{"id":1017,"date":"2023-12-07T18:12:54","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T18:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/?p=1017"},"modified":"2024-02-27T00:36:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T00:36:41","slug":"audio-bio-jake-lanning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/?p=1017","title":{"rendered":"Audio Bio: Jake Lanning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/1748241672&#038;color=%23ff5500&#038;auto_play=false&#038;hide_related=false&#038;show_comments=true&#038;show_user=true&#038;show_reposts=false&#038;show_teaser=true&#038;visual=true\"><\/iframe><div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-410222527\" title=\"Me\/Us\/U\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener\">Me\/Us\/U<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/user-410222527\/new-recording-31\" title=\"Jake Lanning\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener\">Jake Lanning<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*Upbeat Intro Music fades in*<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jake: \u201cHi, I\u2019m Jake Lanning. I am Junior English-Literature major at Susquehanna University, and I was a gay athlete.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*Upbeat Intro Music fades out*<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jake: \u201cNow I know what you\u2019re thinking. Gay athletes might not be as much of a rarity as they once were, but when I was an athlete back in 2020-2021, it was a little bit of a rarity. It wasn\u2019t something that everyone was doing, and when I say I was a gay athlete I\u2019m saying that I was someone who knew that they were gay but wasn\u2019t saying anything so I could continue playing football and not feel bad, which is a horrible thing to feel. I would, you know&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*Weightlifting Noises Enter*<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jake: \u201cgo to practice and be very vocal. I was very boisterous about the things that I felt and about my teammates and having each other&#8217;s backs and all of those things that you tie into being a football player, but I would go home and just be so upset because I was just lying to everyone.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*Weightlifting Noises Exit*<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jake: \u201cAnd by the time I got to my senior year of high school, and like tenth year of playing football, I\u2019m now the captain, all eyes are on me, and how can I be gay and have their respect? That wasn\u2019t something that ever happened. It wasn\u2019t something that was in the media; it wasn\u2019t something that people wanted to really appreciate because around the same time we had things like Carl Nassib coming out and being proud and an NFL player, and it was awesome; it was awesome to watch, and it gave me hope. But it still felt like I had a choice to make where it was either A.) I can play football and I can be straight, and I can show everybody that I\u2019m straight, or B.) I quit playing football, and I could live the life that I want to live, but at the cost of giving up something that was my entire life. So, I didn\u2019t know what to do.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jake: \u201cBy the time football ended, I decided that I couldn\u2019t live the way I was living anymore, and luckily for me I found somebody who I fell in love with, and I am still with him today, um but, I knew that I would need to change my life to be with him. And I did that, I did that. I came out my senior year of high school and at that point I was like \u201cYou know what? I haven\u2019t done everything that I wanted to do. I haven\u2019t- I haven\u2019t seen all the things I wanted to see. I haven\u2019t tried all the things I want to try.\u201d So, I joined the track team. I joined the track team. I became a thrower, and I did some running events, and I\u2019m not going to lie I was pretty darn good. I was pretty darn good at track. Um, but I ran track openly gay. And that was something that was terrifying.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jake: \u201cBecause being a gay athlete means you\u2019re tokenized. You are one in a million. At least it\u2019s what it feels like in North-Eastern\/Central Pennsylvania. I think out of all the track meets that I had, I met one other gay person, and we were kind of forced to like talk to each other. We were forced to become friends, which wasn\u2019t-it\u2019s not a bad thing, but it&#8217;s also, you know, I can be friends with straight people. I can do things with straight people, and there\u2019s all these stigmas around gay athletes, um, predominately male gay athletes, uh, where we\u2019re not playing sports. We\u2019re not doing those things because it\u2019s a straight dominated thing. But why? You know what I mean? A lot of the gay athletes I look up to are women. Women\/female athletes who are not straight and that is because they are playing their sports; dominating in their sports even. And it\u2019s inspiring to see people, just people. Don\u2019t even put a gender on it. It\u2019s inspiring to see people do the things that they love, live the life that they want, and not give anything up. And I wish that I would have had that opportunity.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jake: \u201cAnd now when I look back on it, I have a lot of-I have a lot of regrets. I have a lot of why did I do this like this? If that makes sense. I have a lot of, \u201cWhy am I- why am I so frustrated with myself? With who I am?\u201d Because of a ball that I snap between my legs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*DRAMATIC Outro Music fades in*<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jake: \u201cWhy does it matter so much? It shouldn\u2019t matter so much. And that\u2019s something that I had to tell myself. But I know that there is people like me out there. I know that there is a kid, right now, who doesn\u2019t feel like they can be themselves because of what they\u2019re doing. And you can, and you should. You should. Is it going to be hard? Hell yeah. Yes, it is. It\u2019s going to be the most difficult thing, but it\u2019s worth it. It\u2019s worth it. Because the smile that you are going to have are so much different. So much more genuine. It\u2019s a whole new life. It\u2019s something-it&#8217;s something that we don\u2019t talk about. It\u2019s something that we don\u2019t discuss, and we should. We should talk about it more. We should discuss these things more. But we\u2019re not. Because it\u2019s not popularized. It\u2019s not welcomed the way that it should be, but, there are people like me. There are people who are playing their sports, and they are very worried that who they decide to go home to at the end of the night is going to be the deciding factor of whether or not they get playing time. So there is people like me. And it\u2019s good to know that I am not alone. But I am Jake Lanning, and I was a gay athlete.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*DRAMATIC Outro Music fades out*<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Credits:<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Production Team: Jake Lanning&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Music &amp; Sound: Freesound.org, especially Johnnie_Holiday and tyops.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Voiceover: Jake Lanning&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please visit us at me-us-u.org!&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Me\/Us\/U \u00b7 Jake Lanning *Upbeat Intro Music fades in*&nbsp; Jake: \u201cHi, I\u2019m Jake Lanning. I am Junior English-Literature major at Susquehanna University, and I was a gay athlete.\u201d&nbsp; *Upbeat Intro Music fades out*&nbsp; Jake: \u201cNow I know what you\u2019re thinking. Gay athletes might not be as much of a rarity as they once were, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1070,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio-bio","category-season-3","has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/me-us-u.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/image-e1707012753808.jpeg?fit=364%2C474&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1123,"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/1123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-us-u.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}