The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Raising LGBTQ Allies: A Parent’s Guide to Changing the Messages from the Playground by Chris Tompkins

Episode Date: June 20, 2021

Raising LGBTQ Allies: A Parent's Guide to Changing the Messages from the Playground by Chris Tompkins No matter who we are or where we come from, we all play on the same playground. There are certain collective societal messages we hear growing up that we either consciously or subconsciously believe. As a result, we develop certain belief systems from which we operate our lives. Raising LGBTQ Allies sheds light on the deeper, multi-faceted layers of homophobia. It opens up a conversation with parents around the possibility they may have an LGBTQ child, and shows how heteronormativity can be harmful if not addressed clearly and early. Although not every parent will have an LGBTQ child, their child will jump rope or play tag with a child who is LGBTQ. By showing readers the importance of having open and authentic conversations with children at a young age, Chris Tompkins walks parents through the many ways they can prevent new generations from adopting homophobic and transphobic beliefs, while helping them explore their own subconscious biases. Offering specific actions parents, family members, and caregivers can take to help navigate conversations, address heteronormativity, and challenge societal beliefs, Raising LGBTQ Allies serves as a guide to help normalize being LGBTQ from a young age. Creating allies and a world where closets don't exist happens one child at a time. And it begins with each of us and what we say, as much as what we choose not to say.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast.

We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Be sure to subscribe to the show. Tell your friends, neighbors, relatives to subscribe to the show as well. You can go to iTunes or any different places we're syndicated around the world. You can go to goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, see what we're reading or reviewing over there. You can also go to youtube.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, see the video versions of these broadcasts. And you can see us in all our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, all that sort of good stuff. Today we have another amazing author on the show.

We always have amazing authors. We just put in the Google machine, give us amazing authors. And they're like, they just appear like magic. And we have one of them that we've captured. And we've captured him and brought him on the show today. But I think we haven't pulled him against his will. So anyway, we're honored to have him. The name of the book is Raising LGBTQ Allies, A Parent's Guide to Changing the Messages from the Playground by Chris Tompkins. And we're going to be talking to him about his book today.

And this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, ifi-audio.com and their micro idst signature is a top of the range desktop transportable DAC and headphone app that will supercharge your headphones it has two brown burr DAC chips in it and will decode high-res audio and mqa files we're using in the studio right now i've loved my experience with it so far just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level ifi audio is an award-winning audio tech company with one aim in mind to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound eradicate noise distortion and hiss from your listening experience check out their new incredible lineup of dax and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. But let me give you a little bit

of a lowdown on him because I'm sure you're asking yourself right now, who is this mysterious Chris Tompkins? He is a teacher, a TEDx speaker, spiritual life coach, and LGBTQ inner advocate based in Los Angeles, California. He's also an author of the recently published book that we mentioned before, Raising LGBTQ Allies. And more importantly, he's an uncle of five. Wow, he's got me beat by three. Chris believes all kids are the future and teaches social emotional learning throughout California, Southern California, that is. Chris, welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you for having me, Chris. It's good to be here. Good. Sorry, a little meandering. I took a few detours as I was going through the bio there. Oh yeah, no, no worries. I appreciate being here. You're the first guest that I've

claimed that we've gone out in the wild and captured. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I guess we'll just roll with it. So Chris, give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs and look you up. Yeah. My website, Instagram, social media is at a road trip to love. My website is a road trip to love.com. And then all my social media handles are a road trip to love. All one word, a road trip to love. Yeah. I like how you're sticking with the branding in full there.

So you're going all the way. That's smart. That's smart when you do a book. What motivated you want to write this book? A lot of things. I think that I mentioned that you mentioned that I'm an uncle of five. And so I, back in 2015, the short version is that I've been out all of my nieces and nephews lives. And I was home. I live in California and I'm from Arizona. And so I was home visiting my family. Ironically, I was actually speaking for the Arizona Equality and Justice Conference. So it was an LGBTQ related conference. And after the conference,

I went over to my mom's and my mom had all my family and some family friends over. And my nephew, who was eight years old at the time, my sister's son, I was sitting next to one of my childhood friends and was a girl and my nephew ran over. And how kids are, when they have a question, they just like automatically ask it. And so not necessarily wanting to know the answer right away, but it was just like the thought occurs to them, they ask the question, and they continue doing what they're doing.

And so he asked me if the girl next to me was my girlfriend. And it was an innocent little question. But the more I started to think about where's that question coming from? And it wasn't only his question, but it was my family's response. I looked around everyone in the room and they all just laughed. And I remember my aunt and uncle who were sitting across from me, their face, like they saw a deer in the headlights, like, oh. And so everyone's reaction struck me. And so then the next day, it pretty much changed the trajectory of my life because I started asking parents questions. What conversations are you having with your kids? Why is my eight-year-old nephew asking if I have a girlfriend? What conversations has he had with his mom about having a gay uncle? And a lot of the responses surprised me because, like I said, I've been out for a long time and I thought that we

had gone through certain layers of homophobia and so this was this presented kind of a new layer one that was deeper and so I realized a lot of families that I knew in my own life and then families that I just happened to talk to were comfortable with me as a gay friend or a gay uncle. But when it came to having conversations with their kids, they felt that it was inappropriate or they weren't old enough, which behind, I always look at what's behind the question or what's behind the answer. And so what I started to uncover was these deeper layers of homophobia. Yeah. More closeted homophobia. Hold on.

Yeah. No pun intended. But more nuanced and what I call in my book, I refer to as the benign forms of homophobia. Just because it seems harmless doesn't mean it's not impactful. Yeah. It's interesting. People deny stuff.

I've been at family dinners. I think I launched out of my last Thanksgiving family dinner because I've had a lot of people in the LGBTQ community be friends. I used to own a modeling and acting agency. I work with a lot of people, male models. And so my family, I remember being at Thanksgiving dinner and somebody made a comment about a complete misunderstanding about LGBTQ gay people and how they were just misinformed or misconstrued or it was that whole, what is that word? They try and re-indoctrinate people.

And I was just floored. I was just amazed at what people still think in 2021, but welcome to America. Yeah, the subtitle of my book is called A Parent's Guide to Changing the Messages from the Playground. So that's really key because messages from the playground are what I use to refer to the subconscious beliefs. So we all have our conscious beliefs.

You and I scheduled this time to have this conversation, but our subconscious is all the beliefs that we have that we picked up from our childhood. And so the way that I invite readers to consider throughout my book is that no matter who we are, or where we come from, we all played up subconscious beliefs about what it means to be a man, a woman, gay, heterosexual. And so it's not really a lot. I hear a lot of people because I've been having a lot of conversations about the book and a lot of people are able to say, I'm really surprised to hear this. We're in 2021. A friend of mine texted me last night because he was really upset with his father for misgendering a cousin of his who's transgender. And I really, what I invite people to consider is that oftentimes when people have beliefs, they've had these beliefs for a really long time. And it's not gonna,

my friend's message that he sent me last night, I saw in his text message, because he forwarded me the text message that his father sent him. And what I saw in his father's message was that he really cared for his cousin who was transgender. He really cared. The message was very loving about the cousin because the cousin recently graduated high school. And so I think that sometimes we think that it has to be this or this. I can't be homophobic because I have a gay child or that kind of thing. And so what I invite people to

consider, because even in my own family, like we can't be homophobic, Chris, Uncle Chris, we love you. We're not homophobic. And so what I invite people to consider is that this is really uncovering our subconscious beliefs that we've all picked up. Yeah. Even I grew up with, I grew up in the seventies. We looked at things a little bit differently back then. We weren't quite as open-minded and as inclusive back then, I guess is the proper word to say. But this is interesting. You're talking about this and ideas have to evolve. Society has to evolve. We hope it evolves.

I don't know about the last five years, but it seems we're back on the evolving track. But it's something where society has to evolve. We have to get better. We have to understand ourselves and other people better, which is usually understanding ourselves better. But I think this is important because usually a lot of hate, whether it's racism or homophobia, starts with the kids when they get older and stuff like this. So when they're still on the playground, they're still on that innocent stage where you're not really looking at stuff. You're just looking at your

friends and playing with your friends and everything else. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really important. I remember when I gave my TEDx talk, because this is 2015, my nephew asked me that question and I immediately was like, okay, I have to share this. So it started really, the whole journey of the book started out as a letter I wrote my family. Just basically, I envisioned all of my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my extended family all gathered around in the living room and me sharing with them. Basically, that was the letter. And that letter turned into an article that was first published on the Huffington Post. And then it turned into me going to Toastmasters to practice public speaking, to give a TEDx talk and eventually the book.

But throughout the journey of this book is that I really invite people to consider that just because we have come a long way doesn't mean that we don't have these kind of residual unconscious beliefs. And my mom comes from a generation where through no fault of her own, she just, their parents don't talk about things. They just don't, they never talked about stuff. And so I think that to change the narrative for future generations requires kind of these bridges between the generations where we can help the next generation share information. Because for instance, when I talked to my sister,

she was like, I didn't know that we're supposed to be having these conversations. But really quickly, if I could just say, after I gave my TEDx talk, I remember a friend of mine who I had from college, who I hadn't talked to in a long time, but I was friends with on Facebook. He sent me a message, private message,

because he said that my TEDx talk and kind of this conversation reminded him of when his son was, I think, about four. And they were at a grocery store or some type of convenience store. And his son saw an African-American person and asked his dad, similar to how my nephew asked me a question. They have a thought. They ask a question. But he asked his dad why some people have darker skin than other people. And so that, although it's not the same subject, I think the same rules still apply as far as the importance of talking to children about differences.

Because differences are really important. Yeah. And so this book is targeted towards everyone, right? So even if you don't have an LGBTQ child, or you mentioned in the thing that they might called heteronormativity. And for those of your listeners who aren't familiar, heteronormativity, I mean, it's self-explanatory, but it's basically the belief that heterosexuality is the normal form of sexual expression, sexuality, sexual identity. And it has a lot to do with like gender roles and it's connected to heterosexism. So one of the things that I think is really important for parents to consider is that even if your child isn't LGBTQ, it's very important that we raise children dismantling heteronormativity.

Basically these structures, it's not just homophobia. If underneath all of these things, which is heteronormativity, which is why my nephew asked that question, it's the basic underlying assumption that people are just heterosexual, male, female. And again, going back to what I said earlier, just by virtue of being raised in dominant, socialized in dominant culture, those are the messages that children pick up on the playground. Yeah. And in TV and newspaper and advertising and every place else in the media they consume. Yeah. It's important we don't do that because when we treat people as abnormal, then we malign them. And it's really sad that we're still dealing with this. I just can't believe we're still dealing with it.

But welcome to America. Getting used to the politics of everything. But what other aspects haven't we covered in the book that are important for people to read? I think what I talk about a lot is that this book is very, so one of the things that when I was doing research for the book, having conversations with families, parents, even my own friends who are LGBTQ themselves, it's very easy for an LGBTQ person to live. I live in Los Angeles. I live in West Hollywood, which is one of the more well-known LGBTQ neighborhoods in the United States. And it's very easy to be out and be myself completely. But when I go home to visit and maybe places that

aren't as open or accepting, it's very easy for me to what's called code switch, meaning go back to certain roles or act certain ways that blend in with the dominant culture. And so what I invite readers to consider is that children are very intuitive. They pick up everything. I've been teaching social emotional learning for six years throughout L.A. County, youngest ages 10 to early 20s. And kids are very intuitive. And so this book, as much as it is for caregivers, parents, mental health professionals, religious leaders, it's also for the LGBTQ community themselves. And so I share that because what I invite readers to consider in the book is that we have to look at the stuff within ourselves first before we can really take the action out. It's like a dance. It's like a waltz. I do the work within, I take the action out. I do the work

within, I take the action out. And so that's the book is that I address all the things that I've uncovered throughout doing the research that I found that a lot of parents, people who knew kids, have kids in their lives, were maybe resistant to having certain conversations. And again, peeling back the layers, like what's behind that, connected to religious beliefs, addressing the dominant kind of things that people believe religiously. Although it's not a religious book, I do touch on those things. So basically each chapter is set up to address all the main things that I found that people would be resistant to talking to kids. So by you giving them specific actions and stuff that they can do and ways they can have a conversation and help address the different issues, this makes it, you can kind of help cue out that conversation. Because sometimes people, like you say, have a hard time talking about this stuff. So in your book, you're able to give them different things they can use as communication devices to explain this and make sure kids have an understanding and don't grow up with hate.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that's been such a, I think, like, it's brought me a lot of joy to hear is that a lot of people who have read the book have reached out to me and said that they didn't feel that I was judgmental or they didn't feel like the book was judgmental. Meaning that sometimes I feel that when we're passionate about making change, I know in my own life, I've been an LGBTQ advocate doing advocacy work since I came out of the closet. For 20 years, I've been doing this work. And I used to be very like, you got to change. And I was very kind of vocal that way. And that sometimes could stop conversations. And so what I really believe, and this is one of the messages throughout the entirety of my book, is that we can only take others as far as we've gone ourselves. And so as an uncle, I can only take my nieces and nephews

as far as I've gone myself. As an ally, I can only take others as far as I've gone myself. And so I share that because that's what I do invite readers in a nonjudgmental way to say, hey, we all play on the same playground. I get it. I get it. I heard these messages, too. And so just because I'm a gay man doesn't mean that I haven't picked up these messages myself. And so that's why it requires concerted effort on my part to do the work within and then share. And so I actually do have practical step-by-step do this kind of anecdotes. I have a whole chapter dedicated to exercises that people can do with kids. And I also have kind of the more exploratory, why aren't you having certain conversations? Or I invite families to consider the roles that they play that help support heteronormativity so that we can

hopefully dismantle heteronormativity. I think these are important. You've built a great bridge to the conversation. And these, we have lots of inclusivity authors that have been on in the past year. And these kids are growing up in a world that's very different than the one that I grew up in and our attitudes towards stuff. I think it was in the seventies or sixties or seventies, Harvey Milk era. And I grew up through AIDS and the attitudes that people had that were very sad back then. And I had to evolve with my attitudes. I was raised in a religious home. And so you get that indoctrination and you have to unwind all that sort of stuff. And we're just moving to a more enlightened age. You can't stop what's coming. That's just progress.

That's just vanity, actually, to borrow from no country for old men you can't stop what's coming and these kids are going to grow up in a very inclusive world where they hate hopefully it's not a thing jesus if it is i'm not gonna i'm gonna be an alcoholic um i i barely survived the last five years four or five years and that that thing can't make a comeback not in 2022 not in 2024 in 2024, not ever. That needs to be done, all that hate. So I think this is really important. I think this is good that you've built this bridge where people can have a discussion, especially those people who still have a stigma behind it and have issues. But you need to raise your kids these days with inclusivity.

You need to understand what it is because if not, you're just hobbling them. You're just cutting them off at the knees of their success and careers and their future, et cetera. Yeah. And I think that going back to everything you said is absolutely correct. And I think that I mentioned I've been teaching social emotional learning. And so one of the curriculum, one of the classes that I teach is all about what do you believe? Who are you? And each of the students get a journal and a packet for the entirety of the curriculum.

And in that packet is an exercise that we have them write down. What do you believe about boys? What do you believe about girls? What do you believe about school, work, money, et cetera? And so often I pick a topic to talk about in the class or just like a talking point. Okay. So what did everyone write about? And I usually pick money because it's not so personal. There are boys and girls in the room. I don't want to pick a subject that maybe people don't want to talk about. And so I pick something that kind of everyone knows, and it's a safe subject that

we can talk about openly. And so I often pick, and I write about this in the book, but I use this as an analogy, because I think it's really important, is that in the six years I've been teaching this class, no matter where I'm teaching it, throughout Los Angeles County, and elsewhere in Southern California. Sorry, wherever, whenever I teach that class and I take money as an example to talk about, there's always at least one student in the class that raises their hand and tells me that they believe money is the root of all evil. Wow. And what's surprising about that is that's a biblical reference. And again, I'm teaching these classes in non-religious programs, after school programs, high school,

junior highs, et cetera. And what that, and so often when I asked the student to tell me, is that your belief or is that something that you maybe heard? And they'll say, oh, it's my, I believe that. I'm like, okay, do you believe that money's important? Do you want to have a car, a house, et cetera? And they say, yeah, I do. And I remember this one young man who was 10 years old. He was probably the youngest who said that money is the root of all evil. And I'm pretty sure he didn't have a job. So I asked him, are you sure that's not your, that you didn't hear that from somewhere?

And then through our conversation, he said, oh, it's something my mom says all the time. And so I use that as an example of how easy it is for misinterpreted religious references to be passed on generation after generation. And I'm of a certain age, and I heard that when I was a kid. And here we are in 20, this was a few years ago, but still, there's a young person in my class who's sharing that belief. And that's an example of the subconscious, how the subconscious mind works is that anyone could consciously tell you that young man could consciously tell me that he appreciates money and wants to have a car and a house. Subconsciously, though, if he believes that money is the root of all evil, anytime he gets paid or gets a paycheck, he's going to resist

money. He's going to spend the money. He's going to lose the money. And so I draw the same parallel to gender and sexuality. Awesome. Awesome. This is great, man. I think you, I think it's awesome. You've helped bridge this discussion and give people a cue. I may throw some people that I know, maybe relatives. A lot of times, especially if they were raised with those religious bias, they have a really hard time overcoming this. And then I think there's a lot of quotes that people always quote in the Bible that aren't in the Bible. And so I think it's really important for people to have this discussion. And kids, like you say, they're like sponges.

They pick up on everything. Sometimes parents will tell you, hey, you should do this and we stand for this and we don't stand for that. But they act and they speak in opposition to that. And kids pick up on it. They're like, yeah, they don't really mean what they were saying about that thing. So it's really important, parents. Listen, anything more you want

to touch on or tease out before we go out? I think one of the main, one of the big concepts that I also talk about in the book is it's one of my chapters, but it's not communicating. It's still communicating. So for anyone out there who's listening to consider the conversations that you're not having also communicate something. And so that's why it's really, that's why it's really important to have these conversations because yes, we are living in a society that people, it's happening more and more and we're talking about gender and sexuality. And in the home, if those conversations aren't happening, there's kind of the subtle implication that, oh, this subject must be, there's something about it that must be shameful or wrong. Or do I talk about it outside the home, but not inside the home?

And so that's really important, I think, for anyone. Yeah. And like you say, we need to treat things like they aren't abnormal. They're very normal. We've had it going on forever with gay people and an LGBT community. I think for a lot of years they had to hide in the Catholic church as priests or whatever, but it's been, we we've been this way forever. So let's, this is humanity. Just keep rolling with it. I think it's just, it's just, we're having able to have through books like yours, more discussions, more understanding, more empathy, more inclusion and going. Let's

understand each other a whole lot more and operate as one human race and human beings, I guess. Trying to tie that all up in there. Anyways, Chris, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you very much. I'm still waiting for my second cup of coffee to kick in, but a little low energy here today. But thank you very much for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Give us your plugs before we go out on the interweb. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been great to be here. A Road Trip to Love is where you can find me, Instagram, my website, and the book Raising LGBTQ Allies came out a little under a month ago back in May 14th. So this month is Pride Month. So if you want

to pick up the book, my publisher is offering a 30% discount code that I can maybe send you or somehow link it up. Yeah. If you want to send me the code, we'll put it on the link and people click on the Chris Voss show. They can do it. So that'd be awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Chris, thank you very much for being on the show, sharing this wonderful data. We certainly appreciate it and are honored to have you and congratulations on the new book as well. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. There you guys go. So pick up the book guys, Raising LGBTQ Allies, A Parent's Guide to Changing the Messages from the Playground just came out May 14th, 2021. So you want to pick that baby up. Chris Tompkins was with us today.

And I think you'll like the book. This is a really important discussion everyone needs to have. Get your kids set for the future because the future, you can't change what's coming. Progress is going to happen. Anyway, guys, I appreciate you guys coming to the show. Go to YouTube.com, force.chrisvoss. Hit that bell notification. Goodreads.com, force.chrisvoss. And all the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera, et cetera.

Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you guys next time.