Good Life Project - Nontraditional Fatherhood & Family | Trystan Reese
Episode Date: February 25, 2020After years of on-the-ground advocacy work, Trystan Reese burst into the public consciousness on a global scale in 2017 when he and his partner told their non-traditional transgender pregnancy story. ...As the Director of Family Formation at Family Equality Council, a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ families and those who wish to form them, Reese regularly tells the unique story of his family's creation to audiences across the country on a mission to open a constructive dialogue, expand the public conversation about trans reproductive justice, queer families, and what it means to be a father and inspire understanding and change.You can find Trystan Reese at: Website | Instagram-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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So my guest today, Tristan Reese, was vaulted into the public consciousness in 2017 when
he and his partner decided to share their non-traditional pregnancy story on a podcast.
They figured maybe a few hundred people would listen, but within hours, Tristan, who had
transitioned to be a man years earlier, became
known across the internet as the quote pregnant man. Mainstream media picked up the story and
spun it in a way that led to not just global awareness, but also mass scale, misunderstanding,
backlash, and just incredibly hateful comments. Behind this moment, though, was a years-long,
powerful, and profound story of awakening and acceptance, agency, advocacy, and love that to
this day continues to be at the core of Tristan and his family's lives. And it fuels the incredible
work that he has done both now and he continues to do as the director of
family formation at Family Equality Council, which is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting
LGBTQ plus families and those who wish to form them. That bigger story is where we're headed
today. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life
Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the
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Y'all need a pilot.
Flight risk.
I was a very strange child.
I mean, you know, mom, dad, super supportive.
Both of my parents grew up extremely poor.
So my dad is the son of a coal miner.
He's one of 13 brothers and sisters from Newfoundland.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, which is like the Appalachian, Canadian Appalachian, basically.
Yeah.
And then my mom is the daughter of a single mom who was a nurse.
My mom's dad died when she was very young.
Oh, wow.
So now I'm curious, how did your dad go from Newfoundland to the desert in California?
Yeah.
I mean, he decided as a kid, looking around, you know, in a very, very like podunk backwater place,
healthcare was a huge concern. And they just didn't have it. And with that many brothers and
sisters, you can imagine money was a huge issue. Healthcare was a huge issue. You know, my dad
actually had very bad eyesight and no one really knew until he was a little bit older and an aunt
did like the, whatever the 1950s version of crowdfunding is she like oh
it's even 1940s oh my gosh where she like asked all the relatives to pitch in to get my dad glasses
and once he got glasses they realized he was extraordinarily bright and since he could see
and he did some exercise in like fifth grade where they asked what did you want to be when you grew
up and he wanted to be a doctor and so he you grew up? And he wanted to be a doctor. And so he just decided at age 10, he wanted to be a doctor and he put himself through
medical school.
No kidding.
Yep.
And he met my mom in undergrad in Montreal.
He got into medical school and I guess one day he was like, well, Janet, I'm going to
medical school.
We should either break up or get married.
What should we do?
And my mom was like, eh, let's get married.
And so that's the very romantic way that my, like a very practical love story. I think my mother might've even had to
break up with her, her other boyfriend at the time, you know, cause I think in, in the fifties
and six, you know, it was a little bit like, you know, you just sort of casually saw a couple of
people and it, you know, it wasn't a, wasn't quite as official as it can be today, but yeah. So
that's, that's how they met.
And then medical school, and they went to Vancouver.
They had me and decided they were sick of the rain and moved to California, not knowing
that they were moving to a very conservative, very sort of military idea sort of area.
Yeah.
Was that their bent, their belief system, their values?
No, no, no, no, no.
I mean, they're very Canadian. So like it's, they're not like, they're not ridiculous.
They're not hippies. You know, they're not leftists. They're just very pragmatic,
progressive. Like in Canada, it's like you just do your thing. You don't judge other people. You
don't stop them from doing it. And so they're very accepting in that sort of pragmatic way.
Although they've, I think, taken some extreme left turns raising me and my sisters.
Sisters, how many?
Two, one younger, one older.
Got it.
Yeah.
So you're growing up in this town in a radically different value system.
And you're also starting to sort of, I mean, when you're really young, do you have a sense of gender at all?
Or is it even anything you think about?
I mean, I don't remember feeling like there was something going on with my gender as a kid.
And I know that that's like, it's like an inconvenient experience because we've sort of taught mainstream Americans that what is true about transgender people is that we're born in the wrong body. We knew it from the second we were sentient. And our whole lives since then has been a fight to get our bodies
right. And then we're cured and we can just keep moving on. And I think that that narrative is true
for some trans people, sure, and served us pretty well so far. But I think now, you know, we're at a
place where there's a little bit more room for different stories. And my story is different. Like, I just don't ever remember thinking about gender as a
kid. And because I had these, you know, pretty open parents, I was never forced into any particular
box. So there also wasn't much to rebel against. Maybe if my mom had put me in the, you know,
kids beauty pageant circuit at age five, yeah. Maybe I would have had an early memory of
being like, Oh, this is terrible. I don't want to wear a tiara, but I don't, you know, I had,
you know, I had skin knees and I was barefoot and I climbed trees and, you know, chase,
you know, chase my sisters around and this normal childhood things, I guess.
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that, that context of, on the one hand, your know, I was an obsessive reader.
I mean, my mom still jokes that I would have a book in every room of the house.
I would have like the bathroom book, the kitchen book.
I mean, we really, my mom, I remember had to one day say, okay, I'm putting my foot down.
You cannot be reading while we're having family dinner. Like put the book down, talk to us, and then go back to your stories.
And so that was very strange in my school. Like it
was very weird that I read in school that I was super into, you know, like word games and puzzles.
And then I was really into theater and plays and reading plays and learning musicals. And it's just
like, that was just like so fucking weird in so many ways that it was like kind of my gender was the least of the worries.
I was just a very different type of child than all the other children around me.
And so that really drove me to doing, from a very young age, doing theater.
I mean, when I was nine, I knew that I loved musicals.
God bless my mother.
She didn't know anything about music.
But watching me really start to like them them age five, six, seven.
You know, I saw Annie, the movie or something
from the 80s movie, and I just loved it.
And so she would just go out of her way
to, you know, drive us down to LA
and go to the Pantages Theater and see Cats, the musical.
See, you know, Les Mis, see Miss Psycho.
She just like worked so hard.
She didn't have a parent really.
Her mother worked so hard and she idealizes her mother, the single mom who was the nurse who, you know, was the only woman in their town who drove a car and would drive to work before the kids were up and would come home after they were already in bed and then stay up late doing the laundry, cooking the food, you know, checking their homework only to get up and go to work the next day. So she just thought, you know, she wanted to do the things that she
knew that her mother wished that she could have done and just go above and beyond to give us a
childhood and to support all of our dreams and the ways that she just didn't really get,
not because her mom didn't want her to, but just because she couldn't practically swing it.
Yeah. So it sounds like theater really became a place where you started to find a
sense of acceptance and belonging just because that was a passion of yours.
It's interesting to hear that.
I mean,
I'm thinking back to,
you know,
like my high school experience and they're always the groups,
you know,
like they're the this and the that and the this and the that based largely
on interest or,
or activities and stuff like that.
I didn't see that.
Maybe that maybe sort of like theater was a refuge for kids who felt like they didn't
fit into sort of like other parts of the general community.
I guess because that wasn't my group.
I don't really know.
But maybe is that has it been your experience?
Because I know you then went on and like stayed really involved in the theater community that
that is kind of a place that serves not just as a sense of belonging, but also a refuge
to a certain extent.
I mean, no question.
I think any sort of misfit kid who had the least bit of creative talent, and even if they didn't, they did the lights, you know, it really did become the refuge.
And I think there is something really powerful about, you know, theater really means embodying different stories and which means you're open to different stories. And I think that does sort of set the stage, so to speak, for it being a community of kids who just don't
sort of fit in other places. So yeah, it was really important to me both in school, but
especially outside of school, doing community theater and then going on to do professional
theater. It was the place where I was seen and accepted. I also got to play all these boy parts and I played the artful Dodger, you know, I got to do, and as a kid in a small
town, it's like, there's already a shortage of male actors. And so I just, once I cut my hair,
I just got to do all those parts, which was another place where I could just sort of explore
masculinity and, and have it be super safe and accepted. I found an old review of me as Artful Dodger
at age like 14 or 15.
And I think they even said like,
those who do not know this actor is not male,
you know, will be, you know, will never,
I guess will, those who do not know this actor is not male
will never be the wiser or something.
And so they basically complimented me
on my passability at age 14, which I know, again, it's like major foreshadowing, but yeah.
That's amazing. And I know that you've shared that, I guess, sort of like around the time of
puberty for you was a time where you started to actually say, okay, so let me grapple with the
fact that I'm not only different in these other ways, but also, okay, so maybe this is where I start to sort of like explore gender.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In a super safe way.
It was affirmed.
You know, it was just me doing a good job at acting.
And I had all these adults around that like, you know, treated me with respect and thought that I was like interesting and funny and smart.
And that was really, really helpful for me to have those cross-generational relationships too.
Yeah, so how does your realizing,
okay, so there's something beyond me playing the roles
and exploring this in the context of theatrical performance
and stepping into another person's identity
and other person's role.
And where it starts to touch down like,
no, this is actually maybe about my own identity
and not stepping into another role,
but stepping into my own, like stepping into my own life differently.
Yeah, I know.
It's so funny when you ask that question.
I thought of it as like going on a vacation throughout your life to a place and being like, no, I actually want to move here.
And I actually have often thought about the sort of similarities between a trans identity and that of an immigrant, of going from one
place to another and what you give up when you move somewhere with a totally different
culture and what you want to keep but are sort of pressured to leave behind.
And it was a slow transition for me, really realizing like, oh, I want to move here.
You know, in fact, I, you know, this is who I am.
And so I think there were just fits and starts and putting a foot out of the closet and trying to tell people, you know, I'm actually transgender.
And this is like year 2000, 2001.
This is the dark ages in trans community time.
And I was told in so many large and small ways that I could not possibly be a man.
I could not possibly be transgender.
You know, I was too feminine. I was attracted to men. It was just like there was such a conflation
of gender expression and gender identity and sexual orientation, all of those things,
even within the trans community, even within the LGBT community. And so, you know, I was just,
you know, I believed them. Maybe I was wrong. And so there's like, it was a messy and slow process.
And I think all the way up until I started taking testosterone, I just wasn't exactly sure.
Everyone was telling me that, you know, this just couldn't possibly be.
And I didn't have any role models to be the kind of man that I wanted to be and the kind of trans person I wanted to be.
And, you know, someone who's a little older than me in the trans community said, you know, just try.
Like a lot of us aren't sure.
Oh, you know, we just, we don't have a lot of models and, you know, someone who's a little older than me in the trans community said, you know, just try. Like a lot of us aren't sure.
Oh, you know, we just, we don't have a lot of models and, you know, just try.
And if it feels great, keep going.
And if it doesn't, stop and figure out a new path.
But once I started transitioning medically, I was like, oh, thank God.
Like this fixes so many insecurities I had. It was like it was coming home.
And every day along that way was just coming more and more home
and being more and more myself and more and more authentic
and being able to get rid of all the stuff and just be myself in the world.
Yeah. I mean, the idea of taking almost like, quote, baby steps in the early days
to kind of see like, okay, so I think this is how I want to feel.
I think this is how I want to be in the world.
But I guess you don't really know until you're actually physically start to make the transition,
how you actually will feel until you get there. And the idea, I never thought about the notion
of easing your way into it versus just making an idea and saying, okay, I'm going in and I'm going
to have the physical changes and I'm going to have surgery versus kind of testing the waters a little bit slowly, bit by bit.
And just as a series of experiments almost and saying, like, how do I feel now?
How do I feel now?
Yeah, yeah.
And everything is a spectrum.
You know, some people who are trans, they absolutely know from a very early age.
They are very, very clear about that.
And they want to transition medically and they know, and that's fine. And then
there are some of us who are like, we are definitely trans. And like, we just didn't
happen to know from birth. And we happen to have like other things going on. Like, you know,
we weren't super masculine and we didn't like women, you know, there were lots of other things
that led other people to believe, you know, to, I guess, lead us to doubt ourselves.
Yeah.
And so those little steps were really helpful.
So as you're making these decisions yourself and saying, okay, this is a path that I'm
going to start to travel and I'm going to go, I'm getting more and more committed.
What's also happening in conversations with your parents, you know, because this is, this
has got to be, you've got parents who sound like they're really cool and really progressive and very open.
Also living in a place which is super conservative.
And tell me a little bit about the conversation that's unfolding between you during this window.
I mean, just like the rest of the story, it's just really messy.
You know, steps forward, steps back.
I mean, at this point I had moved out of the house.
I was, you know, 20, 22.
You know, I'm, I'm in point I had moved out of the house. I was, you know, 20, 22, you know,
I'm, I'm in poor, I'd moved to Portland by then. And, you know, so I just kind of visited,
visited with them sometimes and wasn't sure how much to share and how they'd respond. And sometimes I would sort of drop a little hint and then get a really bad response. So then I just
sort of like not share for a little while. And I think there was just, you know, you know, I think there was just one day
when I said, you know, mom, it's time.
And I've given you the space
to come to these realizations on your own.
But, you know, here's my expectation moving forward.
You know, my name is Tristan now.
And I want you to refer to me as your son.
And by, you know, use male pronouns.
And I know it's going to be a journey for you.
I mean, that's not true.
I definitely was not that like accepting and open and patient with her at the time I was in my own
process, you know? So I think there may have been a couple of blowups, but the two of us figured it
out and came back together and, and now we're really close, but. Yeah. What, what was her
beyond just not understanding beyond having to learn just a new way to relate to you? What were her concerns? Because as a mom, I mean, as a parent, I mean, you of crowd in Portland, right. That like, you know, was tricking me into thinking that I was trans or I
was doing it to impress somebody or something like that. I know she was, you know, it's like a fad
or a trend and oh my God, what if I changed my body and then I want to go back? There was that
concern. There was a concern about like, um, just minimizing my chances of a relationship.
You know, it's like, who's going to date you?
You know, who will ever love you?
Did she express that to you?
Yes, many times.
Yes, many, many, many times.
That I was just narrowing the pool to be so small that it's like, you know, gay men who are also willing to be with someone whose body isn't like
other gay men, who I'm also attracted to, who's attracted to me as a person. I think she was just
worried it was winnowing, you know, that once you apply those filters down, it's like the results
after that are zero. And I, you know, I think every parent, I talked to her about this recently,
you know, you first, you think you want your kids to be, you know, wildly successful. And then you
think you want your kids to be happy, but by wildly successful. And then you think you want your kids to be happy.
But by the time they're adults, you want them to have lives that bring them meaning.
And I think first she was worried I wasn't going to be successful.
Then she was worried I wasn't going to be happy.
And I think she was worried I wasn't going to be able to find meaning in this and in my life.
You know, it was just time.
It was just time and her seeing me be happy and find meaning.
And when I went to performing arts school, and that was the first real place that I had a full community of affirmation around me, around being trans, around my identity as a man.
And I was just, you know, held and loved and supported.
And I think once she saw that, you know, for me, that was the real turning point.
When she saw that, we were fine. We were fine. Everything else was just pronouns. So it's like, she realizes, okay,
you know, like he actually, he's got people who love him, who will be around him. He's got like,
it's yeah. I mean, the, the other thing that I, that I wonder about is whether part of the
conversation or at least in her mind, or maybe the conversation you had was around safety. A huge part.
Yeah.
And I mean, the complicating factor is my father is a physician and he's actually an endocrinologist.
And he treated transgender people in the seventies
in Canada before I was even born,
before there was any protocols.
I mean, he was really just kind of making it up
and that's who my dad is.
If someone comes to my dad and needs help,
he will move heaven
and earth to just find a way to give them what they need and to support them responsibly as a
physician. And, you know, people think, oh, well, that must mean that they would have been way more
supportive. That's not true. Most parents, when you come to them and you say you're transgender,
they're like, what is that? My parents knew what transgender was. And, you know, being trans in the
seventies and eighties, when my, my when my parents were interacting with these individuals, like, it was extremely hard.
And so I think, you know, they have that embodied experience of supporting people who are in extreme distress.
And, you know, I know a lot of my dad's patients, you know, they died of AIDS.
They were murdered.
They killed themselves.
You know, they did not, there were not a lot of options available to them.
And I think when I came to my parents and said I was trans, they were gravely concerned for my safety, for my health, for just what is my trajectory?
Where am I going to end up?
And they didn't want that for their kid.
And so they tried to talk me out of it many times.
And we know there's, you can't talk someone out of being trans.
You can't bully them out of being trans. You can't bully them out of being trans. You can't shame them out of being trans. You know, you can, you can talk
them into hating themselves. You can bully them into wishing that their lives were over and,
you know, and, and, and that's pretty much what ends up happening is, is people end up,
you know, miserable and hating themselves and not expecting any better from the world.
And I'm really lucky I was able to talk myself out of that.
Yeah.
And I know, I think I actually heard it from you originally.
And tell me if I get this wrong, that the average lifespan of someone who's trans is
like, it's only 35 years old.
Is that still a valid fact?
Yeah.
I mean, the data is really hard and I'm a huge nerd.
And because I do education, you know, I try really hard to
find the best evidence, you know, and so the data isn't perfect, but according to what we know
currently, it does seem as though the average life expectancy is 35 for a trans person in America and
certainly lower for trans women and certainly lower for trans women of color. So when we,
when we look at the interplay between sexism and racism, you know, we look at, and there are lots
of things that we do know factually to be true. You know, trans people are four times more likely
to live on $10,000 a year or less in America. You know, so when we look at rates of incarceration,
homelessness, I mean, those things, there's very clear and unequivocal data on that.
And it's extremely difficult to live your best life and to be able to
achieve your goals and bring all of your gifts to the world when you're constantly facing,
you know, these, these barriers. It's going to be fun. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is?
You're going to die.
Don't shoot him. We need him.
Y'all need a pilot.
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You're in the world of performing arts um but you also become really involved in activism and
advocacy stumbling on my d's there um how does that all start to unfold yeah i mean i moved to
la fresh out of performing arts school you know having studied shakespeare for two years and all
these um it was a pretty classical performing arts school.
So I did like dance, vocal performance, textual analysis,
classic American playwrights, lots of Shakespeare,
some sort of postmodern as well, but not too much modern.
But I was really excited to do theater for social change.
You know, so I'm like feeling just like on my game.
I get to LA because that's where I know people,
stay with friends, acting during the day,
bartending at night.
And just like, I book some gigs and they're just terrible.
It's like a guest spot on a Comedy Central show.
Just like things where I'm like,
this is not contributing to the world being a better place.
In, in some cases, it's like making the world a worse place and desperately trying to do theater
on the side that I loved. It was just really hard. And then meanwhile, I'm bartending in gay bars and
like, I mean, bars are just the worst places for people. They're like, they're most insecure.
They're most judgmental and petty, you know, just like so much ugliness comes out. And so, you know, I ended up having coffee with
a friend of mine and said, you know, I feel really bad, but I just really hate gay people right now.
I was like, you do something like activism, right? Can I like volunteer or something? He's like,
yeah, I work for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. We're working on all these campaigns in LA. Like, come and volunteer.
And I just loved it.
I loved it so much.
And it was like doing organizing instead of making art that you hope people will come
and like draw conclusions from and make inferences from and then go home and make the connection
that they should do something different.
In organizing, you just stand in front of a group of people and you're like,
hey, here's what's wrong and here's how we can fix it.
Let's do it together.
You know, it's just like so much more direct and straightforward and clear.
And I found my own way to take the acting skills of like being able to access vulnerability
and honesty and storytelling to be able to reach even a large group of people in an emotionally compelling way and use that and merge that with all the skills I was gaining from doing organizing and kind of do a new model of organizing.
Which, yeah, then I stopped doing theater and I ended up getting hired at the task force and spent eight years traveling the country supporting these local LGBT communities who are facing really vicious attacks at the ballot box.
And then when the time came for us as a movement, we realized like, we just don't have enough people
on our side. We just don't, you know, we've been riding the Harvey milk wave of just coming out
for so long. And the data just showed us that it wasn't enough anymore. It got us where it got us.
But then what's next? And we found that even people who knew LGBT people would still show up
at the ballot box and vote to take away marriage and vote to not protect people from discrimination.
And we realized we needed to be having different conversations with the straight people in our
lives and with the straight people that we didn't know. And so then I became part of a team
that really the movement invested
in us learning how to do that,
how to change people's minds
and get them to be pro-marriage
and pro-non-discrimination and pro-trans.
And yeah, and so then I spent a few years doing that.
Yeah, I mean, I'm fascinated by that too,
because there's a problem.
I mean, you're literally going out into the world
looking for people.
Door to door.
Who not only disagree with what you believe, but disagree with your very existence.
Yep.
And then saying, hey, can I talk to you?
Yeah.
With the intention of completely changing their mind.
Not a minor task.
And it's kind of fascinating. I've heard you describe that there's, there's actually a fairly linear step-by-step process of having that conversation that is
incredibly powerful. Can you break it down a little bit for me? Cause I'm really curious about
this. Totally. I mean, there's like really interesting social sciences on this as well,
because like, not only is there a linear way that you can have the conversation, but
it's actually a pretty linear, I mean, it mean, it's actually more spiral than anything else, but there's a way that people move forward
through like total ignorance to like rejection and defense to sort of colorblindness.
Can't we all just get along?
I don't see you as being different, you know, to like, okay, fine.
You're different and okay to like really, you know, celebration and acceptance.
Yeah. And I think just learning the science of that, I mentioned already I'm a nerd,
so that was like super cool. But yeah, you know, the way that these conversations would go is,
you know, you're really, you're actually not, as an LGBT person, the way that the psychology
of bias works, I can't actually reach someone who is in the very
beginning stages. So if I ask someone, like, do you know how you're going to vote on the gay marriage
law? If they say like, yeah, you know, I hate those gay people. I would never cool by, I can't
reach them. You know, for every stage someone's in, they have a message they need to hear. And
they also have a messenger they need to hear it from. Right. So those like super, super, super anti people, I'm never going to reach them. I'm not going to
waste my time. But those people who are like, yeah, I don't know. It just seems weird. Gay.
Great. That's my people. Or like, oh, well, you know, it's not that I'm a bigot or anything.
I just think that marriage means something and it's in it and it means something. It's for
straight people. Great. That's my person. Because that little shadow of openness you know that's what I want
the metaphor that I actually give is it's like you're walking side by side with someone through
the woods you're looking for the light you know often there's no path there's no clearing but
there's a light where the where the sun is coming through and you know that's the way to go.
And so, yeah, you know, always just, you know, if it's on marriage or really anything, you
just ask them about themselves.
You're open and curious.
You want to know who they are.
What do they care about?
What do they value?
And it's, you know, it's both a strategy because you want to know what their values are so
you can frame your conversation in alignment with their values. But it's also a self-hack because sometimes if you've experienced a harm or a wound around your
identity, around a particular part of your identity, the amygdala, you know, that part of
your brain that's trying to protect you only sees in black and white. And it's going to, if you let
it, you know, it will lead you to see someone as an enemy because that's
its job.
And so by asking someone about themselves, you also hack your own defense mechanism to
get out of the amygdala and into the, you know, the better part of your brain, this
cerebral cortex so that you can connect with them as a person.
So I don't see you as someone who's bad.
You're not a bigot.
You're like a human being who's on a journey like me.
And I want to learn about you and I want you to learn about me. And so then once I figure out like, what do they care about?
You know, if they say they care about tradition, if they say they care about family, they care
about love, they care about community, whatever it is that they care about. And there are sort of
core American values. All of us hold in varying degrees. You know, I have my story that can be
told through all those lenses. So whatever I hear them say, you know, if it is about community, I talk about how important it is that everyone in the community have access to the same rights and privileges that they do, including their, you know, their gay and lesbian neighbors.
And then I'll say, you know, in your community, do you have any do you have any neighbors?
Is there anyone at your church?
Is there anyone at your work?
You know, if it's community, if it's family, I talk about my family.
You know, in my family growing up, I was taught that when a kid needs a home, you show up for them.
And that's what LGBT people all over the country want to do.
They want to show up for these kids who need them.
And it is really hard to have a safe home for a kid when the parents can't get married.
You know, whatever it is that their values are, that's where we want to live is in that the crossover and the Venn diagram. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like as you're developing the ability to have these conversations and going
out into the world and becoming really effective at changing other people's minds, part of that
process is necessarily holding yourself open to the possibility of having your mind, your perception
changed as well. And that openness, I would imagine it's so important to either side, sort of like
saying, huh, I never thought about it that way.
Yeah.
I mean, it's fascinating.
I don't know if it's true today, but definitely 10 years ago when I was doing this work, honestly,
a lot of straight people just never really thought about it.
So even if you ask them, like, so you
said that you have a friend, Tom, at work, you know, who is gay. So if Tom and his partner got
married, how do you think that might impact your day-to-day life? Not asking it in a passive
aggressive way, but truly like, let's think about this together, you and me. Most of them had never
actually thought about it. And it sounds so ridiculous for those of us who are more progressive, you know, but you
have to, you know, you just have to let go of that judgment part and just be with them
on the journey and be open to being changed.
Yeah.
You know, that's a big part is for you as the person that wants to change their mind.
You have to have that openness and say, oh, you know, thank you so much for sharing that
story.
I mean, it's interesting to me also, because part of what seems like is happening there
too, is that you're the one who's initiating this conversation.
Whereas I wonder if a lot of people don't initiate the conversation because they're
terrified of getting it wrong, of saying the wrong thing, of entering the conversation
the wrong way, of, quote, making the problem worse,
whether that's certainly part of the self-talk
that eliminates, that stops two people from sitting down
and saying, oh, probably both of us are going to get it wrong
in some way, shape, or form, and we'll figure it out.
Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, it's funny because the work that I did
became its own nonprofit and its own project, which is still doing persuasion work.
And it was actually this American Life episode about it.
The data shows, the longitudinal data now shows that having a one-on-one conversation with someone and having this level, it's called long-form persuasion.
But having this kind of conversation is the single most effective way you can change someone's mind on LGBT issues.
It's the most resource intensive.
It's hard to scale.
And it doesn't work on everything.
They tried it with abortion.
It doesn't work on abortion.
So there are some things it doesn't work on and some things it works great on.
And LGBT issues is one of them. And because last year we hit the 10 years
since the No on 8 campaign,
there was a research project out of a university
who went back and found those voters we talked to.
Not only were their minds still changed 10 years later
compared to voters who did not get this treatment,
this conversation, they remembered who we were.
No kidding.
Yeah.
And they may not remember like,
oh, I talked to Tristan. They'll be like, oh yeah, I talked to the skinny guy who had a lip ring
because I had a lip ring back then. You know, they remember those conversations because when do we do
this? We're in the Twitterverse now. When does someone sit down and say like, I, I care about
what you have to say. I care about your perspective and I'm open to hearing if something
you say comes out messy, if you say isn't, I don't know, man, I just think being gay is kind of gross.
Like if I'm open to hearing that and I'm not going to judge you and be like, screw you, dude.
You know, if I say, yeah, you know what? I totally get that this is new and different. And to be
honest with you, I don't really want to know what you do in your bedroom either. But at the end of
the day, I would never stand in the way of you being able to marry the person that you love and
being able to have the family that you wish you had. So, so talk to me a little bit about like,
like, let's forget about what it is I do in my private life. Let's talk about who I am as a
person. Cause I get from you that I don't think that you would ever want to prevent me from just
like doing my thing and like finding my own little version of happiness in my house.
Is that right, man?
You know, like having that conversation
where I don't take the bait.
You know what I mean?
Where I don't, you know,
I don't let that part of me
that is like angry and scared and hurt.
It's almost like the reactive part.
It's like, you just like breathe and like, okay, huh.
Yeah.
And I tried to just like let go of the words
and get to the core of it,
which is, you know, fundamentally, like usually those dudes, like they're just so scared. You know,
they're so scared about a different way of being a man. They've had it beaten into their head,
sometimes literally, that there was one way to do being a man. And a person comes along that
has liberated themselves from that. And how scary and how scary and how frustrating and how
disappointing and how sad that they were lied to. You know what I mean? They were lied to. There
isn't one way of doing being a man. And fundamentally, I mean, when like in the Twitterverse,
like that's what fragile masculinity is. It's men who've been told over and over and over again that
they are failing at being a boy,
at being a young man, at being a man.
They are told in so many ways.
And so it's fragile.
Their sense of manhood is, you know, masculine.
It's fragile.
It can be broken easily and queer people break it.
And that's where that anger and the retaliation comes from.
Right, because I mean, if your model of the world
is one way and then that gets shattered,
then you're grappling in a space of complete uncertainty.
And then your brain probably also goes, well, what else?
What else?
Right.
Yep.
It's the house of cards.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's with religion too.
You know, there's like the top three things that people would say.
And what a big one was religion.
And that's another thing.
It's like, oh my God, if the church told me that being gay is wrong and being gay isn't wrong, then what's right? What else is
there? And I think having that compassion, it's very hard to access and you have to have done a
lot of healing. So you're speaking from your scar and not your wound, but having compassion for
someone who was told by people they loved and trusted very much that being gay was wrong.
They're willing to be with you in that struggle. They're willing
to reach out halfway to say, okay, I'm going to consider this, even though it's really hard.
You have to then reach out halfway too and say, yeah, man, I know it's hard. I know it's hard.
And I'm going to be with you and I hear you and like, let's work through it together.
And unfortunately in our, in our sort of, I think we've gotten even further away from the ability
to have this kind of vulnerable conversation because we're in cancel culture, because we're in the Twitterverse, because our executive branch is modeling us the exact complete opposite. people, they're being lauded as warriors. And it's like, cool, man, that feels so good for you.
It feels really good, but it is not eliminating transphobia and homophobia and racism. And like,
that's what I care about. And I just want to do strategically whatever gets us there.
And there's data on what we can do that gets us there. I don't care about feeling good. I don't,
you know, I don't care about putting someone else down so that I get more likes on social media. No,
I want to live in a world where every trans person gets to do all the things
that they could ever dream of and be free.
And like screaming at a transphobic person
on the internet doesn't get us there.
So like, why would we do it?
Why would we do it?
Yeah.
So as you're out in the world,
having these conversations,
spending time with people, long form conversations, a lot of it is around marriage equality, right? What's happening really, really brutal campaigns coming out to try and keep, like, retain laws that made it legal to fire a trans person from their job, kick them out of their house, not let them into your university, right?
And so I think doing both of those works, it was really fun.
I loved it.
I was super good at it.
It's a good challenge.
I like a hard puzzle, you know, but yeah, you know, I think internally that was really the struggle of like,
you know, I'm fighting for marriage, but what will I ever be able to get married? And I definitely
didn't think I was, and I'm fighting for trans rights when it's like, you know, do I even believe
I'll have a life worth living? Because for me, like, you know, I wanted to be loved. I wanted
to have a family.
And I didn't know any trans people who had,
who had done any of those things.
And so it was really, yeah, it was hard
because the work is hard.
And it was also hard personally because, you know,
I wanted to get married.
And here I was fighting for this thing
that I thought I would never be able to exercise.
That changes though.
Yeah.
You meet someone. Yeah. I'm just trying to remember
if it was actually 2009 or 2010 when I met the person who would later become my partner. But
yeah, at that point in my young adult life, I was like 25, 26. I really had just like,
I wouldn't say given up on, but I just decided like, okay, I can keep beating on this door of
like a serious relationship, or I can just like do a lot of internal work. And so I just thought,
you know, why don't I just get awesome? So like when, and if the right person comes along,
like I will be someone that they want to be in a relationship. And so, you know, it's sort of
like before you, even if not, you'll still be awesome. So it's all good. Total win. Win, win. Yeah. But it is like before you open your store, it's like, you know, it's sort of like before you. Even if not, you'll still be awesome. So it's all good.
Total win.
Win, win.
Yeah, but it is like before you open your store, it's like, you know, you want the foundation to be good.
You want the lights to work, you know.
You know, so like I went to therapy.
I like, you know, continue to read a lot.
I got, I tried to travel as much as I possibly could.
I just really wanted to be solid, you know.
And this is before the self-care movement.
So there wasn't as much self-improvement sort of out there, but I tried really hard.
And then, yeah, just one day, like quite literally out of the blue, like turned around a corner on the way to a friend's party and almost literally bumped into, you know, someone who
it just like, it was just like in the movies, like I saw him and it was like the clouds parted and
the angels saying, and there was just, there was just something about him that just called to me
and felt, you know, it just felt, it just felt like family. It just felt like home immediately.
So familiar. And he did not feel that way about me at all. So it was like completely one-sided,
which is fine. I was not to be deterred, but we were, you know, we were going to the same event. We had this mutual,
these mutual friends and we went to the brunch and, and, and yeah, I just, he was just,
you know, everything. He was just everything from the beginning.
So you ended up falling in love. He changed his mind.
That's right. He came around, we became friends, you know, after he was not really interested in me.
I just decided, okay, well, I'll prove it to him.
You know, I'll prove to him that I'm the person he's supposed to be with.
And we were friends and it was, you know, my mid-20s.
So, of course, I was flirting with him mercilessly.
And I found out he had a boyfriend, which I did not care about in my mid-20s.
I did not have good boundaries around those kinds of things. And, you know, one night we actually had all been hanging out,
a group of us, and I had had a couple of drinks and was really particularly egregious flirtation
happening. And as I was walking home, you know, he sent me a text message that said,
you know, I sense that maybe there's an attraction towards me on your part and I'm very flattered, but I'm in a relationship and, uh, and I owe it to him to
let that relationship play its course. And so respectfully, as much as I appreciate the attention,
you know, could you please, you know, back off? Um, and, uh, and let's just explore our future
together as friends. And, uh, and I was just like, oh my God, that's who you marry. You know,
that's who you marry. And, and in the moment, of course I was like, wrote back immediately. I'm so
sorry I've been made you uncomfortable. I, you know, I truly apologize. I have the deepest respect
for you and your relationship. And, and I'm excited to be friends with you. And then I just
waited, you know, I just waited. Cause I was like, that makes me like you even harder.
And I was like, what?
He was 25.
He's a 25-year-old gay man living in LA who had that level of emotional maturity, healthy boundaries.
I was just like, oh my God, you know, this is the person.
And then I just waited.
I just waited.
And eventually the time came.
How long?
I don't know.
We try to trace it back.
And this is like kind of pre putting everything
on social media and Facebook,
somewhere between six weeks and three months.
I'm just being his friend.
Like I went, you know, he ran this group,
the social group for LGBT men,
because he moved to L.A. hoping for community amongst gay men from a very small town.
And there wasn't any outside the bar.
So he just created it, which is just him.
It's just him.
You know, he wants something.
It's not there.
And he builds it for everyone else.
And, yeah, so I just go to these events and stop flirting and just showed him that I can be respectful, that I'm healthy too, you know? And I just waited. And, you know, literally I was on a break at work.
I went onto Facebook and it said that he had gone from being in a relationship to being single. And I picked up the phone. I didn't even text him. I picked up the phone as soon as it showed up.
I said, what are you doing for dinner tonight? And he said, nothing. I said,
will you have dinner with me? And he said, yeah. And that was our first date.
And I don't, I mean, I don't think that we spent a night apart after that.
If I wasn't traveling for work, I think we've basically been together every night for the last nine years.
Hmm.
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You fell in love.
And I guess you're a little while into that when you also get a call from, I guess, his sister.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, one of the things that I adore about my partner is that he is very close to his family.
Unfortunately, it happened because of some trauma in their house
growing up. He had to take care of his siblings and his mom. And so he's very, very close to them
and will do anything to support them. And there's a lot of dysfunction in that family. And we had
known that his sister, who became a mother as a teenager, we had known that she was struggling
to care for her kids
in the way that they needed.
And then, you know, yeah,
one day that sort of situation came to a head
and we got a phone call from her social worker, actually,
an off the books courtesy call
because, you know, my partner also was a social worker.
So it was a little bit of that professional courtesy,
you know, where we had reached out to her
to let her know that we were out there
and we were happy to support however we needed to.
And she let us know that, you know, things had come to a head in that home and the kids were going to get taken away.
And, you know, it would behoove us to see if we could offer support urgently before that happened.
Because she was pretty sure that, you know, my sister-in-law wouldn't be able to get things together in time to get the kids back.
And that they may get stuck in the foster care system, you know, which we just couldn't, you know, just unfathomable that we would have let that happen.
So even though we'd only been together for a year and we had just moved in together and this had not been our plan, you know, I was raised in a family where you show up.
And so, you know, he called me on a Friday and I was at work and he was like, are you sitting down? And I'm like, what is this like a joke? Is this a movie? Like, yeah, I'm sitting down. He's like, you know, we have, I think we might have to go and take Kaylee and Riley. And I don't know for how long. And I was like, okay, let's go. Was there even a second thought in your mind? Or you were just saying? Nope. Nope.
Not even a second.
And that's me.
You know, I'm like a very, you know, I'm just like, that's just me.
And he's much more pragmatic and balanced.
And, you know, we had sort of had the idea that maybe this was going to go this way.
And he had just been so adamant.
He's just like, I don't want to be a parent this way. Like, I don't want to be a parent in crisis at the cost of somebody else losing their kids, losing the right to be a parent.
He's like, you don't know what becoming entangled in my family permanently really would look like.
Yeah.
And so we had a long conversation while we were driving up to pick them up.
You know, and a big part of that conversation was about us as a couple.
You know, we'd only been together for a year and we wanted to be careful.
It was a time pre-marriage equality where there was so much undermining of queer relationships
happening culturally that what that meant is that queer people would go really overboard.
You know, so people who had only been on a few dates were calling each other partner, you know,
and were getting married
and were having kids if they could, you know, biologically.
And there was just so much rushing
that we thought was really,
it was just reactionary and not healthy
because like, okay, you start dating,
you get the flutters, you fall in love,
you become partners, you move in together,
you get married, and then what for the next 50 years, you know, we wanted each stage to be precious and
to last as long as it could. Even though I think we both knew and felt from very early on that,
like, this is it, you know, this is the one, but if this is the one, then we have our lifetime
to be each stage, you know? And so we had never talked about getting married
and we had never talked about forever.
And so, you know, we kind of had to have
a little bit of that conversation
in the car ride going up.
And, you know, he just basically said,
you know, we have never talked about forever
or a lifetime commitment or anything.
But you need to know if we take these kids
and they end up staying with us,
my expectation is that you will be with me for the next 18 years.
Even if you're not in love with me, even if it isn't fun anymore, even none of that, because we don't take these kids out of one unstable situation and put them in another.
You know, so I'm really I'm asking you to commit to being with me for the next 18 years.
And I was like, yeah, I'm in.
Never thought you'd asked.
You know, I've been waiting.
Yeah.
And again, not a hesitation.
I was ready to do that from when I bumped into him on the corner
at Hollywood and Vine that spring day.
Yeah, not even a question.
Yeah.
So you end up picking up the kids,
bringing them home
and raising them as yours, basically.
Yeah. And it was horrible. Horrible. If I had any idea how incredibly difficult it was,
it's not that I wouldn't have taken them, but I would not have said yes in that like
immediate way. Like I definitely would have called in the troops. You know, I would have called all
my friends and said, we need a ton of support. I would have called my employer and said, I need
to take all the leave that I have available. You know, I would have called every therapist I knew
and said, I need a therapist. Both kids need a therapist. There was so much they needed and so
little we had going in that it was just, I mean, it was just chaos for a year.
It was just chaos.
And having to manage the relationship with their birth parents and there was drugs and
there was domestic violence and there were legal things.
It was so much.
And meanwhile, we had this one-year-old and this three-year-old who had been in a drug
house.
You know, they've been eating dog food off the floor.
They had so little and had experienced such distress.
They needed so much from us.
I mean, it was, yeah.
I mean, my partner knew, he knew and I didn't.
And I've trusted his opinion ever since.
Yeah.
So eventually, I mean, it takes time,
but it sounds like through a lot of love
and a lot of attention
and harnessing the resources in the community,
things start to stabilize as much as they can stabilize.
And then you both get to a point,
or was it really you as the primary person?
It was like, you know,
we're raising these two kids now.
What would expanding our family look like?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it had been so hard.
Being a queer person, being a trans person, having to deal with investigators, judges, lawyers, social workers.
I mean, the whole process of getting to adoption with the big kids.
It was so hard and so deeply traumatic that, you know, I really did after our adoption became
legally final and we could really just put a bow on that and just focus on being a family and being
parents and raising them. You know, I did sort of re-examine the idea of family and building a
family and having a child and bringing a child into the world or into our lives and thought, how could we do that?
That didn't involve all of these hoops.
It didn't involve all these people looking at us and trying to decide, do we look like what a family looks like to them?
All these people with power.
I mean, it was really, really hard.
And yeah, so I just thought, you know, I want want to grow our family we had talked about growing our
family and you know i thought well what if we did it on our own and for me as a transgender man
i had taken hormones but i hadn't had any surgeries so i actually have like a perfectly
healthy working uterus and eggs and all the things. And my partner is not trans.
So he's what they call a cisgender man or non-transgender man. And so, you know, he has
all the parts that would be needed for a baby. And I, at this point, I'm deeply connected in
the trans community. So I've known hundreds of transgender men who have given birth themselves
and gotten pregnant and given birth themselves. And so I knew it was possible.
And so I went to the doctor on my own and just said,
so is this, like, is this a good idea medically?
Like, what do we know?
And the reproductive endocrinologist I talked to was like,
actually, you know, there's quite a bit of data.
There have been academic studies, there have been medical studies.
There have been, you know, retrospective research projects
that have looked at medical charts and all those things.
And oddly enough, testosterone impacts many systems, but not the reproductive system
permanently.
It does stop ovulation the same way that any birth control that stops ovulation would.
But once you go off it after a few months, your cycle returns and everything from there
is very straightforward and just like any other pregnancy process.
So it's like, okay, so this is medically possible. I have friends that have done it. So like, but does my partner
want to do this? And so I thought about it for just like, I mean, I agonized for months and months
and I pulled together all this data. And then one day, you know, we're at a work retreat for my work
at a camp and my kids were playing and we were clearing brush in the woods. And, you know, we're at a work retreat for my work at a camp and my kids were playing and we were clearing brush in the woods.
And, you know, it just seemed like the right time where, you know, it's just the two of us.
We're super close.
Nice.
No one around.
And I just said, you know, what if, you know, what would you think about having having a baby with me?
And he was like, I mean, immediately he was like, this this is a terrible idea.
No, no, no, no.
Why would you ever want us to do this?
The big, our adoption just got final.
The big kids are finally old enough that like I can go back to work.
You know, he's the frontline parent and I'm the, I work, you know, I work full time and then some.
So he was like, you know, this is like, this is a big burden you'd be putting on me to take care of a baby and to start from scratch just when I'm getting a little freedom.
And I'm really worried about you being a pregnant man in the world like that. That sounds terrible. And then of course he stopped himself and was like, I'm sorry,
I love you very much. And if you want to do this, then I will consider it. But no. And so,
yeah. And so it was many months of discussion. And then I have a very good friend in Toronto who recommended a moratorium on discussion. He said, you know, just stop. Just take a month and just commit. We're not going to talk about it with each other, you know, so it doesn't become this weird thing. And just think about it. Talk to your friends, have him talk to his friends and then come back and see, see where you're at. And that September, we went to a music festival
and he came back from a workshop or something,
yoga retreat or something, I don't know.
And he was like, okay, I'm in, I'll do it.
And so that was the beginning of that next journey.
Were you surprised?
Yes, yes, I was very surprised.
Yeah, he's really like the decider in our family. I'm
like the dreamer, you know, whatever. And then, uh, yeah. And so I, I had expected he was going
to say no and that I might have to fight him on it. Um, but that came, that came a little later on.
Hmm. Um, so you guys, you're both in at that point. And then, so you're basically, okay, let's do this.
And then you get pregnant.
Once you know that, I'm actually, I'm curious,
up until then, it had been a conversation,
it had been theoretical, right?
And then you were both like, yeah, we're in.
When you actually realize, like the day you learn,
oh, I'm actually pregnant, this is 100% going to happen.
I'm curious what that moment is like for you.
I mean, it's like so complicated, you know, because for us, we had really decided like we're just going to remove the barriers.
And if pregnancy happens on its own, great. If not, we're not going to do any more. You know, we're just going to remove the barriers. And if pregnancy happens on its own, great.
If not, we're not going to do anymore.
You know, we're not going to go to the doctor.
We're not going to do IVF.
We're just going to remove the barriers.
And so when it happened, it was like, oh, it's meant to happen then.
You know, this is where our lives are supposed to go.
And there was just, you know, in some ways just like such elation of like it's happening.
Like there's going to be a baby and I can do it and my body can do it.
And yeah, so it was just like such overwhelm and overjoyed.
And again, like I was also super excited about the science of it.
Like what does it feel like to grow a person?
And I thought this was so cool because like most men don't ever get to have that experience.
I'm a man who does get to have that experience. So I was like, this is going to be so
cool, you know? Yeah. So it was really exciting. And then also really nerve wracking of like,
oh my God, like, what does this actually mean? What does this actually mean for like my work
life and my day-to-day life and the burden I'm putting on my partner to really step up and
take care of the big kids while I'm going through this process. And it might not be at full capacity.
And at that time we were planning to keep the pregnancy completely private. And so there
wasn't any discussion of like the public stuff. So yeah, it was, yeah, it was complicated,
exciting, scary, all the things. All the things. Yeah. So you get, I guess, about six, seven months in.
And that decision to keep it private just among you, close friends, family, that changes.
What happens to make you feel like, oh, we actually can't just keep this between us?
Yeah.
I mean, it was a little earlier.
I think it was like maybe three or four months.
I mean, it was at a time, 2016, where really this discussion about transgender people is that kind of a fever pitch, right? We're pre-election, so we're not in that whole thing yet.
But it really is like, you know, Orange is the New Black is a big thing. And, you know,
Laverne Cox and Janet Mock
are out there on the front lines, two transgender women of color, two black transgender women,
doing all this education, doing all this work with journalists, trying to talk about the difference
between gender identity and gender expression and teaching, you know, Katie Couric that it's
not appropriate to ask about what the surgery was like. You know, they're just carrying this
enormously heavy burden. And then I just had a crisis, you know, a real crisis where I was like,
I'm a white transgender man living in Portland, Oregon. You know, like if there is a hierarchy
of privilege in the trans community, literally no one is more privileged than me. Maybe like whatever, Angelina Jolie
and Brad Pitt have a trans kid. Okay. Maybe that trans kid is more privileged than me,
but really they're still a youth, you know, like really, if there's anyone who should be
bearing the burden of being on the front lines, doing education work, moving the conversation forward,
it is unacceptable for me to be expecting trans women of color to be doing that work.
And the, you know, the other part of it is in the trans community for a long time,
transgender men really have work to stay in the back. You know, when we get invited to do a
keynote at a university or a conference,
for a decade, I had said no. Like, and here's a trans woman of color that you should be listening
to instead. For years, we had done that because they're the ones who are really sitting at that
crux of violence in the trans community. Their voices are the ones who should be elevated.
And so this was also a time where I was like, okay, we have some incredible trans women of color who are out there doing the most. So it felt more ethical
to put myself forward as someone who could also be in the mix of telling the story.
So those two things converged. And I think, you know, again, I just sat down with Biff,
my partner, and I just said, you know, I think we should be telling our story.
I think we're in a good position to tell a new kind of trans story.
I think the pregnant man hook is going to be tantalizing enough for us to be able to use that as the door to more conversations about trans lives, families, fertility, all those things.
And he was like, I mean, if you want to do it, it's your pregnancy, it's your body.
You're the trans one amongst us.
I will support you, but this is really your decision to make.
Yeah, so we partnered with a podcast, actually.
One of our favorite podcasts who told our adoption journey.
And I made a little video on Facebook about being a pregnant man,
and then all of it blew up.
Yeah, so that podcast airs.
Yeah.
It seems like it was a matter of hours.
It was little hours.
Yeah.
This went from, okay, it's on a podcast where maybe, you know, like whoever listens to the
podcast, the regular listeners will listen to explodes all over the internet, mainstream
media.
All of a sudden, this turns into something so much bigger than you ever imagined.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
And it was so weird because again, like I've known hundreds of trans men all over the world
who've been doing this.
My friend, Matt, who had a baby post-transition, his son turned 20 last month.
20 years trans men have been doing this.
So I did not think that this was a big deal.
I really didn't.
And I was sorely mistaken.
Yeah, the pregnant man story was exciting to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons.
So to some people for a lot of nice reasons.
But then I guess it got picked up.
It lands in Cosmo, on their social media.
Then it ends up in the Daily Mail.
Yeah, within hours of the podcast airing, Cosmo said, can we write a story about it?
I said, sure.
And then Daily Mail took it from there.
Right.
And that's where things kind of go south, it sounded like.
Yeah.
I mean, they went south for me emotionally, for sure.
Because, you know, the Daily Mail, it's the world's number one tabloid. It's the National
Inquirer on steroids, digital. And, you know, they, yeah. So they took my story and wrote it
in just the most salacious, you know, tabloid-esque way. And it was just, you know, they used all,
it was just bad. It felt horrible. And, you know, there were like
33,000 comments on the article when I first saw it and it had been shared just like, you know,
hundreds of thousands of times. And it was like, oh God, it just felt awful. And, and because it
had been written in such a salacious way, so irresponsibly, the comments were just, I mean,
they were just brutal. They were brutal, I mean, they were just brutal.
They were brutal.
I mean, I don't know if you can imagine like everything that you're insecure about and have always been insecure about.
Like literally thousands of strangers are saying those things for everybody else in the world to see.
Yeah.
And it was, it was just, it was, you know, just like, I was just gutted.
Yeah.
And at that point, when that came out, so this was a couple months later from the first, like, the early decision.
So you're pretty close towards the end of your pregnancy at that point, too.
Yeah, like halfway through, maybe like, I don't know, five or six months, I guess.
Yeah.
What do you do with that?
I mean, when that happens, where do you do with that? I mean, when that happens, how, where do you go from there?
Yeah.
I mean, so many things.
I mean, my number one concern, the first thing that came to mind is I've made it, I've made transphobia worse.
Like my goal was to tell the story so that more trans people could see what I didn't see when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, that, you know, that none of the doors are closed for you.
Like you can be loved.
You can be celebrated.
You can have community.
You can adopt kids.
You can have biological kids.
Like you don't have to, but those options are there for you.
All the things that we're always told we're giving up, you know?
And so when this happened
and I saw all the brutal transphobic comments,
I just thought, oh my God,
like I just horribly misjudged people.
I thought people were ready.
I thought this was going to be good
for trans people to see and I made it worse.
And my first call was to my friend, Nick Adams,
who works at GLAAD, double A GLAAD.
They do the LGBT media work.
He's the trans messaging director.
He's like the, he's like the quiet hero of trans media for the last, I think, 15 years.
He's been doing this work, maybe 20.
Every positive trans character you've ever seen on a TV show, a movie, anything, Nick
is behind it.
I called him and I was just, I was just bawling.
I mean, I was just bawling. I mean, I was just bawling.
I said, Nick, like I messed up.
I messed up really bad.
He's like, okay, hold on.
I'm gonna pull up the article.
Okay.
And he looked at it.
He's like, okay, Tristan, I need you to hear me.
This article feels painful to you,
but this is actually a pretty good article.
For the Daily Mail, like they get your pronouns right.
You know, they describe your relationship to Biff correctly.
You know, they call you the right pronoun.
This is okay.
And the comments, yes, they're bad.
But sweetheart, we've known each other for a long time and he's a little older than me.
He's also transphobia.
You know, there's a little bit of a mentor thing there.
He's like, sweetheart, you did not create transphobia.
You do not have the power to make transphobia worse single-handedly.
So like, let's just let that go.
And I was like, okay, you're right.
That's all ego stuff.
And he's like, but I can help you figure out,
like if you want to keep telling the story,
I can help you figure out how to tell it responsibly
and who you can tell it with
so that it is moving the movement forward
and not making things worse.
And that was, and then that became,
that's like just where I put all the hurt and the pain
is into just like being really strategic
and being like, okay, like this hurts so bad.
So how can I do it better?
How can I be more responsible?
And so taking all of that and using that as the fuel,
the hurt, the anger, using that as the fuel
to just like be excellent at telling the story moving forward.
Yeah, because I mean, it seems like you had to really,
there was a choice to be made when that happens,
which is one, okay, let me retreat from this
as fast as humanly possible to try and remove the pain
and just make it all go away.
Or the opposite, which is what you did,
which is let me really embrace this fully
and find out how do I cultivate the craft,
the wisdom, the intelligence,
the ability to actually continue to push this forward,
but tell it in a way where it is more compelling,
more relatable, more useful, more helpful, wiser,
where it can become this source of connection
rather than running the opposite direction,
which is at that moment in time, you know,
I must have required an astonishing amount of bravery.
I mean, I don't know.
People say that.
It's like being called brave thing is hard.
And I can see you're sort of like weird about it.
I mean, you know, the like being called brave thing it's is hard and i can see you're sort of like weird about it i mean it you know the like this is there are so many intersections between marginalized communities this is like an intersection between trans folks and people with disabilities okay
because they're always called brave just for existing and this sometimes happens too as a
trans people are like a trans person people are like oh my god you're so brave and i'm like i'm
just literally not dead that's like there's nothing brave about that. Yeah. And at the time it really
didn't just feel brave. I didn't feel, I just didn't think about it that way, I guess. I just
wanted to do the right thing. You know, at the end of the day, it's just like, I, you know, I care
more about the trans community and making the world better for them than just like literally
anything else in my life other than my family. And so I just thought like, oh my God, like what I knew if I retreated that
it would be only the irresponsible tabloids that would spin the story out from there.
And there are, there are still examples of really awful, weird mistellings of my story out there,
which are really, it's just like very icky and
strange. The internet is a very strange place, but I knew that it would get worse if I stopped
telling the story. And so it was like, okay, I just have to keep going.
Yeah. So it's less a sense of bravery. It's more a sense of this. It seems like there's
this through line in your life of doing the right thing. Just feeling like this is this, it seems like there's this through line in your life of doing the right thing.
Just feeling like there's something in you which says this is the right thing to do.
Like this is what you do, a sense of duty almost.
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
And also like this is what I was trying to do.
Yeah.
I could literally look at America and be like, where is America on the scale of understanding
trans people?
What skills did I apply face-to-face at the door? This is a chance to do the face-to-face work with millions
of people all at once using media, using the New York Times and Washington Post and CNN and NBC,
like using these people who have this giant microphone and diagnosing where America is,
where's that movable middle? What are their values? What do they care about? And then how
can I tell my story using those values and move them all forward all at once? And so that's what
the next six months of my life was into the end of the pregnancy and then for the months beyond. Yeah. So you now have a beautiful family with three kids
and you're in New York right now
because you're doing sort of like a whirlwind
of educational stuff.
So it seems like you've just continued to build
on that early momentum and said like,
how do I keep telling this story?
How do I keep telling it in a way
that is most inviting, most open
builds a conversation. And that has really become, this is, this is what you do. Like this is your
profession, it's your livelihood. It's your, it's more than that for you. It's like, this is the
thing you can't not do. Yeah. It's my calling. Yeah. Yeah. As we sit here in this container of the Good Life Project, if I offer up this phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
I mean, for me, it's like it's living in the intersections of like, what are your gifts?
What are the world's greatest need?
And what brings you joy and living in that space
where you're great at what you do
where you're giving the world what it needs
and you find meaning in it
to me that's what a good life is
thank you
and that's what I get to do every day
thank you so much for listening
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