My Child is Trans, Now What?

Supporting our queer kids and learning together about all the ways we can show up for them and ourselves is central to our Mama Dragons community. This week’s episode of In The Den dives deep into how we can support and show up for our transgender children from a place of self-reflection and joy!

Special Guest: Ben Greene

Ben Greene is a transgender advocate and educator who has spoken internationally on topics surrounding transgender inclusion. After coming out at 15 in a small town, Ben has devoted his career to spreading empathy, education, and storytelling around the trans experience, and has spoken for companies, hospitals, schools, religious organizations, and government entities sharing what it means to be transgender and how to show up as an ally. He is a fierce advocate for transgender youth, regularly speaking in their defense at the Missouri State Capitol, and is the author of the book "My Child is Trans, Now What? A Joy Centered Approach to Support". He is also the creator of the "Good Queer News" Newsletter, and regularly shares LGBTQ+ stories worth celebrating from around the world. He is passionate about educating others from a place of compassion—no matter where they’re starting from. 

Links from the Show:

• Ben’s website: https://www.bgtranstalks.com/ 
• Find Ben’s book My Child is Trans, Now What here: https://www.bgtranstalks.com/book 
• One-on-one mentorship available here: https://www.bgtranstalks.com/virtual-mentorship 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 
• Mama Dragons on FB: https://www.facebook.com/mamadragons 
• Mama Dragons on IG: https://www.instagram.com/themamadragons/ 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org. 

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Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LeWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here. 

Supporting our queer kids and learning together as parents all the many ways we can show up for them and for ourselves is central to our Mama Dragons community. And today’s episode dives deep into how we can do that from a place of self-reflection and joy! Today, I’m so thrilled to welcome an incredible guest into the den—Ben Greene. Some of you may remember Ben’s workshop from our LUV Conference this past October. Some of our team members on the podcast attended that workshop and said, “We have to have Ben on the podcast!”  

Ben Greene is a transgender advocate and educator who has spoken internationally on topics surrounding transgender inclusion. After coming out at 15 in a small town, Ben has devoted his career to spreading empathy, education, and storytelling around the trans experience, and has spoken for companies, hospitals, schools, religious organizations, and government entities sharing what it means to be transgender and how to show up as an ally. He is a fierce advocate for transgender youth, regularly speaking in their defense at the Missouri State Capitol, and is the author of a new book "My Child is Trans, Now What? A Joy Centered Approach to Support". 

This book is such a beautiful guide, that Ben uses to walk readers through the journey of supporting our transgender kids with openness and love. And Ben doesn’t focus as much on the challenges or fears, but reframes the whole narrative around joy. And we’re going to talk a lot about that today. So whether you’re a parent searching for practical advice, an ally wanting to learn more, or just someone looking for hope and encouragement, this book is a beacon of light and wisdom. So Ben, Welcome. I’m so excited to have you In the Den with me today!

BEN: Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here. I have been a long-time follower of this podcast and of the Mama Dragons. It’s such a dream to be here. This is awesome. 

SARA: That’s so great. Well, I know that this book comes out of your long journey and the story of your life and coming out. So let’s start there. Tell us a little bit about that journey and your story as a young person coming out at 15. 

BEN: Yeah. Absolutely. So 15 was the time that I got the words. But I want to start a little earlier than that. I did not have a “Typical” trans experience. It was not following the imaginations people have of what a trans kid has to look like. I was just weird. I got invited to a princess dress-up party, I didn’t want to dress up as a prince, I wanted to dress up as a space alien. So I just knew that I’m not very good at being a girl. And everyone else can tell that I’m not good at being a girl. And I thought it was because I was bad at being a person. And so it just felt like a little bit of a weirdness for a long time. And then when puberty started to come in, things started to feel a whole lot worse. And they were changing. And I said, “I do not like this at all.” But the ways that the adults around me talked about puberty was “Puberty is awful. Everyone hates puberty.” And so I assumed that all of my peers – to be quite frank – were also miserable, were also wishing that they could do anything to stop the progression of puberty. And so I assumed that I was feeling a way that was normal. Spoiler Alert – I was not.  That was very intense gender dysphoria. But I didn’t have those words. The only words I had were “Weird.” And so I continued to identify as just a weird, bad-at-being-a-person girl. And then I had come out as bisexual when I was 14. And when I came out to one of my friends at school, he said, “Hey, since you’re out, all these towns across Connecticut where I’m from, they’re all so small. We don’t have big communities in any one town. So we had a Facebook group, underground, run entirely by and for queer youth for the whole state of Connecticut. And it’s honestly a miracle that it was not a huge disaster to think back on this as an adult. I’m like “Oh my God.” Because I was about 450, 500 queer kids from across the whole state that were sharing resources, information, stories. So I joined this group and after a couple of months, somebody posted. They said, “Hey. I’m coming out as transgender. And here’s what that means.” And I remember exactly where in my bedroom I was sitting and I read this post and I felt this wave crash over me of like, “Oh, my God. I did not know that was allowed. Oh my God, that’s me right there. Those are the words.” And so I started researching as much as I could. And there was a lot of self-doubt and, “Am I a man enough? Is it worth it to come out?” But immediately I knew this is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is who I’m supposed to be. So I came out to myself. I came out to my best friend who I had met through that Facebook group and who was actually transitioning at the same time as me. He also saw that post and texted me and said, “Hey, have you ever heard of something called transgender.” And I said, “Yeah. I think that’s me.” And he said, “I think that’s me too.” So we came out to each other at the exact same time and went on our journeys together. And I had my girlfriend at the time. Besides that, nobody knew. First eight months or so of my transition, I did not tell anybody. Not a parent, not a friend because I couldn’t afford to guess wrong. I didn’t have any evidence either way and with everything I’d heard about people getting kicked out of their homes and people being really violent or aggressive, I couldn’t afford to guess wrong. And so that was a really dark eight months of my life. And eventually, I did come out first to my parents, and then to more of my friends at school, and eventually on Facebook to my whole community. And it was terrifying. But 2015 was kind of a sweet spot for coming out because it was late enough that we were past a lot of the peak of “That’s so gay” team, school, homophobia. We had moved past that. And it was early enough that people did not know they should be angry about it. It was not a big point of radicalization. I came out and everybody was kind of like, “What? Okay. Sure. Fine.” So people were tentatively open. Some people were worse than others. A lot of the guys in my high school wanted nothing to do with it, were very unkind, and so there were definitely some challenges. But mostly, people were just confused. And so almost overnight, I became the educator. I was answering every question. I was teaching my school’s health classes and writing our schools policies and training our guidance staff and leading our student group and becoming every adult who failed to show up for me. I needed all of these resources and they weren’t there. So I had to become them because all these kids were messaging me. “Hey, you came out. I didn’t know that was allowed. How did that go? Do you think that teacher might use my pronouns if I came out too?” So I realized very quickly that the stakes were much higher than whether or not I would be supported. So I took on all this weight and it was meaningful and also exhausting. I had to become an adult and I had to be more mature than most of the adults I knew, and to be extremely well spoken, extremely patient, extremely knowledgeable. So when I went to college, I originally said I’m not going to tell anybody that I’m trans because I am exhausted of being a trans person who happens to be Ben. Nobody sees the human here. They just see the transgender person. 

SARA: So when you went to college, were you fully transitioned at that point that you could just be Ben? 

BEN: So I’m really fortunate that I was able to pass very quickly – and passing, if that’s a new term for you, it just means being read as the gender you are identifying as – so people assumed I was assigned male at birth. I had not had top surgery or hormone therapy. But I just was very fortunate that I looked very androgynous even before I came out. And so I cut my hair. I started wearing men’s clothes. And people identified me pretty quickly as male. Now, that was my plan when I went to college. But I was there for, I think it lasted about a week. And I was hanging out with a group of people and I realized that they all already knew about trans people. I came out and they were like, “Yeah. Okay. Cool. My sister’s trans. My neighbor’s trans. I’m used to this.” And I could be Ben who happened to be a trans person which was just awesome and so formative for me to get to develop this entire identity. And I was originally planning to be an elementary school teacher. And then I had an opportunity to give a TedX talk. And I gave this talk about everything I’d learned about allyship and advocacy, assuming that it would close the chapter so I could focus on being a third grade teacher. And I gave this talk and it blew up online. 

SARA: Wow. 

BEN: And all these companies found it and said, “Wow. That was so cool. Do you do this professionally?” And they said, “We’ll even give you $100.” And I was like, “Wow! $100. That’ so much ramen. This is great.” And so next thing I know, I’m doing my classes and then taking the train to New York City from Boston and giving these presentations. And I had this moment where I was sitting with my dad and I said, “I think I’ve got an opportunity to do a whole lot of good here. And I owe it to myself and my community to see what this might be.” And so I decided to graduate early and go full-time into public speaking and advocacy. And that was 2019. And that was when I came up with the idea for the book because I knew I have so much to share, I want to get that out ot people. And I remember that I have an email that I sent to – now wife, but girlfriend at the time – and said, “I’m thinking of writing a book. Does this seem interesting?” And I sent it to her six and a half years ago now. And started public speaking and started writing and working on this. And then 2022, I started a lot more seriously. And then 2023, I’m fortunate that I found a publisher. And 2024, it came out into the world. And I’ve spent the past five years living now in St. Louis, Missouri with my wife. She’s a medical student working in advocacy and public speaking and writing. And it’s been a winding road with a lot of major surprises. But I’m really fortunate for the journey I’ve been on. It has been pretty spectacular. 

SARA: It sounds like it. That’s a great story. But I want to go back because I’m really curious. How did your parents respond when you came out? 

BEN: Yeah. Absolutely. 

SARA: Because your book is all about parenting. 

BEN: Yeah. You’re right. You know, we often say that they responded the best they could with the resources that were available to them at the time. 2015, small town Connecticut, there were not other families with trans kids that we knew of. There was not a PFLAG chapter. There was not a community center. There weren’t trans characters on TV. It was uncharted waters. And so I came out and they said, “Okay. We don’t really know what that means. But we love you, so we’ll figure it out.” And that was the best response they could’ve given me. They weren’t going to be experts right away. They had no exposure to this. But they said, “We’ll figure it out together.” And they responded super differently. They’re very different people because they’re entire adult human beings. And my mom is a researcher. She would just go and sit in her little office on her computer for 10 hours a day just reading everything she could find privately. She did not like to talk about it. She would read and read and read and then she would run out of the office and say, “Ben, this article told me to ask this question. Here's the question.” And I would say, “Okay. Here’s my answer.” And she’d say, “Okay, great.” And she would run back into the office and keep researching. So she was accumulating knowledge privately. She needed to process. That’s how her brain works. My dad is an extrovert. He is a talker. He wanted to hear more stories. And so what he and I did was every weekend, we would go to get a haircut or run some errands or just get breakfast. And every Sunday, we’d go out together in the morning and while we were in the car, he would ask me questions. So in the beginning it was, “Why wouldn’t you just want to be gay?” And, like, a lot of questions that a lot of parents have when they have no idea what’s going on. Why wouldn’t you just be gay? How often do people change their minds? What’s the difference between trans and nonbinary? By the time I graduated high school two years later, it was like, “Okay. Do you think that Judith Butler and Michelle Fuoco would get along?” We were debating the highest level of queer theory. It was awesome. To the point where he’d call me while I was in college and be like, “I just gave all of my friends at this party a trans 101. I think they were all drunk. And I don’t think they’ll remember. But I think I did a good job.” And I was like, “Okay. Great.” So they both got there eventually, but they had really different paths. Now it doesn’t mean it was perfect. There were plenty of mistakes that they made and I was not the most patient with them because I was a teenager. And teenager and patient generally don’t even go in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. That was not a mature adult the same way that they were. So there were moments of pretty intense tensions. But the way that we describe it now that we’re all in a good place together is that we were attached by this bungee cord. And I would go forward. I would say, “Hey. I really want to talk about coming out to all my peers at school.” And they would say, “We’re a little nervous. We’re not quite ready for that.” So they pulled me back, but I pulled them forward. I said, “I really want to talk about top surgery. I’m miserable.” They were really nervous. They pulled me back. I pulled them forward. So we worked together. We weren’t always in the same point constantly. But we were able to recognize. There was a moment with my top surgery and this bungee cord, we talked about that, we found that to be a helpful tool. So I said, “Listen. This is as far as this cord can stretch. I am miserable. It’s been years. I get that you’re nervous. I need you to catch up because I am missing out on my life. I can’t dance. I can’t wear a t-shirt. I can’t hug people. I shower with the lights off. I’m suffering. I need you to get on board.” And they said, “Okay.” And so they caught up because they knew that that cord was going to snap. It could not stretch any further. So having the ability to check in with each other and say, “Hey, I need you to be doing something differently right now” was critical. So it was not a perfect journey, but we got here. Now we’re all here together at the end of that spectrum. And they are super supportive. They love the work that I do. I’m so fortunate that I have such stellar allies in my corner. And there was a funny moment. I have two younger sisters. I was originally the oldest of three girls. And one of my sisters was around 10 when I came out. And my parents were nervous. They said, “We don’t want to confuse the girls. We don’t want to make it hard for them.” And we were going out to dinner. And for a while in the beginning, my parents were just avoiding using any name or pronouns because they didn’t want to confuse my younger sisters. And so we’d gone out for pizza and I was walking out of the restaurant and my dad and my sisters were the last ones to walk out. So he gets up to walk out from the booth and my two sisters – who are very scary – they confront him. And my younger sister puts her hand on his shoulder, turns him around and says, “Why aren’t you calling him Ben? What’s wrong with you? What are you doing? Just call him Ben. It’s not that hard.” And he had this total moment of “Wow. I thought I was being helpful but it turns out I’m maybe being not helpful at all.” So then he had to totally adjust his perspective. But having those moments where you get to hear, I’m wrong right now. And that in particular is just such a funny moment. And my younger sister is very scary. She went to the Olympic trials. She is very strong. 

SARA: Great story and I really appreciate the Bungee analogy, too. That’s really helpful, I think, in helping parents think about when it feels like it’s stretched so tight it might snap and how we might catch up and then also there’s some sort of natural pulling our kids back. 

BEN: Absolutely. What are the ways that we both have to accept that we need to move a little bit? 

SARA: I want to chat about this whole idea that your parents held, especially now that you’re on this side of it, of not wanting to confuse the young kids, as siblings or younger cousins, let’s say, in our family. How would you address that now if you were to hear parents talk about that or bring that up to you? 

BEN: Yeah. Absolutely. So in general, I ask a lot of questions around what specifically we’re worried about. Because when people say, “I’m worried about talking about this with kids.” There’s a lot that underlies that. There are a lot of different actual reasons somebody might ask me about that. It might be because they think it’s going to be really confusing, right? I don’t want to confuse these kids. Underlying that is insecurity. If it’s this confusing for me as an adult, I can’t even imagine how hard it might be for a kid to understand. It’s very easy for kids to understand. For us as adults, someone transitioning, someone being nonbinary, that breaks a rule that we have spent our entire lives, 60, 50, 70 years understanding “OK. This is what it means to be a man and this is what it means to be a woman.” It’s going to take a minute to break that rule and change your whole way of looking at the world. It’s okay to admit that’s going to take a minute. That’s hard. For a kid, they don’t have any attachment to that rule. The rules get broken all the time, right? Sometimes you get to leave the house in your pajamas, sometimes you stay up past 7:00 p.m., and sometimes a boy becomes a girl. This is just things that can happen. All of the kids that I’ve come out to have had the easiest time of anybody, and especially if parents and grandparents and people who’ve spent a long time learning this is how it has to be. Kids aren’t that attached to it. Now sometimes people are also really afraid. They say, “I don’t want to confuse them.” And what they mean is “I don’t want it to make my kid trans. I don’t want it to plant ideas in their head.” They’ve got a lot of fear around having a trans kid. So one of the stories I like to tell is people used to ask me. They said, “When did you know? How did you know you were trans?” And I used to say, “I knew when puberty started because everything felt wrong.” And that was what I wrote in my book. That was what I knew. And then recently my parents sold their house and they asked us to come back and come and go through all our old papers and drawers and stuff. And I found a letter that I had written to myself that was an assignment. In third grade we had to write a letter to ourselves to be given to us at our high school graduation. And I had totally forgotten about this letter. And this is five or six years before I had allegedly realized I was trans. And in this letter, the opening paragraph said, “Let’s get one thing straight. You will never like pink. You will never wear a dress. You will never be a girl.” And it breaks my heart to read that. Not just to know that young me was struggling so much wondering what was possible. But I think about how many adult hands that letter had to pass through. I showed it to my parents because you had to write it at home. I turned it into my third grade teacher who gave it to my health teacher, who gave it to my middle school health teacher, who gave it to my high school health teacher. That’s a lot of people who, had they known – I don’t fault them for this – but had the information been available to  them, they could’ve said, “Hey. It seems like you might be struggling. Did you know that there is a different way to live?” And so teaching somebody that it’s a thing to be trans, that they’re giving them that language, is not going to create these feelings. It will give them language to describe feelings that are already there because it’s true. If somebody had said to me, “Hey. Here’s what transgender means.” I probably would’ve said back, “Oh, Okay. I’m transgender.” And that, at first blush, would’ve seemed like those words made me transgender. But the words are the key to the closet door. They are not the closet itself. The last piece to unlock all these feelings that are built up with a looney tunes full closet that the door opens and everything just comes rushing out. So I tell parents, teaching your kids these words is either going to help them describe feelings they’re having or make them great allies for other trans students in their school. There’s no worst-case scenario in which a not-trans kid is tricked into being trans by having words to describe feelings that some people might have. 

SARA: That’s such a beautiful way to describe it. And I appreciate it. It’s so important right now because that is one of the tropes that’s just being used to stir up all kinds of fear and backlash and legislation. And I think you really helped clarify it in such a good way that I think will be helpful for other people, our parents, our community talk with other people about that, how to combat that very terrible narrative. You really intentionally on your book – it’s part of the title – focuses on Joy. And I’m really curious what it was that made you choose to center the book around joy. 

BEN: Yeah. You know, joy has been a key piece of my life philosophy. As long as I have been a person, people hear that I’m transgender. They hear that I’m a transgender advocate living in Missouri and they pity me. They say, “Oh, you poor thing.” They expect me to be dower and angry and crying all the time. And the reality is I’m like a dog. I’m so happy to be anywhere at all times. I’m just so excited to be alive. And people are always shocked to hear that. And I remember when I was first getting into advocacy work, I was spending a lot of time with parents who were trying to support their kids. And they would say, “Well, here are the books that I’ve read so far. But they just felt really sad. And I’m really worried.” And these parents had such a heaviness about them. And so I went and started reading through a lot of the books that were available. And so many of them were, “Okay. This is really hard. This is really scary.” End of sentence. I’m not going to say it’s not hard. I’m not going to say it’s not scary. I’m a transgender person living in Missouri. I don’t have any sand in which to bury my head. That is not an option here. But that can’t be the whole story. When we talk about why it matters to support trans kids, so often it feels like our conversations begin and end at suicide statistics, at anxiety, depression, numbers around anti-trans legislation, right?  We’ve all got a very clear pictures of what we’re afraid of, of what we’re angry about, of what we’re running away from. But those feelings will only carry us so far. You cannot build a home in anxiety or in anger or in depression. So they’re effective motivators, fear, anger, they’ll get you to your first support group meeting. They will get you to your first time testifying at the capitol or deciding to support your kid in going to talk about HRT. Whatever it is, they’ll get your engine started. But we can’t let fear drive the car. Joy asks where we are going, asks where we are building. When we take risks, risks that somebody might regret: going to college, might regret getting married, regret undertaking a road trip. There’s so many risks of regret we take constantly that we deem worth it because we understand what we stand to gain, what we are trying to build. I went to college and I majored in Computer Science. That’s my graduate degree is a bachelor of arts in computer science. There’s very little coding in the work that I do. But I don’t regret going to college because of what I built, the person I became. So when we talk about supporting our trans kids, centering joy is not just a coping mechanism. It is not just a way to feel better on a litany of bad days gearing up for a challenging oppressed life. Joy asks what do we stand to gain. What are the new beautiful things in my relationships with my child? Not just what am I grieving? Who is the person I’ve lost? Your child is still alive. What can you gain? What can you build? So centering joy to me is critical. And make sure that we don’t force our kids to grow up. I had to become an adult very quickly. And that’s something that I have had to work through in therapy and make my own peace with that people think I’m a lot older than I am because I have been very mature for a very long time. And I don’t want kids who come after me to have to do that. I want them to be silly, and curious. And I don’t want an 8-year-old to have to understand why the world wants to hurt them. I want them to play princess dress up and family and pretend to be an astronaut and dream about the future and get to build a life. So I center joy so our kids get to stay kids. If I never hear a trans kid called brave again, it’ll be too soon. 

SARA: That is wonderful. I appreciate that so much. It makes me reflect even on my own experience as a parent in how much joy there has been in celebrating my child together and the new things that I have gotten to witness and see and experience which have been really beautiful 

BEN: Absolutely. 

SARA: Thank you for describing that. I really appreciate it. There was something you wrote on your website that I found really interesting and I wondered if you’d talk about it a little bit. You have this quote that said, “When I finally came out, I was embraced with so much love than I had imagined I deserved.” And I really attached to the idea of deserved and how it shows up particularly for queer folks. It sounds like there’s this story that is like, if I am really who I am, I won’t be deserving. So I have to keep it down. And then to experience the opposite of that. So will you talk a little bit about that? 

BEN: Yeah. Absolutely. When I was figuring out whether it was going to be safe for me to come out, I was really afraid, really anxious and depressed. I was really struggling. And I had this feeling, even after I came out, there was a learning curve for all the people around me. It was really challenging. And some people were better than others at articulating to me the challenges that my transition was bringing to them. So feeling like, “Why are you asking for so much? Why do you keep correcting me on your pronouns? Why can’t you be more patient?” People had a lot of frustration at the fact that I was not handling like a mature adult because I was a 15-year-old. But they had these expectations that I was going to be really patient. And so I developed this feeling that being trans within an instant, sucked up every bit of good-will or human-shared kindness that would’ve been available to me in my life. So I didn’t want to ask for favors, didn’t want to give feedback, didn’t want to say or ask anything because I was so afraid that I had pushed everyone around me to their limit just by being trans and being present, being myself. That it was totally unrealistic to imagine that I might be able to ask for someone to give love in a way that landed as love. Whether that was in friendships or family relationships or partnerships in particular. I really had this feeling to ask somebody to put themselves through dating me as a trans person, I could never. From the ways that a number of previous partners had treated me, I just felt like I was doing something unkind to people by being trans and being in a relationship. And I had kind of given up on that idea. And slowly, as the people around me became better allies, as I started to surround myself with people who really wanted to give me love in the ways that landed as love, as I met my girlfriend – now wife, six and a half, maybe seven years ago now – I really started to feel like I didn’t think that I deserved all this love. And as I started to experience more of that love and started to reflect more on the ways that I had built up that understanding of what kind of love I deserved, I came to understand that we all deserve love by default. We all deserve respect. We deserve to feel loved and seen exactly as we are without caveat, not love if we are patient enough, not loved if we are normal enough, but loved because we are enough was definitely a big journey I had to go on. Still not one I’m not perfect about. I still have a hard time giving feedback to people or saying, “Hey you could be a little bit better of an ally to me by doing this thing.” I’m always, inside of me is that scared kid saying, “When am I going to push people too far.” My inner child is always looking to be held by me and by the people around me. But I’m fortunate that I’m surrounded by people, by and large, who do want to hold that part of me. 

SARA: That’s a struggle that is universal, I think, for so many people. 

BEN: Absolutely. 

SARA: And particularly amplified, I think, for trans and queer folks. But just listening to you talk I thought, “Oh that’s going to speak to so many people who face those same kinds of inner thoughts and challenges.” And you said something that I thought was really valuable in that it was also when you started to surround yourself with people who met you where you were at, met your needs without apology and without asking for more from you or patience from you, and I thought that’s a really important key in the whole joy framework too. This often doesn’t just come to us. We have to be active, take an active role in bringing those people into our lives and bringing those things into our lives. 

BEN: Absolutely. Put love out, get love in. Spend time around the people who return the love you give in spades. 

SARA: Yes. Yes. So back to your book.  Can you talk a little bit about how, in your book as you were writing your book, what are some of the misconceptions that you address about raising or supporting a transgender child? 

BEN: Yeah. Absolutely. One of the biggest misconceptions that I want to break is that there’s one way it can look. You will notice one of the most consistent – to a point where I was like, man, why am I even writing the book if this is the guidance I keep giving – which is, “I don’t know. Ask your kid.” My goal is to give you a toolbox, not a blueprint. Your kid’s going to make the blueprint. They might want to build an entire house only using hammer and nails, or an entire house without touching a hammer and nails, right? There is no one path. And that’s the biggest misconception I burst is that there’s one way it’s going to look. It’s not an easy, linear, perfectly sensible path for every kid. They are not all going to say, “Okay. I am changing my name one time.” Great. Perfect. We’re good. I have no more questions. I’m fine. Life is messy and confusing. And if you want to know something fits, you’re going to have to try it on. So helping people break down some of their fears around things like detransition and retransition or label confusion. It’s okay to be nervous about those things. But it’s critical to put those topics in perspective around how often they happen and why we view them as such a bad thing. I don’t actually think it’s a bad thing for someone to say, “Hey. I don’t think this is the right path for me anymore.” That’s okay too. 

SARA: I want to talk about that a little bit because I know detransitioning is really being wielded as a kind of weapon particularly in the political and legislative sphere. I’m sure you’ve heard it in your legislature. 

BEN: Oh yes. 

SARA: I know I’ve heard it in ours. So break that down a little bit. Talk more about that, that is a fear, I think, that some parents early on in their experience of their own child’s coming out fear. And I think it’s a fear that’s planted in us by society. So how do we unpack that? 

BEN: Yeah. So, again, we want to look to the root. We want to figure out why specifically is the idea of detransition so upsetting. One of the biggest reasons that it turns out to be so upsetting for people is if you view a trans life as hard and scary and bad, we have this framework of, we support our kids because they’re born this way, because this is the only way they could be. And I like that framework and I think that’s true. I do think that I am trans and nothing could change that. And, when we lean really hard on that, we say that I’m trans because literally there’s nothing else I could do, this is my worst-case-scenario. I have no better option. I think there’s a lot of parents who, whether consciously or unconsciously, view coming out even though this will make your life harder, this is your only option. So detransition is really frightening because it has this presentation of you’re going to go through something hard and bad and you didn’t actually have to do that, right? Detransition is really scary in particular when you already kind of don’t want your kid to be trans. And this isn’t a, I’m-sending-my-kid-to-conversion therapy don’t want them to be trans. But in a, I-don’t-want-my-kid-to-have-a-hard-life, so I don’t want them to be trans. So that’s part of what’s really scary about detransition. Part of it is when we use terminology around phases and people think around, “Well I had lots of different interests and identities when I was kid. And things that I said, mom it’s who I am. I need to have this piercing. I need to do this thing.” And that’s the framework a lot of people are understanding these identities as this kind of childlike whim. And that’s not the case either. These identities are so core and central to who we are in a way that is not influenceable in the same way as the ways that we dye our hair or the interests and passions that we have. So recognizing that it isn’t following the same thing as those phases. Talking a little bit about some of the data for a second, on average around 1% of people in the trans community report that they have detransitioned said, “I am not currently going by this name anymore. I am stopping my hormone therapy or doing something that might fall under the umbrella of detransition.” Of that group, of that 1%, around 10% said I did that because I am not actually transgender. Of the 1% that detransition, 90% did so because it was not safe, because they could not afford it, because they didn’t have the resources or it was too challenging. So safety is a much bigger concern than, “Hey, this isn’t my identity anymore.” Now it’s not a bad thing to detransition. I’ve got a couple of friends who have detransitioned. And they are not against medical care either. They said, “Okay. That wasn’t the right path for me.” We also use the term retransition because detransition implies going backwards. Retransition says, I am always just moving forward, learning something new about myself.” 

SARA: Thank you for that language. That is so helpful. I had not heard it like that before and I’m going to start using that word. 

BEN: Absolutely. There’s also one other thing I really like to highlight when it comes to detransition is parents are really worried about medical regret. I really want to clear up, A, that very few people under 18 are having any surgeries. That’s really uncommon. The amount that we legislate it implies that it’s a really big, present issue. But it’s not as it turns out. That’s a very small group. And hormone therapy sometimes people will start that before 18 for a variety of reasons based on their specific needs and their specific medical plan – because I’m not in your doctor’s office so I’m not prescribing anything to your kid – but people have this fear. They say, “Oh my God, I’m so worried that my kid is going to build a body they don’t want to live in. I’m worried they are going to regret changes to their breasts, changes to their voice.” Essentially, they are worried that their child’s biological sex is not going to align with their gender identity. They’re worried that they’re going to say, “Actually, I identify as female and now my body doesn’t look that way and I’m really uncomfortable.” Right? We’re worried that our kids are going to experience gender dysphoria. Our worst-case-scenario is gender dysphoria. And our worst-case-scenario is already true! Our worst-case-scenario is happening. We can fix that. We are not going to make our worst-case-scenario true so that we don’t have a statistically unlikely worse-case-scenario years in the future. So recognizing that, putting that in perspective. And they might say hormones aren’t for me. I want people to know that’s not that common, right? 94% of transgender people said that hormone therapy or surgery significantly or dramatically improved their quality of life. That’s a medical miracle. That is way higher than knee replacement, way higher than bariatric surgery. Weight loss surgery mostly just destroys your body and there’s so much data saying how dangerous it is, how few people are truly satisfied. And yet, all of these things we say, “Well, it’s got around a 40% success rate. So that’s okay.” A 93% success rate for medical treatment is a medical miracle. That’s outstanding. And that’s a survey with tens of thousands of transgender people. That’s a huge population. 

SARA: Amazing. 

BEN: So detransition is a boogie man used to scare you away from loving your kid. It might happen, but I want us to sit with why is it a bad thing, why are we so afraid of it, and what is our worst-case-scenario here, and is our worst-case-scenario already happening and how likely is that to actually go on. 

SARA: Wow. Thank you for that and that wonderful reminder too. That is just brilliant. You gave us a lot of tips in there about things parents can do or ways parents can shift their own thinking. What are some common mistakes, perhaps, that well-meaning parents might make early on and how can they course correct? 

BEN: Yes. Absolutely. So I’m going to start by answering the second part of your questions which is how can you course correct. I’ll give my favorite piece of advice. “I don’t know, ask your kid?” Check in with your kid regularly around, what does allyship look like for you? And recognize that’s going to change. So pronouns, and correcting people was a big thing that changed throughout different points of my journey. When I first came out, I told my parents and my friends, “please don’t correct anybody because I don’t want them to get upset. It’s so new. I maybe haven’t come out to them. Just don’t correct anybody.” After a couple of months, I said, “Okay. Everybody’s had an opportunity. Now they’re struggling. I’m ready for you to be talking to people. Help me correct others.” Now we’re years later and I’ve said, “Hey, if somebody’s using the wrong pronouns for me, I have a beard, I’ve been going by Ben for 10 years now. It’s intentional and malicious to get a reaction. Unless they’re somehow just having seen me in ten years – which, fine that could happen – if it’s anyone other than somebody who hasn’t seen me in ten years, don’t correct them because they’re aiming for a reaction and I don’t want to give that to them. Just let them embarrass themselves by being so inaccurate. So finding those moments to say, “Okay. Any updates? What do you need right now? What’s changed?” can be really important. In terms of other common missteps that parents might make, I think a big one is just saying, “Okay. Great. You’re trans. We’re going to wait for anything medical and I’m just going to wait until after you’re 18 because what’s the worst that could happen, You’ll still be trans then.” And that was really hard for me that my parents really wanted me to wait a long time to go through anything medical. And I feel like a lot of my medical transition has been reparative rather than formative. I went through a puberty I did not want to go through. It was not a neutral option or hormones. My hips widened in a way that I cannot undo. Some of my other parts of my body developed in ways I would not have wanted them to develop. I never will get as tall as my cis-male counterparts. And I often have to special order my shoes or buy kids shoes – which is fine because they have way more glitter and are way cheaper – but still, I’m going through a reparative transition. Now this doesn’t mean rush your kid down a path which I don’t think anybody is doing. But make sure they have that option. And find support outside of your kid is the other big misstep a lot of parents have is assuming that I can tell my kid all the feelings that I’m having about their transition. That I feel like I’m grieving my child. People love to talk about grief. And I am not here to tell you what you can and can’t feel. But I absolutely am here to tell you what is and is not appropriate to share with a kid. For me, I felt like I had known who I was this whole time. I realized my truth. I was still the same person. I was so excited to share that truth with the people around me. And to hear them tell me that it felt like I killed someone, that it felt like I was a stranger – right, because when you say I’m grieving my daughter, that’s what you’re saying – I don’t know you. You killed the person I love. Who’s left. I need to figure this out. And it’s okay to feel that way. I get why people feel that way. As a 15-year-old, I was not equipped to understand why someone would feel that way. Those are feelings for a therapist. Those are feelings for a support group. Those are feelings for a close friend and a partner. It’s okay to have lots of messy feelings, feelings that are unhelpful or contrary. And I use unhelpful with heavy air quotes because all of our emotions are here to send us a message about an unmet need. But recognizing that your kid is not the one to process those emotions with. Now, it depends on their age. It depends on your relationship. But from you, especially in this environment right now when the world feels so toxic, so hateful and angry, your kid needs unconditional allies so badly. I needed everybody in my corner I could get. And somebody sharing with me how hard of a time they were having, for me just felt like them saying, “I am not in your corner in the way that you need right now.” So it’s okay to have fears. It’s okay to have concerns and hesitations. Again, I cannot tell you how to feel. But find resources outside of your kid so that when you’re standing in front of them, you can say, “I’m right here with you. I love you. I’ve got you. I’ve got other parents who I can cry with and other therapists who can help me understand why I’m so afraid of detransition. But right here, while we’re sitting at this kitchen table, I don’t need to solve anything. I just need to make you feel loved. That is my number one priority right now.” But don’t be afraid to make a mistake. You’re not a bad person. You’re just a person. We’re going to make mistakes. We just keep moving forward. 

SARA: Fabulous advice. Thank you. Another question is how can parents create an affirming and safe environment at home. And I’m thinking in particular one of the things that comes to mind is the simple thing of photographs. And so many of us who are parents have walls of all of the family photographs and school pictures everywhere. And so that seems like one thing that is an easy, relatively speaking in the course of being with your transgender kid, thing to do. But do you have any other thoughts about that? 

BEN: Yeah. Absolutely. Actually, this topic, how I came up with the way that the joy framework was going to show up in my book because people always would ask me, “Okay. Do I need to take down all of my pictures?” And that was specifically the language people would use is, “Do I need to take down all these pictures?” And so they were stuck in the loss, in the grief, in the focus of what needs to go away now that I have a transgender child. And it is an important question to ask your kid, right? Which pictures hanging up here make you very sad to walk by? For me, I was totally fine with pictures of me as a little kid. I thought they were funny. I was a very cute little child. I was not a cute tween. And I can look at those pictures and see a very sad kid, pictures from right before I transitioned, I can really see how miserable I was. So I said, ’13 to 15, no pictures. I am really sad to see those.” So the beginning of the conversation is what needs to come down. But the second part of the conversation and what I have in the book as what I call a “Joy Exercise” is, “Okay. What goes up in those picture’s place. You do not need to have sun-faded rectangles all over your house. Get dressed up. Do affirming hair and makeup and do a new family photo shoot.” It doesn’t have to be on a tropical vacation. It can be in front of a rose bush in the Home Depot parking lot. Just find somewhere to take pictures where people feel seen. And put up pictures of things that you all want to remember. So don’t just get stuck in, what am I losing, what’s going away. What are we building? We are building new memories. We are building new pictures and a new environment. And it’s okay to say, “Hey. I really liked that picture. I’m sad to see that go away.” That’s okay. You get to have a lot of feelings. We are all people with complex emotions. And what else are we building? What are we gaining? What new memories can come in here too? 

SARA: Excellent. I love that your book has “Joy Exercises” in them. Is there another one you might share with us? 

BEN: Oh, yes. My other favorite one in there is around coming-out celebrations, whether it’s marking anniversaries or celebrating right away. Obviously we want to match the introvert/extrovert level of your kid. Some kids, they just want a gender reveal card that says, “It’s a boy.” Or that says, “It’s a girl” and you cross it off and write “nonbinary”. It can be funny. It can be campy. It doesn’t have to be really professionally manufactured. Or maybe it is a celebration. I like to get an ice cream cake for the anniversary of my top surgery. And having these moments where we celebrate these milestones is a way to send a message to your kid that doesn’t just say to your kid, “Okay. The day you transitioned was the day my life became different.” But a way to say, “This day was a day that our lives became better. It was a day that you became happier. And we recognize this is an important milestone to you.” My coming out anniversary, my top surgery anniversary, my hormone anniversary, these are all dates that are highly important to me. And when the people I love celebrate these days with me, it drives home that they view my coming out as a good thing. They view my coming out, not as something I put them through but as something that deepened our relationship and helped us all learn things about ourselves and each other. And they celebrate those important days with me. So throw a coming out party. Through a gender re-reveal. Through a transition shower where you get shaving products or skin care products or you start taking your now daughter to get her nails done. Find ways to celebrate and not just tolerate. But to say, “Okay. I’m right here. Let’s have fun on this journey. This does not have to be all business and serious and meetings and conversations all the time. It can be fun and funny.” And we want to find those moments of joy and celebration wherever we can. 

SARA: That is fantastic. I love that as a reminder. And it’s so exciting that there are so many of those reminders and exercises in your book that really invite parents to center on joy and think about joy and refocus themselves on joy. But I want to divert just for a minute from the joy and talk about the challenges. And we’ve already named that the transphobia is just exploding in our country right now and societal challenges. And so how you do talk to families and how does your book help families navigate those very tricky and sometimes very negative societal challenges and transphobia, and also when it shows up in our own extended families. 

BEN: One of the big things that my book highlights is saying, I wrote this book between 2021 and 2023 which means that it painted a different picture of a legislative landscape that we’re facing at this moment in time than we were at this time last year, then we will be at this time next year. So rather than writing a list of all the bills that I’m worried about, I wrote about, where is this coming from? What are the roots? Who are the key players? And so my book as a whole section around how did we get to this moment in time and understanding what our roles are as allies in building a better world for our young people. The last chapter of the book is called “It’s Bigger Than Us.” And it’s about going outside of your home and saying “What am I getting involved in? What am I doing? What are the different ways that advocacy might look like in my own life that I can be making a difference?” We want to circle the wagons. We want to protect our kids. And that’s so crucial especially while they’re new in their journeys or young and vulnerable and afraid. And then we want to say, “Okay. Now what can I do to build a world where the next person doesn’t have to be quite as afraid for their kid?” So recognizing that. Now, transphobia is going to show up in a lot of interesting ways. And one of the big things that I like to highlight is that our world has not – at least in my opinion – actually become more hateful. People assume that everybody’s getting angrier and meaner and crueler. But I’ve got to tell you, I travel a lot of places all the time braced for hate. I go to rural Iowa, rural Vermont. I just got back from rural Vermont. And I’m expecting something to happen. And it doesn’t. I find curiosity. I find confusion. I find fear. And I’m not saying there aren’t people out there who are hateful, who are cruel. They’re out there. Again, I live in Missouri. I promise, I know. I get it. And most people are nervous and are misinformed. Misinformation is a multi-billion dollar industry that is meant to look real, meant to look believable. Misinformation doesn’t not only work on “Bad people” It does not only work on “Stupid People” We are all affected and tricked by misinformation. And I talk a lot about that in the book of how can you identify, debunk, and pre-bunk. How can you kind of inoculate the people around you against misinformation. And that can be really effective as well. But let’s say we’re talking to somebody and they say something that is just totally out of pocket about trans kids getting surgeries in their school nurses offices. We have our gut reaction of “Oh my God, I can’t believe you believe that.” But I’ve had people who really have read all the articles and think it’s genuinely true. Because, again, misinformation is meant to look believable. And I have this approach that I really like that I call the allyship house that I encourage us to take when we’re trying to get through to people who are struggling, who are not on board. So when I came out, I announced, “I am hosting the allyship party at my house. And if you want to be my ally, please come to my party.” Now some people knew it was coming. They were already inside decorating. They knew what was up. Other people said, “Well, this is a surprise, but I will be there right on time.” Some people were not there right on time. It’s two hours in and Uncle Steve was supposed to bring the salsa and we’re all still sitting here eating dry chips. Everybody has noticed that Uncle Steve is late. When he finally calls me up and says, “Hey, I’m sorry I’m late. I’m lost.” And I say, “God. Of course you’re lost. Of course you’re late. You’re such a bigot. We knew this was going to happen. Just turn left.” So when I say, “God. Just get to the party already. Of course you’re late, you bigot.” Why on earth does he want to come to my party if he knows that he’s already too late. I talk to a lot of tentative, hesitant allies who are feeling like, “Everybody just gets mad at me every time I make a mistake. It feels pointless. No matter what I do, I’m doing it wrong. I’m not doing enough.” So we have to make sure people know that we actually want them at our parties. We have to be able to put that anger down and remind ourselves that even if the best day was yesterday, the second-best day is today. So giving people genuine invitations to our party. And even if it’s saying, “Okay.” Uncle Steve is a real person for me. He took years to call me Ben for the first time. So I might have said, “Hey. The doors open. The door’s never locked. I’m going to stop pursuing this now because it’s hurting me. But my door is open. I want you at this party no matter what time you choose to walk in.” 

SARA: I was just thinking about what a beautiful framework that is and how hard it can be. But I appreciate that invitation because it gets exhausting to keep dealing with later-comers, especially when they’re family members. 

BEN: Yeah. Absolutely. Now, the other tool in our tool-kit, when we say, “Okay, just turn left. Of course you’re lost.” What kind of navigational advice is “turn left” when I’m talking to you on the phone? Usually you preface that with, “Well, where are you? What are you looking at? What can you see? I can’t give you directions until I know where you’re lost.” We jump to these immediate conclusions. “Of course you’re not supportive. You’re religious. You’re old. You are conservative. You live in this state. We jump to immediate conclusions around why people hold certain beliefs. And so then we have our canned responses that we just throw at the wall like spaghetti, hoping that one of them will finally make a difference. It’s not going to. That’s not how to truly get through to somebody. If I want to get you to my house, I’ve got to find out where you’re lost. So I sit with people and I listen. I ask questions. I say, “Alright. Help me understand. It seems like you’re having a really challenging time with this. Where are you getting stuck? Seems like you’ve got a lot of fear here? Seems like you’re feeling really frustrated about our loved one’s pronouns.” And we can validate feelings without validating beliefs or behaviors, right? We don’t have to say, “You’re right. Ben’s new pronouns are really stupid. Why would he want to be called that?” But we can absolutely say, “It sounds like you’ve been feeling really confused. I get it. I was really confused too.” And when people feel seen, when people feel like you care about how they feel, about what they have to say, that builds so much trust and safety for them to be open to hearing what you have to say. Change moves at the speed of trust. So we have to build that trust to make an actual difference. Now it’s okay to say, “Right now I’m really angry. I can’t have this conversation. It’s not working.” But recognizing that anger – while an important emotion in protecting ourselves and setting down boundaries – is not a tool that is going to help us get people to the allyship party. And I know we have this reaction when I say, “Talk about the allyship house.” They say, “Ben, that requires a lot of patience. Why can’t people just get on board? I’m so frustrated. I’m so tired.” I get it. I do. I’m tired. I’m frustrated, too. And the people who are going to wake up and become allies and come to the party because it’s the right thing to do, have already done that. They’re already at the party. The people we’re talking about now are the ones who are on the fence, who are misinformed, who are afraid, who are hesitant, who are angry. I’m not talking about how to get through to your perfect allies. They’re already here. I wish everyone was a perfect ally. And they’re not. So I am just left asking myself, “What can I do to build a world I want to live in.” And that means spending a little extra time listening to somebody. Seeing them as another flawed human being with lots of trauma, even though that’s never the word they want to use. When they’re feeling that angry, they’ve got baggage on baggage on baggage. Let me see them as a whole person and we might be able to get somewhere, especially if they love their family member. If you love your kid, we can go so far together. You want to be at that party. Even if you don’t think you do. If you love your kid, we can go a lot of places together. So trying to invite everybody to the allyship house is challenging. It takes practice, takes lots of energy, and takes time to decompress and self-care afterwards. But that’s how we’re going to get there. At least with our hesitant allies. 

SARA: Yes. And as you’re talking, I’m thinking about myself and our community as parents, also thinking about the power of the allies inviting people into the house. 

BEN: Absolutely.

SARA: Not just waiting for our trans kids, or friends, or beloveds to do all of that invitational work. But that’s also a role of the allies in the house can do that too. 

BEN: Yes. And honestly, for a lot of people, it’s even more effective when our allies do it, right? People are expecting me to say, “You can’t make that joke anymore. That’s offensive.” They are steeled against that because they know I’m going to say that. And they don’t usually make those jokes around me. But when my dad, who is a classic, cis/het white guy, strong, likes to make stupid jokes, was a frat guy, works in finance. When he says, “That joke isn’t funny anymore, that means something very different than it does coming from me. Your invitation to the allyship house means a lot more, especially if your loved one is a kid. A lot of people do not take kids seriously, do not take them at their word. You don’t know best. You're just a kid. So saying that as an adult, saying that as a cisgender person, the people you can get through to is much bigger network than the people who are going to hear it from me. 

SARA: This has been such an extraordinary conversation. And I feel like we’ve just barely scratched the surface. And so I really just want to invite and encourage folks to go get your book because there’s so much more there. We only just got to a little bit of it. But what a delight and beautiful conversation. 

BEN: Thank you. 

SARA: And I learned some new things today which is fantastic. And I am so grateful to you, Ben, for all of the work that you are doing building that allyship house for so many of us, for being such a beautiful role model for our kids too. I like to close out the podcast by asking my guests all the same questions. And so the first question is about the Mama Dragons name. Mama Dragons community came about and adopted that name out of a sense of fierceness and fierce protection for our kids. And so I like to ask my guests, what is it that you are fierce about? 

BEN: Yeah. I think the biggest thing – obviously I’m fierce about a lot of things. I can get riled up lickety-split – but I think something I’m really fierce about is community building, is this idea that the only way we will get through this is together. People have this idea that someone’s coming to save us, somebody will step in, somebody will fix things. That has to be us. We have to get fired up about getting involved about working together. And so I am really fierce about saying, “These two community organizations aren’t talking to each other right now? We need to fix that. We need to work together to protect our community.” It is on all of us as a group and individually to build the world we want to be living in. So I am fierce about pulling new people in, showing them you get to play a role in this. You have to play a role in this, but you get to play a role in this to build a better world for your kid. That’s a gift. What better gift could you possibly give to your child than a world that is safe for them. That’s amazing. So I am fierce about being relentlessly optimistic and pulling as many people in as I can to building that world. 

SARA: That’s fantastic. What a fabulous answer. The last question that I like to end with which seems particularly perfect for you is, what is bringing you joy right now? And just also recognizing what you already know and have already shared with us. But in these times in particular, we need joy. So what’s something that’s bringing you joy? 

BEN: You know, I am making the choice to be joyful every single day whether that is choosing to stop looking at my phone when I wake up in the morning and read a book. I love science fiction and fantasy. Fantasy books with trans protagonists. So I’ve been reading Cemetery Boys. Big fan of that book. I’ve also been spending more time working out because when the world makes me feel powerless, being about to feel powerful has brought me a lot of joy. I also have a newsletter called “Good Queer News.” That’s bringing me a lot of joy where I just share every week things that are bringing me joy, positive stories that might not have made major headlines, stories and strategies for resilience and hope and optimism. And knowing that I get to be a source of joy in other people’s days and weeks and mornings, it just makes me so happy that I get to add a little bit more life to the world for a lot of people. So I am brought joy by my own choices and by the fact that I get to bring joy to others. 

SARA: That’s fantastic. And we’ll make sure to put a link to the signup page for the “Good Queer News” in our show notes so folks can be part of that joyful community and your good news. Ben, Thank you, again. This has been lovely. 

BEN: It has.

SARA: I’m so grateful to you. 

BEN: Yeah. Thank you for having me. This has been a delight. Take care of yourselves, everybody. 

SARA: Thanks so much for joining us here In The Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at Mamadragons.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links. 

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