Late Bloomer Lesbianism with YouTuber

ALAYNA JOY

0:00:00 - Danielle Bezalel

Alayna Joy, hello!

0:05:24 - Alayna Joy

Hello Danielle, I'm so excited to be here. 

0:05:28 - Danielle Bezalel

Absolutely just jazzed that you're here today. I mentioned this before we started, but my editor turned me on to you and she loves you, so I'm very excited that we are able to get you on the podcast for her behalf, mine and everyone else's. Her name is Sadie. 

0:05:48 - Alayna Joy

Sadie hello Sadie. I'm sure she's going to freak out. 

0:05:52 - Danielle Bezalel

That's really awesome. I'm really really glad to have you here today. Today, we're… You know the overarching topic: why keep our audience in suspense? We're talking about late bloomer lesbianism here. We're talking about late bloomer queerness, and I think that this is a story that hits home for a lot of people, including myself, as someone who has recently been identifying as bi, which is really fun. Okay, hello, welcome we're here. We're here, we're queer, get used to it, yes, and so I'd love for you to just introduce yourself, whatever that means to you. Tell us a little bit about your journey towards becoming a YouTuber. You got like half a million subscribers. You're rocking and rolling on there, which is very impressive, by the way. Congratulations, thank you, and just tell me, like, what kind of motivates you and inspires you to create the kind of content that you do? 

0:06:47 - Alayna Joy

Oh boy, what a question. Yeah, how much time do we have, I guess? I mean there's a lot there. I started making content on the internet as I was graduating high school. Oh, wow, yikes, because I was living in a small town. I grew up in a very small religious conservative place, rural Manitoba for any of you who are familiar with Canada. 

0:07:16 - Danielle Bezalel

Okay, Canada, you're Canadian. 

0:07:17 - Alayna Joy

Okay, and I found YouTube and this kind of becomes a through line in whatever. Over a decade of you know time I've been making content. I found YouTube and I found this community. I found a place where people were making videos, they were making friends, they were talking about things that I didn't have people to talk about in my day to day life and I wanted to be a part of it. I always loved videos from elementary school. I picked up my dad's camcorder and I, like, started making music videos with my friends and was hooked, and so it felt like this place that I wanted to be. So I started making just you know, silly videos as YouTube circa 2010, 2012 was and then, over time, I guess, my sense of community, or my the desire for a different type of community, that shifted, as my kind of identity, my understanding of myself shifted, so I started making more content around mental health as I got a little bit older. 

Then I realized my own queerness. I started making videos around bisexuality. That community was an incredible place for me, because I did not have queer community in my day to day life, in my face to face quote, unquote IRL life. I did not have that. So it was huge for me to find that space online and to get to be a part of it. And then, you know, pandemic COVID hits and whoopsie. I'm a lesbian, and so you know my content as it evolved along with me and and I started making videos as myself and and here we are today. That's like the quickest version I can give. That was good, yeah, okay. 

0:09:16 - Danielle Bezalel

And yeah, by the way, like I've chatted with a bunch of friends about this, about like this idea of like whoops, tiktok made me gay. My friend Daniela, she's the one that kind of like literally wanted to make a commercial that was like whoops, TikTok made me gay. Like here's like a bunch of women specifically. 

0:09:35 - Alayna Joy

I'm pretty sure I have a literal YouTube video that's called TikTok…. No, I have a playlist on my YouTube channel. Tiktok made me gay. I don't doubt that at all. Like it's real. 

0:09:45 - Danielle Bezalel

It is, I don't know what it is. I think it's like the power of the algorithm. We're like I like this, I like this, I like this more and you're just kind of like moving through. But that makes sense. So you kind of have this like a slow realization and journey. 

So you first were kind of like, okay, maybe I'm bi and then like more in the more recent years, were like, actually like the term lesbian like fits me better, like what was the kind of transition from bisexuality to being a lesbian and what was the like confusion or excitement or all the above different emotions that came up. 

0:10:19 - Alayna Joy

So TikTok, no, but seriously. So again, there's a lot to dive into. I guess the complicating piece. One of the complicated pieces of my journey is that I was in a long term relationship with a man, and I think that relationship was a big part of my not recognizing that I was gay versus bi, because I hadn't even considered that being gay was an option Like I. 

I knew that I was in this relationship that brought so much joy and fulfillment and companionship and love into my life, and so it didn't occur to me to question my attraction to men, whereas I'd questioned my attraction to women from a very young age, and so discovering the label of bisexuality was this really beautiful, important moment for me. And so it wasn't like a feeling of like, oh, maybe I'm bi. For those years it was oh, this is me, this makes sense, this fits, this feels good, it feels right. And then it really was the pandemic hitting and me being kind of, in a lot of senses, taken away from the queer community that I had built, because I had moved to BC, british Columbia, and I had found kind of a queer community in my city, and then COVID and the lockdown took that away, and it was now just me. In my, in my relationship, we were engaged, wow, and so we were starting to plan this wedding. Tiktok is feeding me all the most beautiful women. 

And it kind of became this pressure cooker of anxiety and fear and just knowing that something really didn't feel right, not knowing what that was. And then, as I kind of unwillingly faced this, like what if I'm gay? That's when kind of that realization really sunk in, like once it hit me there was no turning back. It was like once that possibility came into my mind of Something was unlocked, yes, and it was like I couldn't unsee it, wow, and so then we're on to the next chapter. The best begins Right. 

0:13:20 - Danielle Bezalel

Wow, yeah, it was tough, that must have felt very I mean especially because you know, and I think that a lot of people do share this experience of being like I've been in this relationship. 

It is a healthy, like happy relationship, but like my mind has just shifted to realize something that I don't think I was quite ready or willing or able to articulate before and that must be really tough Cause if you're in a relationship where you're like oh, I know we're not compatible or I know that you're not being a very good person to me or I know X, y and Z, it must feel a lot easier, but in your case that sounds like a really, really big challenge. 

0:14:01 - Alayna Joy

Like even just hearing you say that back to me is like giving me goosebumps because it's still like now it's over three years later yeah, it's just over three years later now and like I'm still processing the impact of that and like how truly painful that time was in my life, but also, you know, freeing and beautiful and exciting and you know coming into myself in so many ways. So, yeah, it was a lot. 

0:14:38 - Danielle Bezalel

And when it comes to your public persona, were you kind of like already making those kinds of videos about mental health and about who you were, and then, like your platform, kind of shifted or talked? Me through, like how this happened for you publicly. 

0:14:54 - Alayna Joy

Oh God, just another layer of terror. So, yeah, my relationship had been very public, my engagement was public. I made my entire channel about the validity of being bisexual, being a woman and dating a man and how. It doesn't matter who you're dating, your queerness is valid, your bisexuality, your pansexuality is valid. I stand behind all of that, of course. 

So then, when I realized that I actually wasn't by myself, it was there was so much fear around knowing that this was something I couldn't keep to myself, even if I wanted to, because I already had this public persona, this kind of public facing life, and I didn't wanna be a fraud, I didn't wanna be inauthentic, but I was so afraid that I was going to play into all of these negative stereotypes, like I was like, oh no, now I am going to feed into everything that I've been fighting against and like prove or provide evidence for people who believe that bisexuality is just a phase, or you're gonna choose a side eventually, or bisexual people can't be monogamous and their cheaters, whatever those kind of negative beliefs were. I was like I'm gonna come forward with this and everything I've been fighting for the past five to seven years on my channel is gonna mean nothing and I really was prepared to lose my entire community. I was prepared for what I was expecting. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was bad. 

0:16:42 - Danielle Bezalel

You had a lot of doubts. 

0:16:43 - Alayna Joy

A lot of doubts, a lot of fear. But then, when I posted the video explaining everything, the like, the re-coming out I was shocked at not only the level of support but, like you said, the amount of other people who were feeling the exact same way or who had been in the exact same situation, were on the exact same path of self-discovery and, like me, had never seen anybody talk about it Like that was. The fear is that I didn't see anybody else on YouTube talking about, like I thought I was by whoops, I'm a lesbian. I've been dating a man for 10 years and just realized I'm a lesbian. Like I didn't know that that was an okay way to be. I didn't know that that was a valid way to discover your queerness, all of those things. So it wasn't just, not only was it a positive and supportive response, it was so much of it was building community again in another way. 

Like me too, I'm there too. I'm figuring this out right along with you. I'm 20, I'm 30, I'm 40, I'm 50, I'm 60. I'm just realizing I'm a lesbian. What? 

0:18:09 - Danielle Bezalel

worst. First of all, just like congrats is like the wrong word, but just like. 

0:18:16 - Alayna Joy

No, I'll take it. 

0:18:17 - Danielle Bezalel

I'm like very happy for you that like and I know for sure that there was like a lot of hardships, a lot of tears, a lot of reflection, probably a lot of therapy a lot of like figuring out like how to be the most comfortable version of yourself and how to be really like proud about that, especially as a public persona. 

0:18:37 - Alayna Joy

And 

0:18:37 - Danielle Bezalel

I have a following where I can live off of it, but no one knows me on the street right, and so I understand the idea of being like being, like having this community, and feeling like you need to be honest with them, but being worried about how they're gonna react Absolutely. And so kudos to you for really being brave and like being open and willing to kind of like okay, this is how I feel and this is what's going on for me. You guys can take it or leave it but here's what's going on and that's really powerful. 

But I wonder if you like I saw one of your videos a couple of days ago about like oh, here's some like here's a Google doc of like signs that you might be a lesbian Like, can you talk about like for people listening who kind of acknowledge that, like sexuality is a spectrum? I think that our audience is kind of like the 102 sexuality class instead of the intro class. 

So they kind of know about the Kinsey scale and they know about the idea that sexuality changes over time. But at least for myself, at you know, for the I'm 30, like for a long time I was kind of like yeah, no, like I've had like a crush on a woman and I like have had feelings for women and I looked at, I look at women and I'm like they're hot. 

I find them attractive, like not being able to know the same thing. I'm engaged to a man who has been together for seven years now and, like I feel so in love with him, so confident about our relationship, and it is. I find it very hard as a woman to be like yeah, and I am bisexual and you know the questions are like well, what's going to happen with your relationship, and like there's a lot of backlash and like things that people don't really recognize. I'm wondering if you can just talk through some of the things that were coming up for you when you were in your relationship being like what am I thinking about? Like, how does this label feel good for me? Like, what are my like connections that I'm making to feel comfortable using this label? 

0:20:36 - Alayna Joy

In terms of bisexuality or lesbianism or what. 

0:20:39 - Danielle Bezalel

Maybe both, I mean because clearly you were kind of on that path right and bisexuality did feel really valid to you and felt very at home and then eventually, you're settling on the term lesbian. So maybe like what was going on for you at both times. 

0:20:54 - Alayna Joy

Yeah, the. I think that for me, being able to be open and like feeling comfortable in my queerness while I was dating a man was very much about a desire to be, a desire to not hide and to like being who I am, whether people are going to understand that or not. So it wasn't so much I think I accepted my own queerness to avoid as we've all seen within myself enough that I was like people are going to think what they want to think about our relationship. But it was very important to me that I was seen for who I was and who I was was a queer woman dating a man. So that was kind of the guiding principle behind bisexuality and like being open with that. And then it's so tricky to speak generally about figuring out labels and figuring out what fits because everybody is so different. I know for me, part of the realization where I couldn't look away from it anymore was when my ex and I opened up our relationship, basically when I I had an oh god, I had a breakdown one day. It was after Ingrid Nielsen released her coming out video. I don't know if you are familiar. She is this content creator. She's been doing content for a billion years. She's very femme presenting. She did a lot of lifestyle content, makeup, and beauty. She made a lot of content with her boyfriend at the time and then, oh god, I'm getting chills again remembering all of this. And then she broke the internet out of nowhere, seemingly posting a coming out video saying I'm a lesbian. I had never seen somebody who looked like me Come out as gay. Sorry, it's like I still have a lot of emotion attached. 

0:23:02 - Danielle Bezalel

Don't apologize. This is the place to feel. 

0:23:10 - Alayna Joy

But basically I had this breakdown after I watched that video because I was like, oh god, what if I'm gay? This was 10 years ago, almost at this point, and I brought this to my partner and he was like, okay, okay, so does this mean you know that you don't want to be with me? And I was like no, no, no, no, I want to be with you. And he was like, okay, hmm, so are you saying like you don't, you don't love me? I was like no, no, no, I love you. And he's like Okay. 

So he's like trying to puzzle. He's the most wonderful person on this planet. And he's like, okay, so you're gay, but you want to be with me, you love me, you enjoy our relationship, you want to build our life together. And I'm like yes, and he's like okay, so you're Gay. Then, are you sure? And I was like yeah, and I was like no, I'm bi, ha ha ha, like thinking I just had this moment because I hadn't really explored Very much or I hadn't had a chance to like to have relationships with women, while I was open and understanding of my own queerness. Anyway, so we open up the relationship and I'm gonna say maybe four or five years after that I started having, I started exploring my queerness with women and other queer people, non-binary folks and and that's where I couldn't not look at it anymore, right, because there was a stark contrast In my experiences with men and my experiences with queer people. 

0:24:53 - Danielle Bezalel

So how you saw yourself and how you felt yourself, opening up or connecting. 

0:24:57 - Alayna Joy

Yes, how I felt myself connecting that's a really good word emotionally, physically, it was like there were parts of me that I thought didn't exist, like I thought that I was demiromantic because I thought I just don't experience romantic feelings really Nope, just gay dating men. I thought there were a lot of things that I thought were true about my body and the way that my body responded to partners or didn't respond. That, I thought, was just my body. Nope, just gay and dating men. So fascinating, yes. So for me there was a big experience component to it which Is frustrating for a lot of people who are questioning to hear, because a lot of the people that write to me, a lot of them, are women in monogamous relationships with men questioning their sexuality. 

So it's not helpful for me to say I had to experience it. That's how I knew, right. But the big shift kind of In In more a more abstract shift was my understanding of the difference between experiencing desire myself and enjoying the experience of being desired. So when I realized that my whole life, what I was mistaken for desire Was actually just an enjoyment of somebody else desiring me, it was like yes, it was like oh wow. I saw sorry to interrupt you but no, it's relevant, it's your own video. 

0:26:35 - Danielle Bezalel

I saw a video of yours that was about you being like, you thinking about, like all the guy friends that you had had and like how you've had a crush on all of them and I. 

Really, I just really love that moment in the video. You're just like wait a minute, yeah, hold on. You're like live thinking through like what that feels like, and I think this is relevant to this idea of like mistaking your kind of like feelings for how it feels to have someone else Feel for you, and I think this is where, like the messiness of like of like crushes and friendships and Romance can like swirl around here. 

Yeah, and that point is just really interesting to me . Do I authentically Like this or do I just like that you like me and like how to? 

0:27:32 - Alayna Joy

yes those feelings and how to parse out Whether they like me or not, how to parse out friendship from romance. Like I didn't understand. I didn't know the difference because I had very, very few experiences of romantic attraction, so I was misunderstanding a lot of my own experience as Attraction, when that's not what it was. And then, when I started experiencing attraction and allowing myself To lean in, like allowing myself to be in that feeling of attraction, like I'm experiencing attraction myself, that's when it was like, oh, this feels very different than these other things that I thought were attraction in the past. And you know, I'm still. I'm still learning my own body. I'm still learning on my own the way that I experience attraction. I'm still learning that for myself because I misunderstood it for so many years. 

0:28:39 - Danielle Bezalel

When you were a kid did you? Feel like there were kind of like these moments of love. You would see Women either like cartoons or kind of like in real life or in movies and you would be like, oh, like I Am, there's an attraction there, but maybe it's related to like the make-out scene of like with a guy or like how, how did you kind of like connect that from your childhood? 

0:29:04 - Alayna Joy

Yeah, see, I I didn't make the connection that what I was experiencing was attraction like that. The break there wasn't. Even this is something that. How do I explain this? This is part of the reason that this took me so long it's like I. I genuinely didn't occur to me that what I was experiencing was attraction. So what? There was no mental loop like gymnastics. There were no Jumping through hoops convincing myself of whatever no, because I didn't like Meg from Hercules. 

Yeah, obsessed. I was obsessed with her, of course, like that it was my favorite movie because I loved Meg from Hercules. 

I had this best friend in in elementary school that, like when she moved away, I cried for days I didn't I would break up with a boyfriend and not like my mom has said to me that she was worried about me because I flew through boyfriends so fast in junior high, like I had 50 of them and we would break up and I'd be on to the next one. And my mom was like, oh, this is concerning behavior from Alayna. 

0:30:10 - Danielle Bezalel

No, mom, I'm just in my sweat. But she was like when you break up with someone, like are you supposed to be? 

0:30:14 - Alayna Joy

sad and I was just like Couldn't give, couldn't give two shits, um so interesting. So there wasn't this like I don't know. I think it was so deep down repressed but not even repressed, because this is maybe a bit of a twisted thing to say, and I don't mean it like I don't actually mean like this was a good thing, because it obviously was not, but maybe in in some way that was the benefit of like growing up religious. This was like it wasn't presented to me as an option that girls would like girls. I didn't know Were you Christian or what. 

Yeah, yeah, grew up in a religious town, very involved in the church, all of that fun stuff. So it didn't until Ellen came out, right like I remember the moment. I remember where I was, I remember who I was with, what I was doing, when I found out Ellen was gay, because I was like, wait, women can be Gay. I didn't know they're allowed. Yeah, I had no idea. Wow. So there wasn't this like Jumping through hoops in my own brain to like figures, like convincing myself of my feelings for women, because I just was like I don't know, I just like them. I didn't have that internal struggle of like am I gay, Am I this, Am I that? I didn't have that Because I was like well, I like men, they all like everybody else, so that's totally fine. Until high school, I thought that all girls felt the same way that I did about girls. I thought that was just how we all felt, obviously until I learned that that was not true. When I learned that bisexuality existed and I was like, oh my god, not everybody makes up with their best friend and is super jealous when we date other people and then all of a sudden we're not friends anymore for some reason. When we start dating guys, You're like soft launching this. 

0:35:49 - Danielle Bezalel

This is a very big piece of information here. Yes, so that happened to you in high school. 

0:35:54 - Alayna Joy

Absolutely. Me and my best friend were fully dating, but we didn't know. 

0:36:00 - Danielle Bezalel

Were you like, we're just practicing, we're just practicing. 

0:36:03 - Alayna Joy

It was literally like practicing for the boys or like this is just like we're just really close friends, wow. 

0:36:09 - Danielle Bezalel

I would like to see an A24 movie based on this story. I'm sure it's in the works. 

0:36:15 - Alayna Joy

And yeah, yeah, wow, there's so much. 

0:36:19 - Danielle Bezalel

Yeah, so it was really kind of like I don't have the ability to allow or even comprehend, like how I could be this way if it's not possible. 

0:36:30 - Alayna Joy

For me Exactly, I didn't have it. It wasn't in my mind. The concept of being a woman who's exclusively attracted to other women, other queer people, was not, had not entered Alayna's realm of possibility, so there wasn't this deep internal struggle about it. The only deep internal struggle was around the religious piece, which is a bit separate. 

0:37:00 - Danielle Bezalel

So in a lot of your videos just transitioning to mental health really quick you chat about mental health in relation to queerness and identity. I'd love to know, like, how you think these topics intersect and any advice that you have for people who are kind of navigating their own mental health either joy or struggles, like while they're kind of figuring out this potentially large part of themselves. 

0:37:32 - Alayna Joy

Another big question for Daniel. I think that mental health and identity are inextricably connected but are also things that can be addressed separately. So it's not like you can't have positive mental health. It doesn't mean you can't have, can't take care of your mental health and also not be out or also not know about your identity. That's absolutely possible For me, recognizing who I was and then coming out as that person to the world and then living as that person. 

It was like seeing the world with color for the first time, you know. 

So there's oh, that's a tricky one because there's so there's so much complexity here, because I was very lucky and that my family accepts me, I have a community around me, I have a wonderful partner now, and that's and those are all things that contribute to my feelings of well-being, and not everybody has that. So I think you have to look at the balance when deciding how to live or like, how fully to like to live as your true self. You have to look at your own situation and balance, kind of what are the things that I will gain, what are the things that I will lose, that I will maybe lose A lot of the time. You think that you're gonna lose somebody and you don't, or maybe you lose them for a little bit and then they come back, and then you know you're prioritizing your safety. Obviously, if you're, if you're living, if you're under any sort of control of somebody else, like living with family, or you're young, still in school, whatever it is, you know, maybe wait. 

0:39:45 - Danielle Bezalel

It is really tricky. 

0:39:46 - Alayna Joy

Yeah. 

0:39:47 - Danielle Bezalel

Like, I feel like if we were having this conversation in the 80s or something you'd think it would be, we would have the same answers which is like a very sad part of it. 

I do think that, like with, at least in the US, like with current legislation under many, many states, like it is actually scary and not safe for many people to come out, in whatever capacity, and I just wish that that wasn't the case and I hope that, with the access that most people have to the internet, that online community could potentially serve those folks who are living in a place or with people or in a culture that doesn't accept them for who they are. 

0:40:33 - Alayna Joy

And I think that's the best general piece of advice that you can give for mental health and queerness is to find community, whether that is in your town in person queer meetup groups, or it's the internet, consuming queer content. There's all sorts of different groups, supports that are online, because isolation is terrible. It's terrible and it's really what's the word it can be. Isolation contributes to depression, anxiety, loneliness, all sorts of things that you don't. You don't really want to improve your mental health. 

0:41:23 - Danielle Bezalel

Yeah, and if you're listening and you feel like there are people around you in your community who have come out or who have talked to you about coming out, the most protective thing that you can do is say I'm so happy for you, I'm so proud of you. 

0:41:38 - Alayna Joy

I love you for who you are. 

0:41:40 - Danielle Bezalel

Let me know how I can support you. Here are some organizations that we can look to to get resources or community or advice, and I think that that is a very easy script that you can follow if you're on the receiving end of somebody coming out or kind of struggling with their identity. 

Yeah, that's a really important piece, yeah let's talk a little bit about your audience, and I think if someone like you who has half a million or more like that's a lot of people who are looking to you and who are consuming your content and your everydayness and just like, want to be around you, and I'm sure that there has been a lot of kind of interactions that have mixed bag, but I'm sure there are some that stick out that are really, really positive, where people have told you their you know what your impact has been on them and I would love if you have any stories or kind of like you know any really rewarding kind of feelings that have come up for you doing this. 

0:42:45 - Alayna Joy

I mean, yeah, it would be hard to pick one because I'm very lucky, my audience is this group of wonderful people. So 99% of the interactions I have are like these positive, connecting experiences. I one that stands out to me from recently was I was in a coffee shop and I walked into the coffee shop, I sit down with my coffee and this woman's kind of sitting at a table close to me and she kind of she kind of reaches over and she's like hey, I just wanted to say like I love your podcast, I love your, your content. Or she said, yeah, I love your podcast and I love your YouTube content. Of course, I just wanted to say hi. And I was like, oh, great, nice to meet you and I keep doing my stuff forever. 

And then she gets up to leave her and then she is with a guy and she comes back over. This is maybe like 30 minutes later and she's like Okay, I just wanted to say that I hate what I said before and this is what I really wanted to say. And then she talked about bisexuality and how included she felt in my content and just she said all these really lovely, wonderful things she's tearing up, I'm tearing up Like it was. It was a really nice moment, but it stands out to me because of the like, returning after already saying hi. 

And it made me think because often not every time I meet somebody, after I meet them, they walk away. I have this anxiety like I hope that that was okay, like I hope that I was nice, yeah, yeah. 

I hope that I wasn't too nervous. I hope that I wasn't awkward. You know all the social anxiety things and that was like the first thing she said was lovely, like she said. Whatever it was that she said about the content, I was like Thank you, oh, you made my day. But then the fact that she felt she needed to come and like to say that wasn't good. I hated what I said. Here's what I actually wanted to say. I was like Okay, we're all in this together, we're all nervous, everyone feels fucking weird about this. 

0:45:04 - Danielle Bezalel

We like to interact with each other, yeah. This is kind of like the, the just ordinary life of like meeting someone that you really admire and like we're all just people like, yeah, living on this fucking floating rock, just like trying to figure out. Some are obviously way more privileged and like luck than others. 

But at the end of the day, like when you meet someone who you really admire, you're like, oh, they're just like a person who like just takes a shit every day like the rest of us, and like, just like you know, like we build these people up in our head and like you're definitely one of those people for other people and you have those people and it kind of like continues right, Like it's kind of like this never ending thing with this culture of celebrity that we have and it must feel really fun and nice and really like rewarding when someone comes up to you. But I can understand that anxiety of just being like oh God, like I hope I'm, I hope they like me. 

0:46:01 - Alayna Joy

Yes, yeah, it's like I hope they like me times 10 because they have this idea of me from everything that's online and it's like am I living up to that idea day to day? And then there's just the strange component of like you know so much about me and I know nothing about you. You know, like you, I am a familiar face to you. You are a stranger to me, so there's like there's so there's such a complex dynamic for sure, that's how I feel with my life. 

0:46:35 - Danielle Bezalel

Basically the only podcast I listen to is Armchair Expert with Dax Shepherd, Okay, and I've just listened to like thousands of hours of it. It feels like you know this thing. Where people are, like I have a parasocial relationship with you and, yeah, when I, if I ever like, meet them right, there's this idea in my head of like, oh my God, I like to know so much about them and they know nothing about me. 

And it's really a bizarre thing and I kind of think about that for this podcast. There are people out there, according to our data, who are listening to this right now. 

0:47:11 - Alayna Joy

And 

0:47:11 - Danielle Bezalel

I know nothing about you and you know. If you are so inclined, like a listener, right into me and say hello and just let me know who you are so I can feel like you know. I get to know you too. 

0:47:25 - Alayna Joy

That's the cool thing about meeting people out on the streets and like people coming up and saying hi is like oh, it's a face, oh, you're a real person, you're somebody that's watching, that's listening. So then, when I get those moments of like what am I doing here? Who am I talking to? What's the point? 

0:47:42 - Danielle Bezalel

You're literally talking to your phone or your camera. What the fuck? What is this? 

0:47:46 - Alayna Joy

Exactly. I can remember those faces and it's like, oh okay, I'm speaking to this person, I'm doing this for this person, or it's. Or I'm doing it for little me who didn't have that representation right. 

0:48:00 - Danielle Bezalel

That's really really sweet. Well, I can tell you, as someone who now knows you IRL, that you definitely measure up. You're exactly how your videos are. I'm a new fan, but definitely a really big fan of your work and just everything that you do and how you approach everything and your authenticity. It's really really refreshing and it's been great chatting with you and getting to know you. 

0:48:22 - Alayna Joy

Yeah thanks for reaching out. I'm glad that this worked, of course, and I think it's obviously so important what you're doing, all of the sex education and like. I go on your Instagram and I go through your Reels and stuff and I'm like, oh wow, she's like you're giving. Well, what you said I think it was before we were recording. 

You said, providing the sex education that women never had. Yeah, true, like that is what you're doing and I'm grateful, and I'm sure all of your viewers and listeners are grateful too. Thank you, that's so sweet. 

0:48:55 - Danielle Bezalel

Where can people find you? We don't want to end this interview without giving you some plug space. 

0:49:00 - Alayna Joy

So I'm Miss Fender with 2Rs on pretty much everything, mainly YouTube and Instagram, some TikTok I dabble in, and I also have a podcast, the Chosen Family podcast. Me, Ashley and Mack, we were the gay family you never had. 

0:49:17 - Danielle Bezalel

Love it, and that's, I'm assuming, on all platforms. 

0:49:20 - Alayna Joy

Yes. 

0:49:20 - Danielle Bezalel

Anywhere you get your podcasts on all platforms. Well, Alayna Joy, thank you so much for being here today. It's been a lovely, lovely conversation and I can't wait to tune into more of your content. 

0:49:30 - Alayna Joy

Yeah, I'm excited to see this come out. I hope it helps.