsHoney (01:18:51)
Yeah, yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:18:53)
And I didn’t even realize this was a thing, can I say, until like, you know, I’ve been in certain situations where I’m like, okay, like like when I was in my PhD, for example, I was like, I talked to old people about the 80s, right? Like what is so, you know, terrible about this? And I started to realize like, trans to you, the only thing you’ve ever seen as trans is

Sydney Baloue (01:19:18)
what’s going on in your browser, in the private browser that you’re not showing

NatsHoney (01:19:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:19:22)
your wife. You know what I’m saying? So

NatsHoney (01:19:24)
Yeah. There’s no humanness

NatsHoney (01:19:26)
to it. You’re not trying to actually understand us as people. You’re only looking at us as objects and yes, I completely understand. Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:19:33)
And fetish. Yeah, exactly. And

Sydney Baloue (01:19:35)
that goes both as trans people and again as sex workers. So, you know, part of why I’m just so grateful that I’ve been able to obviously connect with you, connect with so many people who are doing incredible sex worker advocacy work is I’m like, yeah, this is really like fundamental to everything that I’m doing. And I’m really, really grateful too, because I will say.

Sydney Baloue (01:19:59)
I was not somebody who was like deeply involved in like sex worker advocacy. Like, you know, I always remember those were the girls who were always like really loud at the conferences, you know, where I’m just like trying

NatsHoney (01:20:08)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:20:09)
trying to do my little lesbian things. I’m just like, girl, the sex worker people are loud about the sex work again. But like now I’m like, yeah, you should be fucking loud. Yeah, yeah. Like, hello.

NatsHoney (01:20:19)
Should be loud, yeah. Yes. That’s that that’s that spirit coming through. That’s that light shining

NatsHoney (01:20:24)
on them. That’s me in my moment. Wherever I am at, I am basking in it and I am being me. Yeah. Whether I am loud or

Sydney Baloue (01:20:30)
Yes, a hundred percent.

NatsHoney (01:20:32)
quiet. Take up space.

Sydney Baloue (01:20:33)
Take up space. Let the girls know. And and again, it’s like, hello, our oppressions are interlinked. You know, like we are not, you know, like there’s literally a war against all of our bodies right now. And not only do they not care, but it’s also like we gotta see, like my liberation is tied to yours, you know.

Sydney Baloue (01:20:55)
Right? Because I think that’s what really hit me, especially with IWD, like for International Horse Day, is like, yeah, all of these things that sex workers are fighting for, these are all the rights and you know, liberties and you know, sort of you know, fight for human dignity that like we’re all trying to access. Right. So again, it’s I’m done with the like binary silo thinking. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. This is all hands on deck.

NatsHoney (01:21:24)
Love it. Okay, well, in that in that essence, let’s just tell everybody where they can follow your work, where they can get to know you more. Like g give give them the

Sydney Baloue (01:21:36)
Yeah.

NatsHoney (01:21:37)
That was my first

NatsHoney (01:21:38)
time doing it by the way.

Sydney Baloue (01:21:40)
Yeah, well here, I’ll I’ll correct you because I feel like

NatsHoney (01:21:42)
Okay, great.

Sydney Baloue (01:21:43)
Drag Race kind of does this thing where it’s like playing telephone ’cause they’ll pull stuff from ballroom but then it’s like misinterpreted. So you wanna do your middle finger and your thumb. Because because the idea

Sydney Baloue (01:21:54)
is if you’re a femme queen, you got long nails and you can’t like snap because you know, back in the day the girls used to snap. No, so

NatsHoney (01:21:58)
Yeah, yeah, then you can you won’t be able to

Sydney Baloue (01:22:00)
this is like the femme queen snap, is to go like this. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know. I know. But then it’s

NatsHoney (01:22:06)
Thank you.

Sydney Baloue (01:22:07)
weird because over time people have started to do these like little pincers.

NatsHoney (01:22:09)
Yeah no

NatsHoney (01:22:10)
I want to as authentic as possible, please. Let’s not lose the source. Sources

Sydney Baloue (01:22:13)
Yeah, you could you know

NatsHoney (01:22:15)
are important. If we can take one thing away, we know from today. The source is important.

Sydney Baloue (01:22:21)
Exactly. yeah, folks can follow

NatsHoney (01:22:24)
Okay, so where can they find you?

Sydney Baloue (01:22:25)
Yeah, they can find me. I’m very active on Instagram. It’s just my name, Sydney Baloo. You can find me on TikTok. I usually post similar content. you can also reach out to me through my website again if you’re looking for bookings or you know, or any sort of work that I do. Also, Nats, maybe what I could do is share the talk I gave about sex work and ballroom.

Sydney Baloue (01:22:48)
circa last year ’cause the Yeah.

NatsHoney (01:22:51)
I think everyone

NatsHoney (01:22:52)
should see that. I I I found it to be eye-opening. Again, I’m an individual that feels like I have to learn from other communities because other people are doing things that I’m not, and it’s because that’s in their lane. But in order for me to truly be the best human I can be, I have to understand what their pain is, what they’re going through. And when it comes to ballroom, I feel that I feel that. And when I saw that light, like, okay, yeah, yeah,

Sydney Baloue (01:23:16)
Mm.

NatsHoney (01:23:16)
yeah, yeah. This is this is big. Let’s keep the conversation.

Sydney Baloue (01:23:19)
Yeah.

Sydney Baloue (01:23:21)
Yeah, we could definitely link it in the bio. But there’s there’s like a full recording, it’s like an hour and a half long. So yeah, just reach out. I’m always down to connect with folks and I’m just so grateful for you having me here. Seriously, this is amazing.

NatsHoney (01:23:34)
Thank you for being here and celebrating like it’s a holiday. We’re not supposed to be working, but here we are, jamming and working. So I’m making it happen. Making it happen. So I really appreciate

Sydney Baloue (01:23:39)
We’re we’re working. We’re we’re doing that kind of work.

NatsHoney (01:23:45)
you being here, Sydney. Like seriously. And I am very, very grateful that our paths have crossed and I hope that we get to work with each other again. and I plan on continuing to learn from you.

Sydney Baloue (01:23:58)
likewise. Seriously, this was so amazing and I look forward to learning more from you and we will do even more great things in the future. Possibly also just re watch some Whitney videos and just, you know we should we should

NatsHoney (01:24:12)
Yes.

Sydney Baloue (01:24:12)
do like a waiting to exhale watch party or something.

NatsHoney (01:24:21)
Totally down for that. Totally down for that. Okay. let me do this outro script and then I think we’re going to do the other part. So let’s see here. Outro ending always ask. already I already did that. and then I did that. And then we’re gonna say, okay, we’re gonna say, bye Sid, thanks for coming.

Sydney Baloue (01:24:43)
Bye, thank you.

NatsHoney (01:24:44)

Bye