Roan, Alex

Interviewer

Paige Ravenscraft

Files

Description

Alex Roan is a 42 year old trans masc individual who uses he/him pronouns. He was originally from Stoughton, Massachusetts where he grew up with his family before moving to Central Maine for college and living in the Portland area through adulthood. Alex shares his experience with growing up in a Catholic family and finding himself as a trans person in college. He details what it was like to come out to his family, who was in denial at first but later in life became his biggest supporters.

Alex Roan is the founder of MaineTransNet. This interview captures the story of its journey from its conception as a project for school to the fully fledged nonprofit it is today. Alex gives insight into how his college experiences and job as a mental health counselor with teens jump-started the development of MaineTransNet. He also shares stories of forming trans support groups that started in the Portland area and expanded to be held all over the state.

Please cite as: Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, University of Southern Maine Libraries. For more information about the Querying the Past: Maine LGBTQ Oral History Project, please contact Dr. Wendy Chapkis.

Publication Date

11-26-2023

Publisher

USM Special Collections

City

Portland, Maine

Keywords

Academia, Activism, Catholic background, Catholic church, Catholicism, Central Maine, childhood, coming out, community, community organizing, gender dysphoria, family, family support, feminism, friendship, gender, gender expression and identity, LGBTQ Research, losing friends, MaineTransNet, masculinity, Massachusetts, media representation, mental health, non-binary spectrum, organizing, puberty, PJ Mears, queer community, queer identity, queer spaces, queer youth, religion, resource accessibility, role models, Sarah Holmes, self-acceptance, trans, trans men, transgender issues, transition, transSupport, University of Southern Maine, visibility, volunteering, work

Disciplines

History of Gender | Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies | Oral History | Women's Studies

Recommended Citation

Ravenscraft, Paige, "Roan, Alex" (2023). Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection. 118.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/querying_ohproject/118

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.