Dear Sandy #5: I feel kinda helpless

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth, written by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen.

Occasionally for this newsletter, I write an advice column; to submit an anonymous question, info on how to do so is here.

This particular question came up during an exchange I was having with someone I know. I asked them permission to share it here, because these are topics I want to address more widely; they very much agreed.

[Dear Sandy],

“I try to put myself out there as a safe person for kids and I know that’s important, but I feel kinda helpless. What can cis people do to support trans teens in our communities, especially ones who are vulnerable on multiple fronts, without painting a target on their backs?”

Hi friend,

I appreciate you letting me respond to this question here. Given that this was my idea, it’s silly that the first thing I’m going to say is: I don’t actually know, really, where to begin in answering this.

I feel moved to spell out my own limitations, at least: I’m not someone who knows any trans/gnc kids, to my knowledge at least, no out ones. I don’t interact with any teenagers really, save for an example or two, once in a great while. I have very little experience with young people these days generally, save for one 6-year-old (which means for example I’ve seen lots of Bluey). All to say, I’m not a parent myself, I’m not a teacher, I’m not someone whose work has brought me into regular contact with young people, especially not out queer/trans young people. (I did used to teach but last time I interacted with high schoolers was in 2011 and I was in my mid-twenties.)

I’ve known I was trans since forever, preschool at least, but I wasn’t out as a kid, as I’ve written about before. It wasn’t possible to be out in my particular world, growing up in the late 80s but mostly 90s and 00s, or at least I would have thought. I didn’t know it was possible to come out as trans until much later. I barely understood that other people had ever felt the things I did, as a trans kid (everyday, endlessly). So I tried to not let on how I felt, to anyone, sensing I wasn’t safe to. I wasn’t safe in my environment in many senses.

I looked around and felt intense connection with, for reasons I didn’t then understand, the little blips of gender-nonconformity I saw in the pop culture around me. I noted the existence of RuPaul. I noted K.D. Lang on the Pee Wee Herman Christmas special, which I watched repeatedly each December, admiring her lowish voice, her short haircut, her cowboy boots.

I sure had always loved — as I’m still yet to properly write about, but someday will — Bugs Bunny. Bug was my first true hero, for all his genderfuckery:

It turned out RuPaul also idolized Bugs:

I personally though saw no trans men on my television as a kid until Boy’s Don’t Cry. Which, as I’ve mentioned in my work before, came out when I was 12. That this movie about a brutal hate crime is the only example of life as a trans man I ever saw depicted as a child (an Oscar-winning performance by a cis woman), well, needless to say that’s a huge bummer to me.

Point being: the kids these days, they do live in a profoundly different world than the one I did. They know trans and nonbinary and intersex people exist. These bigots in leadership positions who feel emboldened right now, they may try to undo trans self-knowledge but I truly don’t know if they could ever succeed. Though as I’ve written about before, our enemies can of course work to shame and scare folks into silence and complicity and even self-annihilation.

Contemplating your question lately, given my own limited experience with trans/gnc kids these days, I did look for others who’ve addressed this. Most resources I found offered what felt like not-very-deep and sort of predictable advice about how to interact with trans/queer people generally, how to better educate yourself as a cis ally, even a queer one. Much of what I read complained about mainstream media outlets, in particular The New York Times, for so actively encouraging this whole transphobic mess we find ourselves in (example, example).

Or I read this more recent piece, authored by a mother of a trans son, talking about this era and about Hitler. I admit sometimes when cis people, even those with good intentions, just start talking about this era and about whatever other historical atrocity my own blood-pressure shoots up such that I have to disengage. Though, it occurred to me, perhaps this is history some of my (cis) readers might not already know… in which case I do encourage you to learn more. Because yeah, the historical parallels here are ominous and horrifying. (My favorite book on this is probably NeuroTribes, by the late Steve Silberman. I was honored to have coffee with him once in San Francisco, a few months before my own book came out, a story I’ll share properly someday.)

Your question is essentially about the conundrum of trans visibility, which I addressed in general, albeit briefly, in my post on Monday for TDOV. Some months ago I also wrote this previous advice column, responding to the parent of a trans adult who’d written me quite worried, which might be worth checking out if you haven’t already. Also perhaps worth learning about the extent to which all parents these days are just drowning in a swamp of transphobic propaganda, and therefore some are radicalized against their trans/gnc children, via this explainer by Julia Serano.

Wondering what I might say to you, I also looked over on Reddit to see what parents of trans/gnc minors were themselves were discussing. I saw a post about Erin Reed’s latest risk assessment map for example. I’d seen this map in my inbox already and felt terrified by it, this visual depiction of how much my country apparently hates me:

Anyway, I don’t doubt if you go a-googling, you can find the same stuff I did (and maybe you have). I could parrot the best of what I did read, or just urge you to start a PFLAG group or whatever — though only if you feel up for it, as I’ll discuss, and really if no such supports exist already where you are. My impression is options do exist online at least in terms of support groups for trans/gnc youth and their parents/other allies.

But yeah, again, I cannot pretend to know how trans/gnc kids these days must feel, growing up in a world that hates them so openly. Though of course transphobia is nothing new and of course the world hates trans adults too and of course the real end-goal of all the hate is the extermination of us all, trans child and adult alike. I am of course greatly preoccupied with this whole situation because my life literally depends on it. I have been preoccupied with it all for a long time, since last November certainly, but really since 2016 when after his first election, I started coming out. I definitely felt optimism then, about our trajectory, optimism that’s certainly diminished if not gone, now.

So yeah, what would I myself say to trans/gnc kids these days, to those of you who care about them, I truly don’t know. I can only reflect on my own experience of being a closeted trans child who existed within a premise so transphobic that it denied people like me existed almost altogether — other than as jokes, or something gross or to be murdered.

Last summer at camp, I’d hear guys make the point that this is still no doubt the best time to be alive as a trans person in the scheme of human history. Maybe now, these treacherous nine months later, that opinion has perhaps changed for some. But I know what was meant by this sentiment: A trans man like me was a near unthinkable reality just a few decades ago when I was born, socially speaking, medically speaking.

Every day I live, every breath I draw, I am just so damn pleased that this is the life I get to live, now. My whole life feels like such a goddamn miracle, hence I will continue to fight like hell to keep it.

So, this all being said, let me start to share my actual reply, which has been fermenting in my mind since you asked me this. Which was some months back that you first asked me, as you may recall; I just avoided answering at first. I was then too exhausted and too overwhelmed by having had surgery and by so much else, the rise of fascism included. I also know you’re going through a lot of late too, my friend. Some of us have had an extra heap of crap to deal with these last few months, me included and you also included (as I happen to know).

So that you’d even think to ask me about this trans teen you’re connected to, that’s generous of you. I know your concern comes from a good place. I know you probably have asked me about this because you are a parent of a teenager (hence you know this other teen) and I’m a trans adult you know (one who’s public and who’s often sharing my thoughts on topics like how scary it is to be trans lately, talkative guy that I am).

Candidly, I am so tired. I’m tired in general because I haven’t slept well in … months. And I’m tired of fielding such questions. I can’t tell you how many strangers reach out ot me, telling me about trans/gnc kids they know, ones they’re worried about. Sometimes these messages or replies or emails come with specific asks or requests and such, sometimes they don’t. But I am someone who receives quite a volume of such messages, given my work. All of which I understand. But I think given all this, I find myself feeling overwhelmed and, when sent these queries, unsure where to even begin.

Nowadays I sometimes recall this teacher I had freshman year of high school, someone I attempted confiding in; this was in a journal we were made to keep for a social issues class. In response to some prompt, I’d spelled my whole terrible situation out with great honesty and brevity, as in, a summary of what I lived through, most every night, at home.

I even dropped those big, scary terms like alcoholism, like abuse. I hadn’t remembered writing this entry at all until a few years ago, when I happened to find this spiral-bound notebook in a stack with many other diaries and journals I was reading. What caught my attention was this teacher’s response, written in the margin, to all I’d shared:

“☹️ sorry”

Since I’ve been working on this repsonse, I’ve found myself contemplating those very few adults who were my allies, so to speak, back when I was a kid. I’ve been thinking about those who knew me during my childhood and who really did take time to say to me, in ways big and small: I for one see what you are going through and it’s not okay.

Because what I was experiencing wasn’t okay — not at all. Whatever efforts to conceal it and silence the likes of me notwithstanding, the situation wasn’t exactly hard to notice. The situation was, if anything, obvious. It was, if anything, on frequent public display. Therefore as a young person learned how oftentimes adults — especially perhaps polite, nice-seeming adults — would rather lie to themselves as to the seriousness of what they’d just witnessed or learned. Perhaps lest they have to get involved.

I myself deduced that my situation was’t at all okay in about first grade. I started confiding in a few of my closest friends in fourth grade, if memory serves, and in a few safe-seeming adults in about fifth grade. Some of the adults I tried to tell were parents of friends of mine or even just parents of people I knew from school. Some were teachers. Some were vocal coaches or play directors because I did a lot of singing and theater (and my safest-feeling spaces, usually, were play rehearsals and the stage).

But overall, there were not many adults who were my allies. Not many took time to acknowledge what was happening to me, in any real way, let alone try to help me. A handful of true allies say, through my long and lonely youth. The were typically adults who, as I would eventually learn, had lived through something not unlike what I was now surviving. Or whose spouse or someone had, even their own parent.

These adults from back then, they still are often in my thoughts. I think about the friendship they showed me. I think about the ways they modeled what love actually is all about. (As one of my wisest mental health-type counselors often repeats to me these days, Love is a noun, something we either hold or we don’t. His point being: The world is full of types who might say they love you but who will just as soon treat you like crap, as I well know.)

In brief, my real allies through my first eighteen years — those courageous and aware-enough adults who did help me survive — their gestures of support didn’t need to be grand:

It was them taking the time to have a conversation with me. It was them giving me a ride. It was them asking me how I was, really. It was them listening to my answers. It was them showing up at my plays or performances, maybe with flowers or an inscribed book. (Given it’s me, these memories involve lots of people gifting me books.)

I think often of a family who let me crash at their place whenever, basically, my last few years of high school. (I dated their son, who was usually 3,000 miles away at college.) The dad got big into Buddhism around then and would give me lots of books, books about Buddhism especially, but also about socialism and such. The older sister in that family, she gifted me the likes of Audre Lorde and bell hooks. I often think of the mom, too, who’d listen to my troubles, who’d feel outrage with me. I sometimes remember the spell when she got really into juicing shots of fresh ginger, imploring whichever of us teenagers happened to be wandering through her kitchen at that particular moment to take one. They were wicked, those ginger shots, scalded the throat. I loved them, that house, the people, all of it. I loved the feeling I belonged.

I think often of all those welcoming families and teachers and so forth. I think of all those who had me into their homes, who had me over for dinner, who let me stay over. The ones who’d let me visit them when I came back from college or from grad school. Who’d call me, write me, who’d demonstrated they cared how I was, really.

(How I always feel that exchange in The Royal Tenenbaums, [one of my favorite movies] when the mother matter-of-factly says that the now-grown author who grew up across the street has always sent her his reviews, to her daughter’s surprise. “He used to send me his grades back in college,” she adds. This line always makes me feel such love for my chosen mothers and chosen fathers and chosen siblings, all my chosen families, from however long ago.)

Sometimes, I also think about those other sorts of adults, the ones I tried confiding in but who did not prove helpful. Like I tried staging an intervention once in fifth grade but it was called off by an older relative who caught wind. She somehow called it off and then she called me, scolding me, shaming me for spreading our family’s private business. (I wrote more words about her here but deleted them. I decided, for now, against speaking ill of the dead.)

I also learned early the cops don’t actually help you even if you did call them, that at best it’d seemingly just make everyone more upset and everything worse. I can’t tell you how many hours of my youth were spent having dialed 9 and 1 and then pausing, finger hovering there above that final 1, as I monitored the screaming, deciding what would be bad enough to press it anyway.

But again, mostly I didn’t try; most adults couldn’t really hear my truth. Perhaps they couldn’t fathom the life of a kid like me. Or perhaps they didn’t want to because they just didn’t know what they could do.

I try to remember sometimes all those counselors in middle and high school, whom I would occasionally bother (about what I don’t remember); they were of no actual help to me, not that I can recall. I tried going to therapy twice in college — as in I tried precisely two times. Both were experiences that made me say, fuck it, maybe I’m not that broken.

I reacted the same way — fuck it — those times I tried going to Al-Anon as a college freshman. I told myself I didn’t care for all the god-talk and these whining, old-seeming people (as I saw them) who still hadn’t gotten over their childhood issues, no thanks. As I’ve mentioned before, I probably really didn’t like Al-Anon as well because I didn’t want to stop drinking. I didn’t start therapy until I was in grad school in my early twenties and by then extremely messed up — a deeply closeted, deeply self-loathing, cigarette-smoking drunk who was typically very-to-non-functionally-depressed and quite-to-sometimes-very-suicidal (not that anyone really knew). I didn’t stop drinking until I was about 30, nearly eight years ago now.

All to say: When you texted me I feel helpless, I have known helplessness. My own versions. All the ones I’ve lived even before I became the (sometimes petrified) trans adult I am today.

At last, I’ve arrived at my actual advice, such as it is:

While you feeling helpless makes sense to me — while any cis adult ally feeling helpless makes sense — figure your helplessness is also probably nothing compared to that felt by trans/gnc youths right now (I would assume at least). Some of these kids may be additionally vulnerable for other reasons, as you allude is true in this instance. Let’s not forget as well, those kids who’ve not come out still (however trendy-seeming coming out has apparently become of late). Because it’s also true that transphobia itself has never been more popular, so I’d bet that accordingly some adults and indeed youths will still attempt to remain closeted — rather than face such a seemingly hostile society. These are deeply personal calculations; I don’t judge anyone’s decisions.

I think often of the Brené Brown line about how ‘we can be brave and afraid at the same time.’ So while I hear your fear about making this teenager’s life worse if you try to get involved, I’d probably urge you — and all concerned cis allies — to nonetheless be brave and do what you can anyway to support those vulnerable (trans/gnc) youths you’re connected to. I’d urge you to do so from an informed place. I’d urge you to do so as calmly, openly, and warmly as you feel is appropriate given the situation and your relationship with this minor. And given your own bandwidth.

Bottom line: If you don’t have the energy to take on some vulnerable (trans/gnc) kid’s problems, don’t. Take care of yourself and your own mental health first, as I’m often urging, do so with devotion and fervor. During times of heightened stress — which these are for us all, full stop — it’s crucial to remember to put on your oxygen mask first, so to speak. So, as I often advise, during hard times lean even harder into your own self-care routines and best practices.

Repeating ideas I often say, but: You might want to book with your own therapist-type person, or find one, if you don’t have one or one that actually suits you (or who is very helpful). Cultivate your friendships and other best connections, the ones that bring you actual joy, not further stress. Seek out further community for yourself. Perhaps you could meet people if you go to a protest, take a class, join a club, or join a support group for yourself, if one might apply.

Consider committing to a meditation practice, ideally a daily one; here’s a post I wrote on how to start meditating. Perhaps try out JournalSpeak, which I’m often recommending (it’s best one try it for about 30 days to start, as is explained in that linked description). Do whatever other practices help reduce the level of your own proverbial emotional reservoir, to borrow Nicole Sachs’ metaphor (the therapist who created JournalSpeak). Do such practices as often as you can, again ideally every day. (Again Nicole Sach’s new book is out, if you’re curious as to what I’m talking about.)

Here’s my biggest ask these days to all cis people who are wondering how they can be good allies right now (to trans/gnc children they know):

Do everything in your power to support trans rights generally. If you have money, give money to trans people and the causes truly defending us. (I suggested lots of other ideas like this the other day.)

Model good cis allyship all the time, because you never know who is watching. How you as a cis person act — even when you think no trans/gnc people are around or listening — does matter. If for example some fellow parent expresses some shitty transphobic views in your presence, however small or seemingly innocently, don’t stay silent. Speak up. Don’t shame them, especially if they aren’t malicious but merely ignorant, but be firm and clear in correcting them. (Again, please refer to this piece in order to better understand the anti-trans propagandizing of parents.)

When I say model good cis allyship, all I really mean is: First, deprogram your own mind and care for your own mind/body/soul and then, as possible, please do everything you can to stand up for trans people, for our rights and lives. Practice using your voice. Try to have zero tolerance of bullies. Try to employ your relative social privilege.

I’m not advising you do anything that might make a kid (or yourself) unsafe, obviously.

However, when you can safely use your privileged position (as a cis person) to help us trans/gnc folk, please by all means go ahead.

I’m grateful to you for asking me this, my friend. I appreciate you also letting me answer here so that others can hear my thoughts as well. I had many thoughts, it turns out. Hopefully some will find them of use.

To all cis allies actively supporting trans/gnc people right now: Thank you for caring. It truly means so much.

In solidarity,
Sandy 

p.s. Here’s the sort of energy I love to see from people confronting fascists.

p.p.s. Once again, not all heroes wear capes:

p.p.p.s. What’s Helping Today: Having young seedlings to tend to:

p.p.p.p.s. Here’s a new one of my playlists, called thank you for being here.

p.p.p.p.p.s. Finally, this felt relevant so I wanted to share it here: An excellent serious, smart and hilarious conversation with three trans people who are actually asked, by a cis straight man: How does it feel to be trans in America right now? The entire episode is worth listening to.

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