Dear Sandy #6: How to argue (or not) with transphobes

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.

First of all (hi!): Lemme warn you all right away: This is a REALLY long one. So long I’m publishing it in two. Part Two I’ll publish tomorrow (or Monday?). Soon as I can, let’s say.

Let me also warn this whole discussion has gotten very insider baseball-y too, in terms of: It’s mostly for my fellow reporters/editors/producers.

I’d urge newcomers to my work — non-media types especially — to probably not read this newsletter — just yet, anyway.

If you insist on trying, I’d at least ask you first read this brief, previous newsletter setting up my recent, viral ‘cis-allies post’, a whole situation.

The advice I will offer in this long response — while more general — builds off of that experience and on much else I’ve written.

Again, this will be SUPER long/in-depth/not for beginners (to my work).

Okay. If you read on anyway … do not pretend I didn’t warn you.

First, a bit of housekeeping...

Here, for reasons (iykyk), is a thread I rage-wrote comparing the mental health care systems of America and the Netherlands, some. This happens to be a topic I cover a great deal… like in my in-progress book on the future of mental health. Specifically this — the American v. Dutch “mental health” care systems —is basically one of the subjects I’ve studied THE MOST as a reporter, on-the-ground style, but also remotely interviewing … everyone who’d know anything, including so many academics for years, and reading basically all the things...

My (long in progress) sometime sequel to AKOMP will cover this in depth .. Introducing wider readerships to the likes of the Hearing Voices Network (which my long-ago Pop-Up Magazine … viewers? listeners? maybe will recall) … as well as the “care farms” movement, or as the Dutch say Zorgboerderijen. Amongst other frontiers in “mental health care,” I’ve long researched, again (for reasons) often focused on Dutch/American “mental health” care-comparisons.

You’re meanwhile encouraged to check out my relevant works, including:

My brand new Eater essay about an aspect of my own “mental health” survival-strategy (so to speak), over recent years, as meanwhile I’ve also come out as trans, amidst this frightening reality.

This older-but-evergreen 99PI episode, one I reported and produced about historic “mental health” in America, focused on the Kirkbrides. In particular, check out the last act about Gould Farm.

Please read (if you haven’t already): My long Believer feature from last fall about these issues, by which I mean: Whose voices matter, as we create truth? As especially “we” reporters and producers pick and choose whose stories we elevate — and whose we ignore?

Also check out: my first book, which is another way of trying to have this same conversation. (As its readers know, I didn’t start it; Uncle Bob did.)

Finally: To announce this, once more:

I’m now offering consulting for “mental health” professionals — both who work with patients (in any capacity) and to fellow media types whose work touches this space. I will consult for news orgs as to how to update your style guides and/or your standards/practices, when it comes to more fairly and accurately reporting on “mental health” — including “trans” health-care. I am way less suicidal today than four years ago because of T, end of story. My hormones are mental health care; as is the case for so many of us.

Interested in maybe working with me? Please visit this page for all details. And for many testimonials from various mental health professionals. (I receive many messages from physicians, including psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, therapists, teachers, so forth.) You’ll also find there many testimonials from patients ourselves — and our loved ones.

Alright, onto the Dear Sandy column...

I received this question on Bluesky a while back and got permission from the querent to answer it here for you all.

I drafted a LONG answer, one I then just let sit …

But recently I’ve felt motivated to try to edit it into some version I could publish:

“Hi, this question is a bit random, but do you have advice (or any links) telling allies how (or how not) to argue with transphobic/GC rhetoric? Whenever I try, it usually just goes in circles or the person just sort of disengages.

Thanks so much for this. I don't want to be completely silent, but I'm not the best at arguing, especially arguing stuff from the perspective of a cis man, someone without (direct at least) 'skin in the game'. I feel like there're angles that a woman (trans or cis) or trans person generally could argue from that might sound ... disingenuous? ... coming from me. And I don't want to be counter productive.”

Hi, back,

Thank you for asking me this question, first of all. Sorry my reply got so long and took awhile.

This all makes me think of a story my wisest therapist-type professional sometimes tells me:

It’s about this one time he was approached by a bigot in a grocery store parking lot, in the rural Midwest where he lives. My aforementioned wise professional is just to set the scene: Elderly, Jewish, I believe straight.

This bigot in the parking lot said something like your kind aren’t welcome here along with a variety of slurs — the worst ones, some of which applied, some of which did not.

My counselor looked at this bigot and said something like:

“I’m sorry, about whatever happened to you.”

I think about his story a lot, especially lately…

One morning recently for example I woke up with my heart and head heavy already with lots of sorrow and fury and chatter … as I often wake these days, my sleep often terrible, since the election at least.

That morning first thing, practically, was some bigot in my replies just being a transphobe right to me — saying something incomprehensible but clearly vile about trans people. It related to us using public bathrooms, in belated response to my recent Cosmo story.

A few hours later, I saw it announced about some new podcast from the devotedly anti-trans NYT put out by a literal former colleague of mine who’s become for-some-reason-obsessed-with-this beat of ‘just asking questions’ or ‘saying both sides’ about trans youth healthcare … since back when we were at BuzzFeed News a decade ago now, despite lots of (trans) media colleagues and other experts, yours truly included, objecting for a while now, as loudly as we can — for years now.

But she’s just … kept going.

Having now listened to her show — some, 2 ½ episodes, as much as I could handle before I tapped out for my own “mental health” — the vibe was very:

My life, each day, as just one trans American living through these obviously bad times — and as a journalist and author who once greatly revered the likes of the NYT, and who again called some of those individuals-evidently-lost-to-anti-trans-propagandizing literal colleagues, whom I’d have then respected — it can feel quite despair-inducing.

Full disclosure, in terms of my-own-biases:

Pamela Paul’s book review ignored my [acclaimed] debut book (which released as I finally started coming out). I’ve never sold a pitch to the NYT — not for want of trying — an effort I finally gave up on after the 2020 election, if memory serves. That year, they’d been quite kind to my by-then-already-defunct self-produced podcast; … though while doing that annoying thing some [transphobes] do wherein they contort language itself to avoid my [scary?] trans pronouns altogether … as I always note to myself when I re-read that rave NYT Mad Chat write-up, with a small sad laugh. My podcast? I made a season and gave up when I couldn’t find funding.

Me, these last ten years? I am freelance, lately positively scrambling (financially) to hang in there.

I’m recovering from surgery. Today, how’s my weather? No surprise, my back hurts.

Anyway, that’s just some of the context, for me, lately…

What’s your life like?

Do you worry about your “bills, your ex, your deadlines”, to quote Alanis…

Or do you worry (as a trans person) that you are going to die? One way or another?

(Do you worry for someone else’s sake and safety —  however young?)

Cis folks: Do you worry about your own life-saving healthcare disappearing? Do you, my fellow american citizens in particular, worry about whether you can safely use your own passports?

When you leave your house, do you worry about if you’ll find a safe public bathroom?

It’s exhausting, all of it.

And yet — if I seem grouchy, even on social media to strangers bothering me — I wind up with reply guys being like WTF?! Can’t you take a joke??

How differently we experience the world (these days), cis people versus out-as-trans people like me. In my mind I put “cis” and “trans” in quotes here because I reject the binary ultimately — knowing for example that many folks are just pretending to be cis but are trans.

It’s a conundrum on my mind, all the time: This gulf between our two experiences, us cis and trans folks, so to speak. It’s a messy, imperfect line, as such lines tend to be … In brief, Nature/God scribbles usually and we humans invent such certain-sounding lies called nouns.

In general, I often contemplate how to shout across such very divides, in terms of our disparate experiences, our unequal stakes.

I wonder how to get through to cis allies, despite our ambient fear-and-anger-and-sadness levels being oh-so-different, generally speaking.

Despite (some) cis allies perhaps feeling tired (however deep down) of all this trans bla bla bla.

Despite some “cis allies” just wanting to ignore it all… or doing so.

All my own talk here or on Bluesky might seem unprofessional, unpleasant. Impolite. Impending genocide is unprofessional and unpleasant and impolite, amongst much else...

Annoying, plan-ruin-y, inconvenient, psychically taxing…

Frightening. Again, I barely sleep.

In my work, I often discuss such gaps between how we understand, well, everything. How these can sometimes make relating amongst one another as humans quite tricky — let alone having big, serious, nuanced discussions.

Tricky… but hopefully not impossible?

I note how throughout history, humans have long interacted peacefully with one another, at least sometimes — despite our apparent dissimilarities and inequities … Including in terms of how we experience reality itself.

Inequities like…

How blissfully, how ignorantly, may we “just live our lives”? How freely may we just “do our jobs”? Or just post online or exist visibly in public — without potentially being on the receiving end of the random, misguided cruelty of bigoted systems and strangers, say?

How casually might one “just date”? Or try to find new work?

How easily might one survive each horrific passing day without really thinking-thinking about … the encroaching, bigoted state-sponsored persecution of … you.

Your community. Including lots of innocent kids and others our society ignores and discards — routinely. Black people. The Mad. Incarcerated people. Immigrants.

How endlessly are you subjected to media coverage about “you” … created by people who clearly know nothing about you? About your people? Let alone like, this entire frightening reality we’re now dealing with — and our families?

Part of what I found so interesting and candidly inspiring about the massive pile of responses my viral cis allyship post received (and still receives!):

People shared their endlessly varying starting points, caring-about-trans-rights wise. Many shared how they progressed from there… and no two tales were alike.

So my thought in answering your question was I will turn to the heap of replies and highlight some of what I’ve noticed is contained therein… all that collective wisdom.

One thing I do want to say, to the querent (and those who feel like you):

Sure, some (straight/cis/white) men don’t think you ‘have skin in the game’.

I hear you; I get what you men. I’m white and until I was about 30, I mostly pretended I was cis and straight (however well), so I have lived with those and other privileges…

I want you to know that that view (that ‘cis men have no skin in the game’) is fundamentally wrong:

Trans rights are human rights … end of sentence. Trans rights are your human rights, too. If this notion doesn’t make perfect since to you today (which is fine), hopefully it will in time…

Yes, even cis straight white dudes can and should loudly support trans rights — as someone like Adam Conover models well. Or John Oliver. Or Josh Gondelman. And … a small handful of cis white men elected as Democrats (here’s one).

Bottom line: I remain hopeful all other good-hearted people — all with big platforms/any power — will continue to get with it … and perhaps learn to call out the anti-trans misinformation and hate for their audiences’ benefit too, too...

Because at this point, the GOP is being pretty obvious about it:

They just loathe trans people. Trans adults, especially trans kids, they just want us all … what … to leave the country? Or to kill ourselves? Or to re-closet ourselves (somehow? Supposing it’s medically possible even for … me … and so many others, which, I don’t even know…). The bigots, they don’t care. They want us gone.

The fascists? That’s long been their goal. It’s all spelled out, in print, in their widely circulated evil plan. Any pretenses that these trans-related moral panic “debates” were ever … “just about” fairness in sports or cis-female safety in bathrooms (which…such “debates” never were) have basically at this point fallen away.

The bullies just hate me and everybody like me; that’s it. The Right’s pretty darned clear lately that their project is the total annihilation of trans/gnc americans, children included …

And yet: So many of my supposed “allies” remain … stubbornly ignorant and seemingly deluded big picture … My own sometime lesser-of-two-evil party’s elected leaders mostly asleep at the wheel still.

Like I said, in media, even some of my own former colleagues in journalism have become powerful (and amongst trans people notorious) anti-trans propagandizers, however unwittingly so …

All to say: Your question, querent, how do we get through to the transphobes?? … I think about all this a lot.

I often come back to that old bit of wisdom, which I probably heard first during my brief time attending Al-Anon meetings (in a Providence church, when I was like 18):

We can’t change others. We really can’t. I do believe in this.

And I’m an artist — a musician and a writer, mostly; a literary journalist and essayist and screenwriter. I create work (from my marrow, it often feels like), in hopes of … transforming strangers’ hearts and minds.

And it works, all the time, even — based all on the fan-mail I receive …

So it’s a contradiction I live and breathe: changing people v. not changing them.

I live many contradictions perhaps… I’m a tired, furious, heartbroken and still hopeful trans guy who doesn’t often want to get out of bed but who does, anyway…

Here’s just a couple of observations I’d offer, big picture, given all I know:

Most humans don’t like to be told what to do … or how to feel or how to think … or so we think.

Most humans, we’re also more impressionable than we know. We’re more capable of being manipulated — by massive, well-funded coordinated attack especially — than we realize …

And, I’d offer: Most humans, if not us all, have ‘main character’ syndrome so to speak; we think of ourselves as the ‘good guy’ in the story, sometimes no matter how messed-up our actions may be. We are biased to see our own selves as right and our actions righteous. We’re biased against others, who don’t see things our way perhaps.

People will sometimes resist being in touch with consensus reality itself — if perceiving said reality necessitates realizing first that they are maybe not so “good” after all.

In terms of arguing:

Suffice to say I’m no stranger to doing it but I’m also skeptical “argument” as in “fighting” ever works. In my experience, at least, “arguing” with people tends to not accomplish much — as I learned growing up all too well.

My two cents: Especially when attempting to argue with a jerk or a bully or a bigot — especially when said jerk/bully/bigot is already enraged/ashamed/etc. — it’ll probably only activate them further … perhaps now also you too … and then probably your two worst selves are now fighting …

Which means, therefore, nobody’s learning a damned thing. Because when we’re activated, when we’re in fight/flight/freeze/fawn, we’re irrational — by design. Our brains aren’t getting blood; our hearts are.

When (we’re attacked and) activated: We’re not learning; we’re running — from predators on some imagined ancient savanna, which is where our protective and stupid lovely nervous systems were designed.

It’s how we evolved. Physiologically-speaking, we fight … because we’re just saving our own lives.

Hence I tend to advise (and try to remember, but it’s hard), per Brené Brown and many others: If you are activated, calm down before making (big) next moves. As she says: don’t talk, type, or text.

Now: I confess, personally, I hate fighting. I avoid violence. I’m a pacifist man, I sometimes say, echoing one of my own, life-long heroes: The Dude.

But even The (fictional) Dude (as Lebowski fans will perhaps recall) fought back — back when when it mattered (if you believe him, he was involved somehow with writing the Port Huron Statement, which arguably kicked off “the Sixties”, in part, as my own book on that period covers).

I think often about how to fight fascism — sensitive, trans stoner pacifist type guy that I am…

And, believe me, cis allies especially… I do need you to fight — and how. I need you to get loud. I need you to speak up for trans/gnc rights.

As I’m often saying: I need you to do so from your own strong foundations, from your own grounded, well-supported and actually informed starting places...

But trans folks we need you. We need your support.

Trans folks, are a teeny tiny minority, numbers-wise, our own voices utterly drowned out by the evil side’s very loud and well-financed hate, hate that flows steadily through the riverbeds of eugenicist thinking running through so many folks’ minds…

This, in my view, is what makes so many of my countrymen particularly susceptible perhaps to eugenicist bullshit/brainwashing, in the form of comforting / familiar narratives like:

We should just punish and lock up all the dangerous lunatics — in the guise of offering them ‘help’.

Like… ew, gross, trans people exist. (Kill them.)

Like.. anti-vaxx ableist conspiracy nonsense…

Now extra popular since COVID….

Like racism, like misogyny, like anti-Semitism, like fatphobia — all are all-american classics, old tunes (some) folks love to hear, again and again seemingly …

Eugenic misinformation is as american, I’d offer, as baseball and as apple pie ...

Hence: Any actual cis ally speaking up right now against anti-trans hate, anyone using your comparative power in that brave way, this is noble.

I’ve said before and I’ll repeat: I welcome your allyship, however clumsy-seeming or awkward, if your heart’s in the right place — and if you’re doing that challenging internal work, first, and constantly.

I welcome your allyship: Especially if and when you are leveraging your relative power as a cis person — and/or whatever other privileges you have — to counter transphobia, in action ... Especially, as I’ve said before, when you cis folk think yourselves alone: Please speak up. Especially if you think you’re just amongst cis adults and you witness transphobia in action, try to speak up.

FWIW: my own rule of thumb, I basically always assume trans people might be around me. Because, having suffered in the closet however consciously until about 30, one never knows who is in the room, not really. Trans people are indeed everywhere, however closeted — or however cis-passing and fully stealth.

To be clear: I judge no (trans) persons’ choices, not these days, not ever.

I know we’re typically just looking out for our own safety, as we navigate a very cruel world …

Alright, enough preamble already …

Let’s begin my analysis of that gargantuan pile of responses from mostly self-identified cis allies to my asking ‘how they started caring about trans rights’. My thinking is this exercise will hopefully help your problem — and maybe mine.

I grabbed these random examples that follow some weeks back when I tried to save “just a few exemplary ones.” I wound up with 400+ screenshots and then, two days later, I gave up … still not even having read them all.

I’ll now share some of the somewhat common response-types the thread received, my own sometime classifications bolded.

Let’s start with — as I think of them — the “I’M just not a dick, bro”-bros:

The next category I’ll call the I just have empathy??-types. Meaning those who explained to me (with zero irony or seeming self-awareness usually) that they “just have empathy” or they were “just raised right” etc.

Or they said like:

Or those who quoted the likes of this at me:

(Quoted such! At! Me! Me who got an 5 on AP US History exam, me who loved the Animaniacs, me who was in School House Rock Live!, me who tends to know all such shit, by heart…)

(Also, come on folks, truly as if there’s ever been any actual fidelity to this country’s clearly aspirational, stated founding values of equal treatment and common human decency ... )

A handful highly original and hilarious comic geniuses responded with this exact same meme:

All the aforementioned responses are … obnoxious to me, if that’s not already clear.

They’ve not understood the assignment, these respondents….

Now, here’s another sort of response I got lots of …

Maybe I’d call these ones Extremely Fucking Depressing

(BIG vibe shift ahead; CW: transphobia, violence):

Not just suicides, people told me about anti-trans homicides too...

Or here’s a bit from an exchange I had with someone whose ‘distant’ trans relative was murdered:

As one person’s response even forced me to look up to confirm that indeed: Suicide and homicide are our top two cause of death, trans people.

(Which I didn’t know.)

(Again: Personally, very fucking depressing.)

As is hopefully apparent, contrasting between that first group of respondents and this second one, these two sorts of so-called “allies” are working from … quite different premises. It’s clear from what they shared. It’s clear from their word choices and from their tones. It’s also clear based on how rude are they to me for even asking this.

To me: That first set — however they view themselves — just sound like assholes.

I’d guess such nominal allies remain seemingly largely unaware as to the extremely frightening situation real-life trans Americans are in, right now. Trans kids yes and also adults like myself.

Many such reply guys seemingly didn’t take the millisecond to realize that me, the person asking this, is trans — even though I’d spelled it out in my original thread itself, and it was also then the first word of my bio.

I even noticed some such jerks noticing their errors, seemingly, in subsequent exchanges (saying like, ‘the OP is trans’), while maybe still quibbling with my premise and / or language. (Again, how dare my trans self for just … asking my question to them in particular perhaps, according to their fantasies …)

Nope, these holier-than-thou assholes instead leapt right to critiquing me and/or my question:

My best guess is: Some such so-called “allies” would much rather critique the likes of me, a trans guy, than confront their own selves, inside.

As one of my followers astutely put it in our subsequent discussion about all this:

This sort of behavior is the reason I’m often imploring you all to please read some Brené Brown, educate yourselves about shame itself. As she explains so well: Shame is what kills growth and curiosity. Shame shuts people down. Shame drives dehumanization by media — which can fuel real-world genocide.

My best guess is shame is what had these and many such respondents answering my question so quickly they didn’t even take a moment to consider … Why me, a trans adult, was driven to ask aloud into the digital void, in essence:

Do any of you monsters even care?

I disagree that this is more interesting, the question of how hate spreads. I find hate and its decimation boring and routine.

Many people do seem to understand this, as this entire experience has taught me.

In short, I agree:

Let’s now contrast the aforementioned ‘premise-dismisser’-type respondents with those who …

actually listened …

to me …

a trans adult …

and who engaged with my prompt.

Especially commendable in my view were those who shared stories of their own former now-regrettable views and/or behaviors.

Some told about their prior misguided beliefs and ways, which I’d also asked about in the original thread.

Some shared how they’ve changed.

Some said how they are still trying.

Some confessed regrets they carry still.

Many described being products of the hateful (anti-trans) environments that raised them — whether those households were for example deeply Evangelical or Catholic or Mormon (amongst other repeatedly cited belief-systems) — and how they actually woke up from all that. As in these others:

For the record (/for the haters):

Countless of the thousands who replied did share some specific catalyst that made them ‘start’ caring about trans people and / or trans rights … as in these:

Querent, to your question, and to the question behind your question perhaps (like does your own advocacy even matter):

Countless cis people did share stories wherein someone else had intervened — whether that someone else was cis or trans … whether this happened online or IRL …

So many truly brave cis strangers publicly shared about how their friends or their children or their coworkers or someone from their digital community or whoever else had spoken with them about their own transphobia (however “innocent”) — and this had helped them wake up.

Sooooo many respondents recalled being transformed by merely first meeting — or knowing/loving — one trans human being …

Whether that’s someone they know online or in real life…

(I heard endless stories of both…)

Whether that’s someone they know/love still (which was probably the most common sort of answer I received, overall, if I had to guess) …

Or whether that’s just someone they knew / met long ago — sometimes even if that trans-someone-else only came out much later and the respondent just noticed this from afar on social media or whatever.

So many examples of all these…

I suggest, querent — and to all reading who’ve been wondering such stuff — that you just go beach-combing through all the responses.

Meaning, just read through the reposts/replies and perhaps pick up that which you find that speaks to you …

Some said: I have never met or seen a trans person (that I know of) still to this day — but I care about your rights. Sometimes all it took was just was seeing one (lone) trans person at a distance or in passing, even just once, maybe even decades ago…

Some recounted once being younger people themselves who didn’t find the existence of real-life trans adults confusing … but who were quite confused by the actions of the transphobic adults around them:

Many radicalizing narratives featured the witnessing of mass-transphobic bullying by a group of adults — an entire block or neighborhood or congregation or workplace all ganged up versus a single, visible trans person:

Personally? I super appreciated hearing from “liberals” who spoke with seeming great candor about their own sometime internalized transphobia, like:

Much of which I related to.

I got truly countless stories from allies about how their own eyes were finally opened in terms of the pernicious lived realities of surviving transphobia itself … once they knew/loved someone trans.

In other words, they get it because of hardships their trans friends/families/etc. routinely go through.

I also heard countless stories about how allies just had to see the (once sad/angry/etc) trans people they know finally happy, on this side… which I loved hearing.

Again, I encourage anyone/everyone to scroll through the thousands of anecdotes that my original thread inspired, just in case anything you stumble upon resonates.

To me, as the one trans dude on the receiving end of all this, in theory — it has been greatly taxing, but also deeply healing… this big, unexpected outpouring of cis love.

I know other trans folks feel similarly, because they’ve said as much. Some cis allies meanwhile have said they have found this all helpful too; it’s made them feel less alone, amidst all the unchecked, senseless hate …

In those thousands of stories, you’ll find answers from all over the world. You’ll find them in mostly English but also (from what I’ve noticed) in Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, French... amongst others.

You’ll find numerous responses from parents of trans/gnc people — of all ages.

You’ll find responses from trans/gnc’s peoples’ children.

You’ll find them from our siblings. You’ll find them from our cousins and our other relatives (however distant).

You’ll find them from our friends (however current, however close). And from our coworkers and from our neighbors and from the people we just see in our communities (however long ago), so forth … It goes on and on.

There are also lots of answers from trans/gnc folks ourselves — whom again I’d invited to share from the start.

Because we too often have had our own journeys with all this unlearning-transphobia business — as was the case certainly for me. I discussed in terms of myself some more in my initial thread, quite oblivious it would ever “go viral”.

This response will continue on in Part Two, which I’ll publish tomorrow (or Monday).

In which I’ll actually answer the querent’s question … and I’ll offer some further analysis o’ the pile of replies … inasmuch as I believe this might be illuminating for us all.

More tomorrow,
Sandy

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