In celebration of Pride Month, we’re sharing two stories about coming out with the help of science.

Part 1: After years of struggling with their gender identity, Parker Sublette finds inspiration in marine life.

Parker Sublette is a comedian and speculative fiction writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She can usually be found scrambling around the city looking for any stage that will have her, or at home with her roommates and their two cats. Parker also sometimes hosts an open-mic in Bushwick, you can find her @parks_jokez on instagram.

Part 2: Bullied as a kid for the sound of his voice, Garret Glinka begins to reclaim his confidence thanks to biology class.

Garret Glinka: I wear two hats: one as a businessman with half a Master’s in Business, and the other as a scientist, with another half in Biotechnology and Genomics, complemented by a Bachelor’s in Biological Sciences. My background allows me to bridge the administrative and scientific worlds. Over the past six years, I’ve honed my expertise as a laboratory professional in both corporate and academic settings, helping operate and set up five laboratories domestically/internationally. I’ve been a technician, team leader, supervisor, and lab manager. As a member of the queer community, I bring kindness, authenticity, vulnerability, and positive influence to my leadership style. Now at Columbia University’s Neuroscience Institute, I manage two labs, lead the Gender and Inclusion Mentoring Program, and coordinate the Lab Liaison Group, ensuring communication across the institute’s departments and other lab managers. When I’m not dissecting Drosophila in New York City, or out to eat with Jersey City friends, I retreat to my family’s farm in central New Jersey. There you’ll find me tending to our goats and chickens, inspecting the crops, or racing dirt bikes with my three-year-old nephew, Jay. My life is a dynamic blend of science, leadership, community, and family, each enriching the other in unexpected ways.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PART 1

In Long Beach, California, there lives a twin to one of the most iconic mammals of New York City. I am, of course, talking about the model blue whale that hangs in the Museum of Natural History. The one in Long Beach is at the Aquarium of the Pacific and it isn't as grand. It's a little bit more beat up than the one in New York and it hangs in the entry hall, its downward tail frozen in a flick pointing at this floor‑to‑ceiling display tank where you can find any number of fish and wildlife native to the California coast, garibaldi, flounder, leopard sharks and the sea bass.

Parker Sublette shares her story at Hudson River Park’s Pier 57 Discovery Tank in March 2025 in New York, NY. Photo by Zhen Qin.

It was on one of the many visits when I was there with my family, and it was many visits because I made them take me as much as they would, where we had sprung for a guided tour, that I first heard the fact that fish can change their sex. This is the beginning of the very long story of how a fish made me trans. See, I am a non‑binary trans woman. It's taken me a long time to get here, but I'm very proud and happy to say that, because being a non‑binary trans woman doesn't make a lot of sense.

I have people ask me, "How can you transition on a binary scale but identify on a spectrum?" It's really easy. You just do it. The categories are also made up.

See, in taxonomy, which is the practice and science of categorization and classification, the word "fish" doesn't mean a lot. It is nondescriptive, nonspecific. Anything that lives in or near water and has a spine can be a fish. And to my understanding, the spine thing, somewhat optional.

So, I grew up with my parents making this joke that I was part fish, because I also wanted to be a marine biologist. I didn't stick with it, shout out to you Shinara, but I wanted that. I grew up by the beach, grew up in this beachside suburb south of Los Angeles where I spent every free moment of my childhood summers with my feet in the sand, in the water for as long as possible. I was always the last one out. Over the years, I learned to scuba dive and surf and paddle board and swim and sail boats all so I could spend more time in and on and near the ocean and I loved so much.

When my mom wouldn't drive the 45 minutes, which could also be two hours, because LA traffic, to the aquarium in Long Beach, we would go one town over to this place called the SEA Lab. It was this conservation center and education center, and it has sadly since closed down. But when I was young, it offered after‑school programs and touch tanks and internships, and it was the best.

I remember actually one summer, they were literally incubating baby octopi. And I got to, like at six years old, hold a baby octopus in my hand. It was incredible. I was fascinated by sea life and I still really am.

It's funny, because talking about it now, it feels obvious how much the Pacific Ocean meant to me, but I didn't really realize that until I left it behind. Even now, after seven years living in Brooklyn, I feel like a tourist. I don't really feel like I'm at home when I visit, until I've gotten down to the beach and in the water and have let a wave just toss me about like laundry.

Growing up there, I didn't actually think a lot about my gender. I can't say that I've always known I was a girl trapped in a boy's body. That hasn't really been my story. If anything, I'm a little envious of people who have had that certainty their whole lives. But growing up, I think a lot of people who are assigned male at birth don't have gender forced on us in the same way people assign female. We're still beholden to patriarchy, to the social norms of gender, but there's a little more looseness.

And so growing up, I didn't really think of myself as a boy or a girl. I just thought of myself as a kid. But even kids hear a lot and internalize a lot. Even in a progressive area with liberal parents and caring teachers and kind friends, I heard trans people and the actions that we take to feel at home in our bodies referred to time and time again as unnatural. It's one of the primary rallying cries against us.

So, when I got older, when I started puberty, when those gnawing feelings that something was off, that something wasn't quite right and I was different somehow grew, I ignored them. I shoved them down because I just didn't want to be seen as a freak of nature.

So, years passed and I went from middle school to high school to community college without much consideration for the sea bass. My desire to be a marine biologist faded away and I just felt this gnawing sense of alienation throughout these years. I had friends, I had hobbies, I had a life that was filled with objectively good things, but I couldn't get away from the fact that, when I was in the world, I felt like a fish out of water.

After some time in community college, I realized that I needed to be somewhere else to grow. And in spring of 2018, I transferred to an arts college in Brooklyn. There, I got to meet trans people who are out for the first time in my life and I got to hear other people talk about dysphoria and their feelings and their experiences. I got to realize that I wasn't unique or strange in what I was feeling. I was perfectly natural.

The next couple of years were great. I enjoyed college. I got to experiment with makeup and dress in ways I hadn't before. Then March of 2020 rolled around and some things changed in the world. I got sent home from my dormitory back across the country to finish out the rest of my junior year from the safety of my childhood bedroom.

I was depressed and dysphoric. I was worried that I would be separated from that community I'd been building, from those people who had the answers to my burning questions, possibly forever. I had a lot of time to think in lockdown and I thought a lot about my gender, about how I would be doing it differently if I was still in New York, how I'd be doing it differently if I wasn't at home, if I was someone else entirely.

The semester ended and, by this point, it was June of 2020, so we had really lost track of the word "unprecedented." I was just desperate to do anything to distract myself, anything to get out of my parents' house, so I hit up a friend. I convinced them to go with me to the recently and partially reopened Aquarium of the Pacific. I had just read this article published in Medium titled, There's No Such Thing as Fish, and I thought maybe, if I go somewhere from one of my favorite places for my childhood, I'll feel a little less crazy. I didn't.

But I went and I was there, walking around and thinking about this article that talks about cladists, who are biologists that study the grouping of living things. They are different from taxonomists, but I cannot tell you how.

The article explained that cladists don't see fish as a useful term. It basically argued that if the very origins of life on Earth can be described as fish, but so can reptiles and amphibians and even some mammals, then, well, either everything is a fish or nothing is. So, that's kicking around in the back of my mind while I'm walking through this place from my childhood, where I'm looking at terrified masked faces.

Then I find myself below that blue whale, standing in front of that touch tank, or display tank, looking up at what taxonomists and cladists would call a member of the subfamily Serranidae. I looked up at the sea bass, I watched it swim around, and I thought about this tour guide from a decade past. I watched the sea bass swim around and I thought about how the word taxonomy hadn't been coined until 1813, but fish have been changing their sex since before our ancestors could walk upright. I thought about all of that and I went home that day.

We in the trans community talk about our egg‑crack moment. It's the thing, the moment that made us realize that we're trans. For me, it felt a little bit more subtle. It was less of a cracking egg and more of a rising tide. When I think of where it started, it was there in front of that tank, looking up at a sea bass and thinking, “Fuck! If a fish can do it, why can't I?”

So, I went home that day prepared to finish out my degree, possibly through a webcam, and had more time to think. And I did. I had been looking so desperately for a correct answer, for a true/false binary. I had really needed this reminder that nature is very fluid.

A couple months passed, I moved back to Brooklyn. I finished out my degree and I entered the working world. It was once I entered the workforce and realized how stringently gendered the professional world can be that I started seeking out hormone replacement therapy. It was a little bit longer, because at first it was just to try it out. It was a little bit longer before I started allowing myself to identify differently, to ask the same of other people around me.

This past Christmas, which is almost five years after I was reminded of the beautiful fluidity of the sea bass, I came out to my family as trans. Their response has been confused but largely supportive, and I feel very grateful for that. But I knew that there was something else I needed acceptance from to really feel at home.

And so after I told my family, I got in my car, drove down to the beach, kicked my shoes off and sprinted for the water. That was the first day I've ever worn a bra to the beach. As I tell you this story, it has been one year, 10 months and 15 days that I've been on estrogen. Every week and every month brings currents of change into my life. I really can't tell you who I'll be in another one year, 10 months and 15 days, but I know that the Pacific Ocean will welcome her then as it welcomed me this winter, which is to say like a fish, impossible to categorize and perfectly naturally at home.

Thank you.

PART 2

The first time I remember hearing the word, I was in fifth grade. My parents told me its definition, in the conventional sense, meant happy. But in context related to me, the kids at school were using it to imply that I liked boys.

I was bullied a lot in grade school. Somehow, I was always the easy target, probably because I was that little boy with a feminine voice for everyone to pick on.

My classmates used to ask me, straight up to my face, “Are you gay,” or, “Why do you talk like that? Why do you sound like that?”

I was never really friends with them. There was no trust there. So, I always said no and just walked away, because how could they know me? Because how could they know who I was if they didn't even know me?

Garret Glinka shares his story at Caveat in New York, NY in April 2025. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I always dreaded these altercations that came off as very rude and accusatory. They made me feel misunderstood and confused about myself because I thought I was just like every other boy.

But even at home, my family would always tell me to stop talking like a girl, to stop whining. Although I had one cousin who didn't care what I sounded like, only that we'd have fun on our next weekly adventure at our weekend sleepover.

Of course, I didn't tell my family about the bullying at school, though, so I had to deal with their harsh comments even if they meant the best. The thing is, I became very aware at a young age that I did not sound right.

I learned to hate my voice. I maneuvered most of my early life very quietly. People used to think I was just shy, but I was really scared of being heard and labeled as that boy with a feminine voice.

In sixth grade, the girls would find it fun to ask me out just to see what I would say. In seventh grade, the few friends I had distanced themselves from me because they didn't want to be associated with the feminine boy. The boys in eighth grade would kick me in places that men should never be kicked, just to see what kind of parts I had down there. In ninth grade, they would try to steal my phone as I walked through the hallways to see who I was texting.

Quickly, I learned what it meant to be a fly on the wall as I dart between class with my head down, walking as fast as I could to avoid the destructive hands of my peers.

It was in tenth grade that I was introduced to something that would change my life, biology. There was something about biology that just clicked with me, like we were best friends since birth. I loved learning about the study of life and I easily retained a lot of its facts. .I think it was the vast expanse of topics, ever changing in class, always keeping me intrigued. Plants, cellular respiration, genetics, evolution, all rewiring my brain.

I had biology first period, and that early in the morning, nobody wanted to participate. “What's the powerhouse of the cell?” Nobody would answer.

My teacher, Ms. Cofinas, realized that I was the one that would most likely know the answer when she was making a cold call. She'd look at me and say, “Garrett?” Terrified.

I'd mumble under my breath as low as I could. "How dare she put me in the spotlight and expect me to talk?"

I'd have to repeat a couple bit louder, “Mitochondria.”

With each cold call, I'd be correct, and Ms. Cofinas would be so pleased.

Speaking up in class was still scary, despite these fleeting moments of joy and me being correct. It opened the opportunity for my classmates to hear me and be reminded that I was still that boy with a feminine voice. Given the correct answer gave me some confidence, but not in how I sounded, at least if I was going to speak up, my voice wasn't the topic of scrutiny if I'd given the wrong answer.

Nonetheless, throughout the year, Ms. Cofinas had me falling in love with biology. I think it was because in those moments, for what felt like the first time in my life, my voice was associated with something good.

I knew I wanted to continue studying biology in college. I was a commuter. I only lived 20 minutes away. I found myself in situations where I didn't need to be social, where I had the freedom to sit in the back of the lecture hall and avoid contact from others.

I did most of my ruminating between classes, strutting down the sidewalk to Lady Gaga's Artpop playing in my headphones, overanalyzing every past bully attack, present form of self‑expression, and future conversation that I could imagine, with Fashion’s lyrics playing in the back of my head, “Looking good and feeling fine.”

I mostly thought about who the first person I’d come out to would be, how my few best girlfriends from high school would react, how my family would take it, how to accept that this is the person that I am, and if I'd ever find happiness in it all.

In college, I was around a lot of other students, however, I didn't find myself in their crossfire. So, day by day, I pushed my self‑expression all the while still blending in. Nobody was saying anything bad. So, piece by piece, I learned a little bit more about myself without the outside influences of other's voices.

Four years is a long time to live in your own head. I spent it as what most people might call lonely. However, I look at that time as me finding my greatest quality, my independence.

I didn't realize it, but I was setting up these safe spaces for me to trauma‑sort through my dark childhood. I learned not to care what other people thought about me if they didn't know me and that I could find happiness just sitting by myself in the library. My relationship with my internal voice turned into a journey where I could accept pieces of myself on my own terms.

After college, I job searched for what felt like an eternity, just begging the universe to give me one person who believed in me. I started to spiral, thinking that I'd never be able to prove myself good enough at any company. I did all this work on self‑growth and there was no validation. I started to question whether or not I could believe in the stronger person I thought I had become.

I was lucky enough to meet my first lab supervisor, Cynthia. It wasn't ideal, but I took a job working on the night shift at a biotech processing lab that processed biological samples for big pharma research. I found it easy to give 110% in my tasks every day because the work was so cool, it gave me purpose and it affected patients on a clinical level.

I found it surprising when my day shift co‑workers went out of their way to genuinely get to know me, who didn't judge me. That was when I realized that I needed to give people a second chance, that maybe my co‑workers aren't as cruel as my classmates.

I'll never forget this conversation I had one day with my co‑worker, Donna, about six months of me at the lab. Ms. Donna was about 60 years old. She was sweet, loud, spunky, always sang at her lab bench and would beat you up if you squeaked styrofoam around her.

She said to me while I was scanning my blood samples for processing one day, "Garret, I bet you were so popular in high school."

I looked at her and said, "Ms. Donna, you have never been more wrong in your entire life."

But later that night, I started thinking, “What does Ms. Donna see in me that would make her think that I was so popular in high school?” Because everybody has this image of a popular kid in their head, confident, charismatic, outgoing, cool, trendy. In my head, I was none of those things. Me living my life day‑to‑day was good enough for other people I was meeting. Why wasn't it good enough for me?

I reflected back over the course of several months these interactions with some co‑workers and realized that maybe I had just been stuck in a mindset of people telling me that I was less than for so long that I didn't realize the type of person I was becoming.

My boss called me into his office one evening during the peak of the COVID pandemic. I thought it was just another routine night shift check‑in for daily operations. However, he asked me if I would travel to Minnesota to help train 24 technicians at the new lab we were opening there.

Me? A traveling scientist? I was blindsided. But being given that opportunity only showed me that I could trust in my authentic self and it gave me this new sense of confidence. I started to realize that I am that popular kid.

I went on in that company for almost six years, spearheading new client projects, leading a large team of technicians and helping establish five labs internationally, each opportunity only further validating that I could believe and trust in my authentic self.

It's ironic growing up being told who you are, and nonetheless by others who don't even know who they are yet. They tried to give me a voice before they even found their own. I went from a little boy who was too afraid to talk to an international lead scientist, to a proud gay man that can stand on a stage in New York City and share his story with you. I had to get out of a world where everybody else's voices pushed me down. I've come to hear my authentic self and living it day‑to‑day has become my life's work.

Science isn't just something that I do for my career. Science isn't just something that I do to make a living. Science has given me a second chance at figuring out who I am, at loving myself. Science has given me my voice.

Thank you.