Jae Downing, PhD is an assistant professor in Oregon Health and Science University - Portland State University School of Public Health. Their research explores how policies and social safety nets shape healthcare for gender and sexual minority populations. Jae tells me how they protect research time by setting boundaries on service, the challenges and exciting aspects of studying sexual and gender minority populations, becoming a parent in the pandemic, lessons Jae and their wife learned about second-parent adoption of their son, love of rom-coms, Bridgerton, Brene Brown, and more!
Jae Downing, PhD is an assistant professor in Oregon Health and Science University - Portland State University School of Public Health. Their research explores how policies and social safety nets shape healthcare for gender and sexual minority populations. Jae tells me how they protect research time by setting boundaries on service, the challenges and exciting aspects of studying sexual and gender minority populations, becoming a parent in the pandemic, lessons Jae and their wife learned about second-parent adoption of their son, love of rom-coms, Bridgerton, Brene Brown, and more!
Jae Downing:
My son likes to eat approximately 8,000 times per day. He's very large.
Lisa Bodnar:
Really.
Jae Downing:
He's like 95th percentile. And you can't tell by my voice, but...
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
I'm an average size human. He eats a similar amount for breakfast as I do, if not more. I don't chug a whole eight ouncer of whole milk on the side.
Lisa Bodnar:
Hello, Shiny Epi People. Welcome back to the show. I am Lisa Bodnar, and I'm really thrilled that you're here. Go check out our social media accounts, Instagram and Twitter @shinyepipeople. And of course, share the show with your friends. Please. If you'd like to support it via a Patreon, you can find us there, patreon.com/shinyepipeople. Today, I am speaking with Jae Downing. Jae earned their M.S. from the University of California in San Francisco and their Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.
Lisa Bodnar:
Jae is an assistant professor in the Oregon Health and Science University, Portland State University School of Public Health. The research explores how policies and social safety nets shape access to and quality of healthcare for gender and sexual minorities and other minority populations. Jae and I talk about setting boundaries, specifically when it comes to service responsibilities. The challenges and exciting aspects of doing research on gender and sexual minority populations, becoming a parent during the pandemic, the complicated path to second-parent adoption that Jae and their wife are taking, and much more. I hope you enjoy this chat.
Lisa Bodnar:
Hi, Jae. Welcome to the show.
Jae Downing:
Thanks. Happy to be here.
Lisa Bodnar:
I'm so happy you agreed to do this. How long have you been living in Portland?
Jae Downing:
Been here two years now.
Lisa Bodnar:
What are your favorite Portland things?
Jae Downing:
I guess I really like being able to get out into nature really quickly. Still have the small city vibe, but be able to drive and get out to the mountains and go hiking. I spent the last or a good part of my life in California and the Bay Area, and there's just always so much traffic to get out to good hikes. A million people on everything. I think my favorite thing about Portland is that there always seemed to be kind of the right amount of people at events or bars. Just enough that you didn't feel like, "Oh, I'm going to leave. There's not enough people here."
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
Not too many that you had to touch them or...
Lisa Bodnar:
Right.
Jae Downing:
Except for brunch. There's always long lines here for brunch.
Jae Downing:
So I don't do that.
Lisa Bodnar:
Portlanders are big brunches. So Jae, one of the things that I was really struck with when you and I just had a brief chat was how strategic you are about protecting your research time. This is... you just sort of made a face that I don't know how to interpret, but it sort of was maybe not really. Is that what you were trying to say.
Jae Downing:
Oh, my face was... I was just curious where you're going to go with this.
Lisa Bodnar:
I think that protecting time is something that is really hard, especially for early-career people. And I was wondering if you could just sort of talk about that at first. How you learn to protect your time.
Jae Downing:
Yeah, absolutely. When I originally thought about academics, I saw everyone working all weekends and all nights and just constantly overwhelmed. And I thought that doesn't sound like a very fun life. Again, I'm only four or five years into my career, but I've really attempted to preserve my weekends and nights as much as possible because, at least for me, I need to rest my brain in order to get good thoughts. And the only way to do that is to be extremely organized. And I definitely go through phases where I start out, and I have a great grand organizational plan, and then a couple of weeks or month later, it falls apart. But then I go through it again, and I try to be gentle with myself and say, "Okay, well, the intention is there." But I think what you're getting at is it's about protecting your time and trying to understand like, "Do I really need to be at this meeting?" But I think a big thing is around service is that we get asked to do a lot of service-related tasks. Sometimes they're fun. They're enjoyable. Not always.
Lisa Bodnar:
I was going to say, "Uhm, okay."
Jae Downing:
Sometimes it can be fun. I mean, even not just for your academic department, I'm talking about other things. I'm part of this committee where they're trying to develop standard recommendations for sexual orientation and gender identity to be used in Portland. And they have these long meetings that are so fun-
Lisa Bodnar:
Cool.
Jae Downing:
... but it just takes up so much time. But that's sort of been one thing that's been a challenge to attend. If I have more time, I can attend other sort of community-based organizational meetings that are so relevant to my work and outreach and establishing trust in the local community, particularly around my area in transgender health research. But those sorts of things, how does that fit into getting a promotion? Where does that fall? And it ultimately tends to be a small portion of how you're evaluated to get promoted.
Lisa Bodnar:
Do you find that, in general, it's a thing that you just often have to really put a boundary on?
Jae Downing:
Yeah. I think you have to put pretty strict boundaries on it. And so I moved from a tenure track nine-month appointment job at the University of South Carolina. And this job is a non... they don't have tenure at OHSU specifically, which is a side I'm on. But it's a soft money position. So 5% of my time is technically for service. And that includes everything from reviewing journal articles to any kinds of service. I certainly spend more than 5% of my time on service.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
So just trying to use that line whenever I can. It's just this is what I have. Maybe I can scrape through a little more time, and that's something that's the challenge, I think. I think I'm in a spectrum, it's easier for me to say no. But I think I'm not a straight white male. And so I think that this sort of position of privilege. Typically, a lot of women and POC folks tend to be doing more of the service labor in departments.
Lisa Bodnar:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jae Downing:
And particularly as they're wrapping up trying to diversify, trying to be like, "Oh, we need to involve a representative from the sexual and gender minority people and a BIPOC person. Well, let's look around. We have approximately two and two of that in the whole school." So how are we compensating these folks for their time and their labor? It's great that you want those words voices heard, but how do you involve them in that?
Lisa Bodnar:
Being responsible for speaking on behalf of a incredibly diverse population in and of itself has got to be really challenging. Do you think that faculty recognize this at all when they're asking?
Jae Downing:
I don't really think so.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
I mean, certainly, there's some people that have insight into that. And it usually comes from other people who have experienced marginalization in some way.
Lisa Bodnar:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jae Downing:
Certainly, even cisgender women have experienced that in higher ed as well. Our school is actually, is putting something in place for the very first time. I'm not sure how it's going to work. But it's a good new model, and there's going to be specific grants to buy out part of your time to do extra labor, particularly around issues of racial and social justice, which a lot of our faculty engaged with unpaid regularly. So I think that's the thing, compensating folks for their time. And that's not it. It's not just about compensation, but I think that's a good start, and we'll see how this model works. I'm just... I am happy that they are trying something new.
Lisa Bodnar:
Something else that you wanted to talk about today is assessing gender in more than just a binary way. Could you talk a little bit about that?
Jae Downing:
Yeah. Now is kind of a time where folks are trying to think about this a little bit more, particularly at our institutions. One example of this is that for an internal grant at my institution, OHSU, there was a Women's Health Funding Grant, and I reached out to them. I said, "I'm doing trans health research. Would it be trans women, or does it have to focus on female sex assigned at birth?" And they said, "Wow, no one's asked about that before. Let's look into that. Let's think about it." And very similar conversation I had with the folks I'm part of something called Women and Academic Medicine, I think is the name of it. But this the same kind of question came up because they were offering awards for faculty. And some of the language said, woman, some of them said female. And I said, "I identify as gender non-binary. So what applies to me? Am I eligible for female or woman?" I ended up not applying, but I just wanted to ask them the question.
Lisa Bodnar:
I like that.
Jae Downing:
And they were also like, "Whoa. Yeah, that's a great point." And they were quickly to try to be inclusive of non-binary and then folks, and sort of starting the conversation around maybe changing their name.
Lisa Bodnar:
When there's an award for a woman in STEM to make it more inclusive, what should we say? Because I don't want to fuck this up either.
Jae Downing:
Right. And I think that's been one of the main criticisms, "Oh, the language is too challenging."
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh. Uh-huh (affirmative).
Jae Downing:
But that's the thing, right. Anytime something is new and different, the language around it will be more challenging. So I don't know if I fully have the answer, but I think, some folks suggested something around gender equity in STEM or something. And then someone brought up, "I don't want this to seem like an LGBTQ organization." And I was like, "Well..."
Lisa Bodnar:
Come on.
Jae Downing:
"... that's a common misconception that we're not really talking about sexual orientation right now." And then they said, "Well, we want to focus on issues that are for women. Particularly like having children and pregnancy." I said, "Well, I actually just had a baby."
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
What always comes up in these conversations is valid. Is that a lot of cisgender women have been and continue to be marginalized in higher ed and men are occupying at least the professor level status positions.
Jae Downing:
And so I think this organization, like a lot of Schools of Public Health, [inaudible 00:11:37] together around being a woman. And I think really what these folks are concerned about is around gender equity and moving the language to being around. We want gender equity across all genders and not just for cis women. I think if it feels like it's... cis women sometimes feel like they're being raced in these conversations. It's not an in us meaning the gender non-binary, genderqueer community versus cis women. It's all of us are trying to live in a world that has gender equity. I am not a BIPOC person, but I think that folks are trying to search for equity.
Jae Downing:
It's not an us versus them. I think folks at the NRH are starting to think a little bit more about that. What are health differences that are related to one's sex assigned at birth or her sex and even folks who say biological sex? Well, what does that mean? There's so much variation, or is it about something about gender that is causing our health disparity? Is it the way that we were socialized in our gender that's causing this health disparity?
Lisa Bodnar:
Is an important exposure the amount of time that someone has either been out or kind of themselves identified as being queer. Is that important? And do people study it? Maybe that's silly to ask.
Jae Downing:
This is a great question, of course, asked by an epidemiologist. Just to take a step back. The thing, the fun thing about doing sexual and gender minority research is that not only am I helping folks like myself, but the questions and research problems are nuanced and challenging. And so, how do we think about this? So your question is basically, how do we measure sexual orientation and gender identities? And what does that mean in terms of exposure? If I'm coming out at a time, well, what does that mean? Were you actually queer before that, and you just not saying it, and that could be worse for your health? There's some longitudinal large surveys that have collected sexual orientation over time.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Jae Downing:
A lot of folks switch their sexual orientation. Some identify as queer and then straight. And then, so it's not just a linear thing by any means.
Jae Downing:
So is it the most proximate exposure that would cause that? And so I think it really requires thinking about your particular research question. Are you using the sexual orientation as a proxy for stigma? We're really trying to tease that out. And the big challenge in this field is just the absence of the population-level data. I mentioned a few surveys have it, but those surveys often results in too small sample sizes. And the questions aren't asked in a way that are really relevant. A lot of terminology is also changing in the queer world. Younger folks might use queer. Older folks use lesbian. So if you're looking at lesbian versus queer, you might be... those folks are older, and maybe, or maybe live more in rural areas. So they have multiple intersecting exposures that might affect their health. So this is why this research is fun to think about and also very challenging.
Jae Downing:
A lot of us have turned to race, ethnicity, disparities, literature for some health. How have you dealt with some of these issues before? But those experiences are very different from a methodological standpoint. Sexual orientation changes over your life course. Again, you could say someone's race ethnicity could also change over their life course and across place and time. So there are some parallels to it. Typically, there's no within family, everyone's not necessarily a sexual minority. I think the biggest parallel is that when we're studying this stuff, just like when we're studying race, we don't actually care about race. We care about race as a proxy for racial stigma and racial discrimination. And the same thing is we're talking about that for sexual orientation is that focus on discrimination, not their sexual orientation themselves. I'm getting on my academic hat.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's okay. No. Put it on. Is it different if you were studying risky behaviors, then you're kind of looking at a different exposure?
Jae Downing:
Exactly. The three dimensions, I think it is. Sexual orientation, sexual behavior, and sexual identity.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Jae Downing:
Those are different, right. Because that's a big thing, particularly around the HIV world. So the men who have sex with men who identify as straight are most at risk for HIV, for example. So if we're just doing outreach to gay men, that might miss a large percent of population.
Lisa Bodnar:
I'm so happy that you're willing to teach me and listeners.
Jae Downing:
Thanks for caring.
Lisa Bodnar:
Switching gears, a smidge. Jae, you and your wife have a son.
Jae Downing:
Yep. He just came back from his nanny share, and he's going for nap right now. Yay. We're still on a two-nap-a-day cycle.
Lisa Bodnar:
Ugh, I love the two nap a day. That was so good. Those were good times. And then when they give up the nap, oh my gosh, those are just like, "No, what happened to my break?"
Jae Downing:
Yeah, exactly. And I guess I'm speaking to the right audience, but I don't know the counterfactual here. So I don't know what it would be like to be... It's kind of crazy, though. I don't know what it'd be like really to be a parent, not in the pandemic. Leo was-
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh, right.
Jae Downing:
... two and a half months. So I was just emerging from the haze if you will. The first round of the haze and then the pandemic set in. So we have had a very unique situation along with the other cohort of folks born in the same time.
Lisa Bodnar:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jae Downing:
But we don't know what it's like to go over hang out with other parents while I say, "Is this normal for the baby to be doing this?"
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
So that's something that we certainly feel like we missed out on, and that's been hard and challenges finding childcare, I think has been a challenge for everyone.
Jae Downing:
And particularly during the pandemic. Even a lot of my coworkers who had babies around the same time, they just, "We're going to keep the baby at home with them." And that's hard to do. And...
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
... you needed a little bit of a break, and we're only doing a part-time nanny share. So my wife takes care of him. She launched a physical therapy business during the pandemic, which has been-
Lisa Bodnar:
Wow.
Jae Downing:
... also challenging. There are obviously lots of benefits. Some of us have just seen each day looking very much like the next.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes.
Jae Downing:
With a young baby at least you're like, "Wow, he didn't do that last week."
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
"Something changed."
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. Oh, that's so cool, right. You have all those changes to look forward to.
Jae Downing:
Yeah. So that has been the plus.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. I wasn't even thinking that the only time you've been a parent is during the pandemic.
Jae Downing:
Oh yeah. Yeah. Leo actually went to the grocery store for the first time this weekend. Put them in the shopping cart, and he just looked around silent.
Lisa Bodnar:
He's like, "I've never been anywhere this big."
Jae Downing:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:19:05]. This is something that you would do with your baby is, "Okay, let's at least go get..."
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. Let's go to Target.
Jae Downing:
"... something at the store. Let's walk you around while I get something done." And now it's like-
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
"... okay, he's going out for a nap." So then my wife goes grocery shopping, and then I'm on duty and like, "Hopefully, he doesn't wake up." So I'm on a meeting.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jae Downing:
What meetings can I move at this time? So that if he does wake up, it's just my colleague that I'm friends with.
Lisa Bodnar:
Sure.
Jae Downing:
It's fine. Versus a serious meeting. And the challenges, I think, are fun.
Lisa Bodnar:
You and your wife have had to learn so much about guardianship of legal guardianship in same-sex couples. I'm sad to say I didn't know anything about this before. So what would you like to share about that experience?
Jae Downing:
One thing that I thought when I started this research, this was before I was a parent. I thought that the birth certificate was a legal document of parentage. Is that if you're on the birth certificate. You are in fact the parent. But it turns out that's not how the court of law looks at it. So in order to be on a birth certificate in most states, you have to either be married to the birth parent or biologically related to the child. For same-sex couples currently in most states, if, for example. So I birthed our child. If, for example, Jessica and I got mad at each other, and I took Leo across state lines. Then it's possible that the courts would say, "Okay, no, Jae is the only parent. Jessica is not the parent," or grant me more rights. So a lot of same-sex couples are suggested they should use second-parent adoption for their child.
Jae Downing:
So some people are like, "Well, this is the same as, say, I'm a straight man." I married my wife, and she has kids from a previous marriage. I adopted them. Well, that's actually a little bit of a different. That's step-parent adoption. That's a little bit-
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Jae Downing:
... different than second-parent adoption. At least this is my [inaudible 00:21:18] that I'm still not great at. What's interesting is that our university offers the benefit of $5,000 for adoption but the baby has to not be biologically a part of your family before in order to get that benefit. So I asked them if we could use this benefit, and they said, "This is not what the IRS says." I looked at the IRS laws, and it said, actually, if you're in a domestic partnership, you can use this benefit. So, sometimes I'm fresh, and I said, "Well, we were in a domestic partnership before. Are you saying that you should recommend for all employees to be in a domestic partnership in order to access this benefit?" They didn't like that comment. I don't know why. It wasn't rude or anything.
Lisa Bodnar:
I like it. I like a gentle sassy pushback.
Jae Downing:
It was sassy/ That's not typically how policy changes are made. It's what I learned from that experience.
Lisa Bodnar:
The sassy pushback, not effective. Okay.
Jae Downing:
But I mean, ultimately, right, we could afford to do this process, but a lot of folks can't afford this process, and so skip it, and thus the legal protections for the child are not great in that situation. So some lawyers that I've spoken to are trying to change this at the state levels, and we won't need to do this adoption process.
Lisa Bodnar:
Wow.
Jae Downing:
But this is what's been going on for a long, long time, even before gay marriage.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. You ready to talk about some fun stuff?
Jae Downing:
Yes.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. Do you have a memory that you wish you could go back and experience again for the first time?
Jae Downing:
So I did the Peace Corps when I was 22 or three.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Jae Downing:
And I just remember the first time going to my site, and everything just looks so foreign.
Lisa Bodnar:
Where was it?
Jae Downing:
In Morocco. I guess I'll sound like a little bit of a hippie. But a profound sense of how small I was in the world and how different things were, but then how much the same we are. And I just, I do wonder how I'd experienced that today and would I see that in the same way.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. I really liked that memory. I thought you were basically going to say, "The birth of my son." Which would've been fine.
Jae Downing:
I don't want to go back there.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Jae Downing:
I remember that all too well. That was a lot of pain.
Lisa Bodnar:
What's something you're embarrassed to admit that you like.
Jae Downing:
People are often surprised that I really like romcoms, romantic comedy movies.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. I'm totally shocked.
Jae Downing:
Okay. I'm really into them.
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh really?
Jae Downing:
Yeah. It's just they're so nice. All the kinds. Even extremely heterosexual ones, like Bridgerton. That was great.
Lisa Bodnar:
I loved Bridgerton, Jae.
Jae Downing:
Yeah. That's-
Lisa Bodnar:
Loved it.
Jae Downing:
That falls in that genre. Jane the Virgin.
Lisa Bodnar:
I love Jane the Virgin.
Jae Downing:
Yeah. They're so sappy it hurts. But why not?
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. Yeah. I love that. Let's not be embarrassed by that, especially Bridgerton. I was expecting there to be more queer relationships in that.
Jae Downing:
Let's see. Probably season two. They're really trying to sell it.
Lisa Bodnar:
They're like, "The duke is so hot. Let's start with the duke."
Jae Downing:
Right. We'll just focus on his abs again. It's like all the men want to be him. Everyone wants to-
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes.
Jae Downing:
Everyone loves them.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah. Okay. Do you use emojis when you text?
Jae Downing:
I do. But I think I have three emojis that I use.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. What are they?
Jae Downing:
You know the one that's like the teeth. I don't know if that's...
Lisa Bodnar:
Like the cringe one. That's like...
Jae Downing:
Yeah. The cringe. I do that one. Laughing with tears.
Lisa Bodnar:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Jae Downing:
Then the thumbs up.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay.
Jae Downing:
It's very vanilla. I think I started thinking about overthinking emojis. I didn't want to show that I'm communicating like a teenage girl. But I like the same shows as them.
Lisa Bodnar:
Thank you so much, Jae, for taking so much time to talk to me.
Jae Downing:
Thank you.
Lisa Bodnar:
So good to get to know you.
Jae Downing:
This was a lot of fun.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah.
Jae Downing:
Experiences of vulnerability around sharing about yourself and Brené Brown.
Lisa Bodnar:
Brené Brown, man. I hear you.
Jae Downing:
Be vulnerable, be brave. Kind of make fun of her, but I kind of love her.
Lisa Bodnar:
Let's talk about shame. That's how we get rid of it. Just bring it to light.
Jae Downing:
Did you see that really bad movie Wine Country?
Lisa Bodnar:
With a whole bunch of...
Jae Downing:
Older women.
Lisa Bodnar:
Like Tina Fey.
Jae Downing:
Yeah.
Lisa Bodnar:
Uh-huh (affirmative). Yeah-
Jae Downing:
And then Brené Brown, who used to... do you remember Brené Brown makes the appearance. She's like, "Hi, I'm Brené." And they're like, "Oh, my God. It's Brené." Yeah, you got to rewatch it for that part.