Jess: We come along these journeys and all of us have this stepwise, well, I was here until that wasn't okay, and then I needed to do this. We don't come to truth for a while because safety always comes first.

Will: Right. And not even safety. I heard this recently. We don't actually seek safety. Our lizard brains don't seek safety. They seek familiarity.

Jess: That's a good point. Yes, you're right. It's more familiar.

Will: What was familiar to us in childhood is what we seek out, which is, you know, I had emotionally immature parents. I ended up in an emotionally immature marriage, in emotionally immature church. It was all familiar. I didn't know any difference. So for me, that felt like safety, but it actually wasn't.

Jess: Hello and welcome back to the Gender IQ Podcast. Today I'm joined again by Dr. Will Cole, also known as your trans cousin on Substack and the founder of Query Research Consulting. Dr. Cole is a public health expert, writer, and a joyful disruptor of gender misinformation. So this is part two of our conversation. Part one was more about his own gender journey and coming to authenticity. But in part two, we talk about the very real danger of misinformation and disinformation campaigns targeting trans communities and how they're weaponized to erode rights, trust, and autonomy.

So Will shares honest reflections on how to talk to folks who don't see the world like we do, why call-outs rarely lead to clarity, and what it actually takes to build understanding across difference. So if you've ever felt the weight of holding truth in a room that doesn't get it, or you've wondered how to move the needle without losing yourself, this episode is for you. Let's get into it.

Jess: Well, tell us, you just kind of took us through your professional - your personal journey, your professional journey, starting query research consulting, but were sharing with us about grants that are being defunded. And this is something that I wanted to talk about on the podcast with someone who knows. Cause again, I'm married to a researcher who was impacted by this, but not doing trans health research. So explain it to people who may not know exactly what's going on at universities and in science.

Will: Yeah. So the NIH and the CDC, right, both fund a lot of health research. The CDC focuses more on like surveillance while the NIH focuses more on innovation in science. Researchers who are qualified can apply for these very competitive, usually five-year grants to study something in a new way. Right. And that's everything from Alzheimer's research to fetal development, to, you know - and like hardcore bench lab science to social behavioral interventions. And I work on the social behavioral intervention side of things.

So with the new administration and its anti trans agenda and anti any minority agenda a lot of these executive orders, you know, I'm keeping track and like adding as I see the ones that impact trans people directly and are specifically for trans people, which is about half of them. And then the other half include trans people, but there's also more broadly like DEI, so it includes racial minorities, et cetera. Basically they came out with a statement that said like, you - the federal government, NIH cannot use funds for anything related to trans stuff. Even LGBTQ more broadly. This is extremely, it's so extremely unusual to get a grant terminated.

Jess: Yeah, I think people don't understand that if they're not inside. Like, I understand how unusual that is. But that's, oh, that's a good analogy for it. I don't know if there's a really great analogy for it. It's almost like not getting a paycheck from a job that you've continued to work at. It's almost that level of guaranteed funding if you're continuing to do the work and demonstrate that you're doing the work. And there are certain ways to do that with the NIH reports you have to submit. it doesn't happen. This is not normal.

Will: It does not happen. Like I can, so an example, I think this will help. When I was on my KL one, it was five years of funding, but at the end of each year I have to, you know, file a report. did I do all year? As long as I'm making progress, they will give me the next year and they really want to give you the money for the next year. You have to screw up so badly to not, because it's more paperwork for them to take it back. In my third year of the K is my 2019 Will era in which I accomplished - I mean, I did accomplish things, but like on paper, it looked like nothing. I specifically - they wanted publications, right? Peer reviewed publications to come out of my work. And I didn't have any that year. I had been doing work, but you know, I didn't produce that year. And the project officer, the PO came to me and was like, "is there anything? Were you co-author on anything?" It turned out I was like middle author, which is like nothing.

Jess: That's like "yeah, you've read it." I've been that.

Will: Right. I was connected. The work I did in Tanzania with sex workers, but the PI was writing the paper, a principal investigator, and put me on the paper. It had been accepted, but not actually published yet at my deadline. I had turned it in in June, it was going to be published in August or whatever. She was like, okay, we'll count that. That's how hard we looked to find something to count in order to have me continue on that grant rather than terminate it. So it's just not done to terminate things. And also if things do end, like you don't get the new year, you know that ahead of time. You have time to plan and know that it's ending.

So these letters have been coming since early February, late January. Just a one page letter that's like, your grant is terminated effective today. And there's no, it's just, it's just gone. It's just - and so in, in the history of the NIH, LGBTQ people have only been a health priority population, like a recognized health disparities population since 2011. So before that, if you wanted to do something with LGBTQ people at health, you had to like, justify.

Jess: Yeah, I would imagine you'd have to use HIV funding mechanisms or something like that to piggyback on.

Will: Totally. Yeah, it was mostly HIV funds even today because like, yeah, that's the way to get in, right?

Jess: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's still there today.

Will: So that's why we have more data on gay men than any other LGBT population.

Jess: Right.

Will: So yeah, so in 2011, the NIH started to say, okay - and that's since I started my PhD. Like, it's not that long ago, really. They were like, "yes, LGBTQ is a disparity population." So people could start writing grants to study these groups. Trans people specifically, it was even later.

Jess: Yeah, honestly, the 2014-2015 trends tipping point really is true. I think that you don't see the widespread awareness, visibility, or anything related to trans folks until 2014-15. Yeah.

Will: So we were just getting to a point where there were trans health grants. And even then there's huge gaps in them. So like for, I finally did get, I was on one of the grants that did get terminated was the, was the one on gay trans men that I had wanted to do from the beginning. And I had, you know, connected to this leading person in the trans health world. And he had brought me in and we, I still work with him, but you know, we were co-leaders on this grant before I left for the Trevor Project that was canceled like two weeks ago. The NIH over the past few years had built like a special office for sexual gender minority research. And it had like one person in it for like five years, and then it finally had two or three people. And now that's completely dissolved. And they kept a listserv where you could keep up on all the info. And that's gone.

But a bunch of us have rallied together and have our own like independent, you know, people who work in sexual and gender minority health are talking to each other. Right. And there were, there have been a couple of Fridays in the past couple of months where just a ton of termination letters went out and it was, it was awful. It was just like a slaughter of like another email, another email, another email. And I'm a moderator on the group. So like every email has to be approved. So I'm like seeing these come in and like "mine was terminated too mine was terminated too mine was terminated too," and I know that's not even all of them. Like some people are keeping quiet about their terminations and not sharing more openly. And yeah, it's millions and millions of dollars and stopping interventions in the middle.

Jess: Yeah, just slashing and people are not going to see this because it's mostly audio, but like we're both kind of sitting here without words. Yeah. We're a word based medium right now just because it's just sort of hard to put words to it. It's devastating. It's devastating.

Will: Yeah.

Jess: It is very dystopian. The level of erasure happening at, you know, the federal government. I remember one of the first things I saw was, you know, Erin Reed had posted a side-by-side image of the State Department website after passports were one of the first things to happen. And not only did folks with an X gender marker suddenly get completely erased and were not able to update their passport with their lived identity, but LGBTQI plus travelers got changed to LGB travelers.

Like you can see the side by side. It is erasure and it is really similar to things that have happened in the past. And it's interesting. There's this book that'll be, I talked to this author on the podcast and there's a monologue in it from, from Magnus Hirschfeld who ran the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. And then of course it's fictionalized, but Hirschfeld, you know, a character asking Hirschfeld like, why do you do this? Like, you're not trans, like you're gay, but you're not trans. Like, why do you do this for trans people?

And Hirschfeld says, "you are like the canaries in the coal mine of democracy. I work for you because I love my country. Because a country that protects trans people will protect everyone. You represent everything that's fundamental to democracy. You represent working rights. You represent fair housing. And most importantly, you represent the right to bodily autonomy. So I support trans people because I'm patriotic.

Will: That's beautiful.

Jes: It made me cry. It is beautiful. I think that's, you and I could both probably work ourselves up into a good frenzy around how the folks who we grew up around have really bastardized the idea of patriotism and love of one's country to mean subjugation of its people. And if you don't subjugate people properly, then you are not actually a patriot.

I can't wait for a time when I'm actually proud to hang an American flag again. I would like to be able to do that. It's been a long time, but I really want to.

Will: It's been a very long time.

Jess: Because I do think that's actually a patriotic thing to care for the least of us. Now, why trans folks have continued to be the least of us - that's a whole other issue that I'm still not okay with. But I do think like, yeah, we represent all those things.

Will: Yeah. The bodily autonomy issue is, yeah, it's so huge and it's so quickly translatable to all women and reproductive rights, you know, forced pregnancy and, you know, all the stuff that we could get into that we don't need to right now. But yeah, I want to see that people see that it is about bodily autonomy. Yeah. And so many things are, you know, rights in schools and right to identity and all of that is about the things that this country claims to be pro, know, self-determination, independence. But yeah, thinking of us as the canary in the coal mine is really profound. I think, you know, I've posted a bit on my sub stack about genocide. You know, I, given what's going on in Gaza and what happened in the Holocaust, both horrific, horrible things.

It was really hard for me to say, "hey, we're in the beginning stages of genocide here with trans people. We really are." Like if you look at sort of genocide theory, you know, there's like 10 steps to genocide. Murder is nine and we're easily at seven for trans people right now. We're already there. Like it's been happening since 2014, right? The early stages and they got in on the sports issue and then the bathroom issue. And then it just, you know, creeped that door wide and now it's like trans people were being erased completely. And I saw some, you know, some conservative was like, "how dare trans people compare themselves to Jews in the Holocaust?" And someone answered, "no, no, no, we're comparing us to trans people in the Holocaust because they were also killed." And the very first book burning, as I'm sure you know, was Magnus Hirschfield's library of the Institute of Sexology erasing all the progress we had on trans surgeries and medicine and identities and experiences. I'm sure Hirschfeld himself would have been killed that day. He just happened to be out of town.

Jess: Yeah, he'd been out. He planned it, like he'd been out of the country for three years because the writing was on the wall. But not only did - were trans people in the Holocaust, the Allied forces didn't save them. They were sent to serve their sentences for their crimes.

Will: Right. And we, I, we hear more about people like Turing, you know, was forced castration, chemical castration afterwards, even though he saved the world with his skills, but because he was gay. I think we hear those stories more, but we don't hear that. I only just heard about the trans people then liberated from the camps, then put in jail.

Jess: Yeah, me too. When in reading this book, it was new to me. Yeah, it's wild. It is. Okay, we can nerd about that for a while, but I know we want to get to some stuff. Let's talk about - you are really, you've become an expert on the science around gender affirming care. That is something that's a strong area of expertise for you. As someone who clearly understands the science, what frustrates you most about how gender affirming care gets misrepresented? Yeah, just choose one.

Will: Woo. Yeah. What really gets me is the disinformation. So misinformation is - you're spreading information that you believe is real, but it's not. Right? You're just mistaken. Disinformation is purposely a lie. So they are spreading disinformation and preying on especially the fears of parents about their children and making up lies to get them scared so that they will be rallied against all trans stuff. But it's all based on a lie because trans children are not getting surgery. Trans children are not getting hormones. And if you really want to be riled up and speak out against non-consensual, bad, irreversible surgeries on babies, get into the intersex rights movement because that is actually where it's happening.

It's definitely happening there and I hate it. It's unconscionable. It should stop if it's not medically necessary. And usually it's not, but that's not happening to trans people. That, deliberate manipulation of parents' fears for their children really gets me, you know, as a parent myself.

Jess: I can imagine as a parent yourself, you know how compelling that argument could be.

Will: Yeah. Like, so being parents is like, the one thing you can connect on with another parent anywhere in the world, even if you have nothing else in common. Right. And - or even closer to home, like I have a sister that I adored growing up. She's my big sister. We shared a room. We were very good friends when we were young. We had kids at the same time. And now we don't talk because she's bought into the TERF-y arguments that she and her daughter are somehow unsafe in bathrooms, despite no evidence. It's just become such a flashpoint between us that if she can't see trans women as women, that means she can't see trans men as men. Therefore, she doesn't see me as who I am, and that she's not safe for me to be around.

And there's been times in our lives where we were, even before I came out, we were less close, and I could always rely on connecting via our, you know - I can play with her little daughter. We can talk about diapers, we can talk about schooling. There's always something there to talk about. And keeping it at that, like, we're just trying to be great parents level is kind of universal. So preying upon that instinct, knowingly manipulating that instinct.

Jess: Yeah. All right. What do you think are doing that the most? Social contagion theory? You think that is one of the most strong arguments?

Wil: Contagion theory is definitely one. I just read this great article about how social contagion for trans people is not a new theory at all. It's been around for a hundred years. Just slightly packaged differently. Social contagion. And then, you know, they're spreading lies about like even how the executive orders are framing things about surgical mutilation and chemical, you know, whatever. They're framing it in these like really horrific terms that alarm everybody.

And they know what they're doing. This is strategic messaging, right? And, you know, it is, it does all of those arguments like rapid onset gender disorder, social contagion, you're harming our children, we're not safe in bathrooms, like all of that fundamentally comes back to this broader, like, fundamental understanding of the world in a white supremacist way. Right? It's misogyny, it's racism, and I'd have to get really in depth to - I clearly link transness and racism, but it is just like fatphobia is and, you know, there's all sorts of things.

Jes: Well, I, you can say, I know you cannot actually simplify it, but I think about just normativity is the air we are all breathing and are not really aware that we're breathing all the time. And normativity has been built into frameworks for a long time. Like the gender binary was encoded along racist taxonomies that prioritize whiteness and put whiteness at the top. All of these things were sort of constructed together and we don't know that we're in it. And so when you don't know you're in something it makes it hard to find the truth and it makes it easier to have these fears preyed on because people conflate health with normal. That's what I see people struggling with. Because yeah, someone said recently, I feel like there's not a true objective center in this research, like there's either these crazy people who are against all gender affirming care, and I don't agree with them. But then everybody else is just for it. And it seems like there's no objective center here. How would how would you speak to that? I have my thoughts on it. But how would you speak to that argument?

Will: I have likened that - like a different analogy would be like, like to say there's two extreme balanced sides is so inaccurate. It's like, it's like you write an article about climate change and you interview some flat earthers, and give them equal standing to climate change experts.

Jess: Okay.

Will: Right. It really is, you know, 98 % of the scientists and providers agree that gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-backed. Yes, there are gaps in research - let us do those, those gaps.

Jess: Exactly. If you ban the care, you won't be able to do the research at all. To find out the answers to these questions, you seem so worried about.

Wil: And they're like, we need cohorts of thousands of children to follow for years. I'm like, there aren't thousands of trans children. That doesn't even, just the absolute refusal to pay attention to the numbers and the, like the extreme, what's the word? Like the words they choose to describe us in these executive orders. I don't even want to repeat them. They are so dehumanizing. Dehumanizing. Dismissive. Yeah. Dehumanizing. They are. And they're making us to be monsters. Yeah.

Jess: Yeah, no, and I think that obviously is an incredibly powerful rhetoric. Like, thinking about the research, for those who haven't kept up with it, what are some key things people should understand about what the science actually demonstrates? Because you posted something really good today that was a good summary about gender-affirming care for minors, which is the biggest flashpoint issue, I think.

Will:  It really is, and that's why I posted that. Yeah, the - there is a lot of rhetoric out there if people are paying attention of the people that are talking about social contagion and there's no evidence and like, there is. There is a lot of evidence. In fact, there's enough evidence that we have really standard, solid guidelines from WPATH, from the American Pediatric Association, from the Endocrine Society, all of which say, here is how to handle gender-affirming care, medical care in adolescents. And none of them, none of them talk about medical intervention before puberty. That's just the facts. The people that are fighting against this, there are some scientists fighting against this who have in their head theories about transness as pathological. It's the same people that had homosexuality as pathological.

Jess: Yes. Right, and the number of diagnoses that was like anything except trans, like autogynephilia and just different ways of deviants being pathologized as opposed to just a variation of a normal.

Will: Right. So like, when I look at the history and those theories and people who spout them, it's like very much some cis people encountered a couple trans people, or maybe they didn't in the medical field was like, well, why do we think they're that way? And instead of asking people about their experiences, they pontificated and said, "well, maybe it's internalized homophobia and they don't want to be gay, so they have to switch genders so that they'll be straight." That is a theory that some people still believe. I've had people say it to me, well, you transitioned so you wouldn't be gay, right? And I'm like, actually, no, I have a husband. I'm still gay. And then yeah, the auto-gynophilia theory, which the first time I heard that I was just flabbergasted. What? How? Like that tells something so intimate about the researcher that came up with that.

Jess: I know, I like to not make assumptions about the actual researchers, but when you talk - when you look into late 20th century sexologists, their stories are like - John Money's upbringing and how that led to some of the shit that he pulled. Good Lord. Yeah, no, I feel like this happens all the time with it. And this happened not just about trans folks, but anything any medical intervention, psychiatric intervention, the more evidence you feel you need to be able to recommend an intervention actually tells you a lot about where you stand on the issue, about where your bias already is. That's why I'm trying to tell people like you're looking for objectivity out there. Actually, if you're really reaching for that, the more times you ask that question of where's the objectivity, you really need to turn it inward and ask, "wait, what's not, why can't I find this?"

Will: Yeah, I - because I was raised in such a high control religion, and because I was in a marriage that was very unhealthy, where my son and I were victims, I know what it's like to be in a mindset where there's lots of evidence in front of you that contradicts your life, but you cannot interpret it that way. Like, I can look back at my marriage and from the very beginning see the red flags.

I kept journals, I have all these memories, right? I see the red flags from the very, very beginning. At the time, I just couldn't interpret it that way because I had this underlying assumption in my mind that this is the man I'm supposed to marry because I think God told me to. Right? So nothing could come in between me and that belief. All of his behavior that was otherwise was just a weird aberration, a weird exception, but overall he's a great guy. Right?

That's just how my brain programmed it. And similarly to being Mormon, like I was a true absolute believer, 100%. And until I switched how I was thinking of things of, "wait, I can't really determine if this is like the true church or not, if I'm starting with the assumption that it's true." And once I switched and said, "okay, I'm starting from a blank slate, let me see where the evidence falls" I was out in two weeks.

And I think there's a lot of people in this trans battle, the people who are about, you know, internalized homophobia and autogonophilia and the white supremacists and the real TERF people, they have a belief like that. That's so strong that no matter how much evidence they see, it will not break that belief until they themselves decide to switch or let that go. Or make, you know, see it from a different perspective. And that has to be something within them. The creator of Harry Potter could get all the evidence in the world right in her face. And she'd still double down because that's how our brains work. It's not that it's not because someone's evil. I mean, but like, you know, like, I and it's not because someone's stupid.

Jess: Right. Thank you for saying that. I think this is really important and doesn't actually get a lot of play because it's a tricky topic. But these are all just people and our brains are not, they're not really reality interpreters or videotapes for recording. They are anticipation machines trying to keep us alive. That's what they're trying to do. That's what those beliefs helped you to do to stay safe in your marriage until it was no longer right for you. We come along these journeys and all of us have this stepwise, "well, I was here until that wasn't okay, and then I needed to do this." Like, we don't come to truth for a while because safety always comes first.

Will: Right. And not even safety. I heard this recently. We don't actually seek safety. Our lizard brains don't seek safety. They seek familiarity.

Jess: That's a good point. Yes, you're right. It's more familiar.

Will: What was familiar to us in childhood is what we seek out, which is, you know, I had emotionally immature parents. I ended up in an emotionally immature marriage, in an emotionally immature church. It was all familiar. I didn't know any difference. So for me, that felt like safety, but it actually wasn't. When we're in these strongly held beliefs, evidence doesn't work. Facts don't matter. You have to throw that out. So you have to get somehow on the other side of that.

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Jess: Okay, tell us how to do that. How do we do that with trans healthcare, with trans people, trans humanity?

Will: It's exactly what I'm trying to do, right? When I write. So first of all, you're never going to get 100 % of people. So let's just let that go. There's a, there's like a rule of thumb from management, business management. That's the 10 80 10 rule. 10 % of people, if we translate it to what we're talking about to communications, 10 % are resistant and will just double down. You'll never get them. Like I went to a counter protest the other day, there was a trans day of visibility activity at the library. So protesters came. So a bunch of counter protesters came and I was one of the counter protesters and there were a handful of protesters. One of them will just kept on had a MAGA hat on, had a, was filming and just kept on yelling at us, groomer and you're going to hell and hands off our kids. That's a 10 percenter. At least for now. Right?

Like talking to him, having a conversation with him wouldn't - it would just make me mad, it would make him mad and we'd polarize. Right? There were other people there that there was one man who was a preacher on their side, and there was a preacher on our side, both Christian. And there's a great picture of them talking that made it into the newspaper. Just these two Christian men talking to each other. Both of them are using Christianity to justify their position. Right? So they can come together and find what do we have in common? We both believe in Jesus. We both believe in Jesus's message. Let's start from there. And then you could say, OK, how are you using Jesus's message to say we're bad? And how are you using it to say Jesus loves trans kids? So that's something called ⁓ the latitude of acceptance or the latitude of tolerance.

Like if we have a spectrum of beliefs and I'm on one end and you're on the other end, me repeating my beliefs won't help you at all. And you repeating yours won't help me at all. If we can find something that's just an inch closer to me from you and talk there, where can we agree? Like talking to my sister, we can talk about our kids, right? We can agree we love our children, right? That's where you need to start. Somewhere close to where they are. So there's the 10 % that you'll never get, then the 10% you have. That's great. They're allies, but you're an echo chamber if that's the only people you're talking to. Right. And there's a good reason to be in there and get that empowerment and safety. Right. But then the 80 % of the middle are flexible. They're pliant. They're persuadable. And that's who I'm trying to talk to with my Substack writing.

So first we have that, you know, the population. They are open-minded. They may not know anything about trans health. They may have a trans kid, but they're all somewhere like still struggling with, don't get it, or "I have the inaccurate information." And a really key thing is when people get a piece of information that contradicts their understanding of the world, we can call that an identity threat. We tend to reject it and get defensive. Right.

So for example, I think of myself as an anti-racist person. And if someone says to me, that thing you did is racist. If my first response is "no, I'm a good person. can't be racist. So therefore that thing I did was not racist." Like that's not going to help anybody. Right. And we got to get people to understand that like, if I'm just going out saying, "you're transphobes, you're hopeless." It's not going to do any good.

Jess: Yeah, that has entrenched people in their beliefs for centuries, like avoiding being called racist, trans, like, they're like white supremacists in KKK robes saying, I'm not racist. Yeah, like that that's not gonna work. It's never worked.

Will: Right. It's like my sister says she's not transphobic because she has a trans brother. And that's actually doesn't qualify.

Jess: Like, aren't the same thing, but people have these held identities and you can't attack those as a way of trying to get a message.

Will: If you attack that, even accidentally, if you get people on the defensive, then they're in fight or flight mode. And you cannot learn in fight or flight mode. You react, you get defensive, you get angry, anything that is going to be your coping mechanism to get that defense away. So we also have to get past that. a really good, I think a lot of people read it, I hope, the idea of nonviolent communication. I know, I have the book on my shelf and it's basically just like tools and approaches to use to help both parties or all parties feel heard, feel validated, and get past those defenses so that you can actually come to some new understanding. It's, it's also called the language of compassion.

And it really is about compassion and empathy for the other person. Even though you disagree with them, you can have compassion. Like, I disagree with people that say trans kids shouldn't get surgeries. But I can have compassion for and empathy for, they're worried about their kids. They're afraid their kids are going to get hurt. And I have a kid so I can connect there, right? And that's a place to start.

So there's four basic steps to nonviolent communication. We've got observations, feelings, needs, and requests. And these are similar to other things. Yeah. Observations, feelings, needs, requests. It's similar to like other effective communication tools. You know, there's a lot of different ones. There's the three C's and, know, using I statements, "I feel blah, blah." Right. Right. Very similar to those, but this is - first start with observations without judgment, no value judgment. What you're just stating what you see.

So I'll give an example of, from my own work from this week. I have a follower on sub stack that, you know, is trans, seems to be a great guy. He's also intersex and he's very big about speaking up for intersex issues and intersex rights, which absolutely yes. And I've found a couple of times lately where I've posted, including on the one that you mentioned earlier, I put like quick facts about youth. And he's like, "you forgot intersex people." Right. And he's - a big, long comment with capital letters and, you know, really getting down on me. Like, why didn't you include my people? And my professor persona definitely popped up.

Jess: Yeah, just went into typing mode.

Will: That's my defense mechanism of like, well, I didn't include intersex people because I'm not talking about intersex people. I'm talking about trans people. And then I was like, hold on, Will, hold on, let me step back. So instead of saying what my initial reaction of "why are you always bringing up intersex issues when it's outside of my point, it's outside the scope of my argument right now," I could say what I observe. "I noticed you commented on how intersex issues relate to the stock." Very nondemandamental, just a statement of fact.

It can bring us to the next step in our feelings. So we have to think about their feelings and your own feelings and honor them both. So like I said, my feelings of defensiveness came up. Both my professor persona and my perfectionism. Like I missed something. I got something wrong and that is terrifying to me. Right. I'm trying to get over it, but it's there. Right. I can acknowledge it. I can say, I see you. Let's let that go. But in nonviolent communication, I wouldn't say his statement caused my feelings. His statement was a stimulus. And then my history and my own coping mechanisms caused that feeling of defensiveness, of shame, of whatever. So I really just sat with myself and asked why. And I can see my professor persona and my perfectionism were felt attacked here.

And that has nothing to do with him. Right. He - so then I can think about him. He is acting out of his own hurts and his own history. And as an intersex person, a long history of being erased, right? Most people don't even know intersex people exists at all. And when they do and they're born, they usually get operated on such that they're forced into a binary. Right. So his history of erasure and stigma was being brought up.

My words were stimulus for his feelings like that. Instead of again, like, "I wasn't even talking about that, you know, why are you always bringing that up?" Which is - might be my initial reaction. Instead, I typed, "I can see how frustrated you are. And rightly so. Honestly, I'm not intersex myself, and I feel inadequate to speak to the issues." And so that's like stating my feelings and acknowledging his feelings. And I could also ask about his feelings, of course, it was a conversation, a person I met. And then we can move to needs. So his anger and frustration and my shame and professor are coming out of some need that isn't being met. Right? Is it a need for love? Is it need for being seen? Is it need for belonging? All my life, I haven't been seen. I haven't had belongingness. These things get easily triggered. Right. Those things haven't been met. So I can acknowledge that by saying like, it must be so exhausting to be erased over and over. And I can do better to practice allyship for intersex communities and be more sensitive to how I talk about intersex issues related to trans issues. So instead of saying, this was about gender affirming care and, gender affirming care isn't done on intersex kids. Well, then those surgeries are done. It's not gender affirming care, right? Which is actually part of what I wrote.

You know, I'm not perfect, but like having that like internal, you know, I could do better. I could be more sensitive on this. That would only help. Right. Yeah. And then you go to move to requests and specifically your request, what you want, not what you don't want. So a different example, like, "I need you to not work all the time. I need you to work less." That's not the way to approach it. It was like, "I would love to have you home more" positive way to frame it. So I could ask this person, I want to be a better ally. Would you share with me any resources you trust that I could read? Or if I'm asking someone else to practice trans allyship, I could say, would you please look over this website before we talk again and come to me with questions and talk about it? You know, that's like a specific request. Like I've asked my sister multiple times, please read some books, because you're using language in a completely different paradigm than mine. And we're not going to be able to understand each other until you have this basic vocabulary. She said, no. So here we are. But you can make that request. And of course they have that responsibility to answer or not. So that's not the basics of nonviolent communication. It really is about finding empathy for them and for you figuring out where those feelings are coming from and asking for what you need.

Jess: I would definitely encourage anybody who's listening to this, think about something that comes up in a conflictual conversation and then go to this framework and kind of play that through. Like, how would you go through an argument like that? How could this look? Cause I feel like if we get the reps in, it can actually become part of just a working part of how we talk to other people. It's hard though. I can imagine I'm like feeling myself, like some of these conversations.

I don't want to be getting into a debate about my own humanity. Yes. Which is where I struggle at times.

Will: Yes. That is a very key point. We're not having debate about pineapple on pizza. We're debating about our humanity. Again, with my sister, that's one reason why I'm not coming to her with like, "hey, can we have a nonviolent communication talk?" She's still at the point of debating my humanity. And like, I think Ben Shapiro has like challenged Chase Strangio to a debate. "Let's go, let's debate the trans issue, seat is open," you know, and Chase, for anyone who know, is a fabulous lawyer, trans. He spoke in front of the Supreme Court in December about gender-affirming care, works for ACLU, and he said, no, it's not a debate. I'm not going to debate myself into pretending that my life is a debate.

Jess: It's not a - yeah, I will not dignify this.

Will: Yeah. So if I could think of like an example where this kind of communication around trans issues might help. I have like an acquaintance, she used to work with my husband and I've met her a couple of times, right? And I posted something about a couple of years ago about trans kids, trans kids deserve care, something like that. And she texted, she texted me saying like, "but I don't want them doing surgeries on kids, isn't that damaging? They're too young to decide, right?" And so I came back to that of like, of course you would be afraid to have your little daughter operated on for any reason, especially when you think it's unnecessary, right? But that's actually not what's happening, right? So like, I could come to her and be like, they're just lying to you.

Jess: Yeah, that's what comes up in my mind. Not happening. You heard me take a deep breath.

Will: Yeah. Right. That's not happening. So that's not going to help her. That's not going help her listen. That's going to help her get defensive. And now both of you are defensive and can't - you know, so instead I, you know, I had empathy for her. It helped that she's a person I know. And I know her wife and I know her daughter and you know, so it was definitely easier for me to have empathy for that. But you need to have figure out how to have empathy with strangers if that's who you're talking to, as well, find some commonality and, you know, approach that with like, first acknowledge and validate their feelings. Cause that will help them get out of fight or flight. When you're all caught up in those feelings, you're not ready to learn. So you need to have those seen, validated, somebody have empathy for them, even if you don't have them or agree with them, just to have them seen and validated, you know, it's just like, well, you know, when we have a little conflict with a spouse. I just want you to acknowledge you upset me, you know?

Jess: To be heard before we can hear. Yes, that's just humanity.

I really love talking to people about what's giving them some joy or trans joy. I think either that or what's one thing you hope sticks with people after listening to our conversation. If you think you can cover both of them.

Will: Yeah, I think empathy and compassion. And joy is one of the things I teach about. I mean, that's how we met, right, from my seminar. Right. And so I really do love to focus on joy. And something that's giving me joy is these past two weeks, I've had like two of my creative writing pieces accepted to be published. And I have two live storytelling stories that also got accepted that I'll be giving next month. And so it just feels really good to finally be seen and see - for people to see my creative writing skills and my stories as valuable and touching because they're all this mix of trans and trauma and my son and, you know, authenticity all mixed in. I'm glad it brings me joy to know that people are reading those stories who otherwise wouldn't be hearing anything about trans people. And it's, it's helping them see things a little bit different.

Jess: Wonderful. And I'm so I'm so glad that you exist and that you stepped into your authenticity so you could be seen and that we could we could see you. It's been really lovely getting to know you. Thank you. I feel a lot of kinship with the way you've had to go through the world and the way that you're trying to live in the world now.

Will: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast and letting us have this conversation.

Jess: Big thanks to Will for being part of this conversation. I really appreciated our time. So whether you're pushing back against a tide of misinformation, trying to connect across political or personal divides, or just figuring out how to show up in your values more clearly. You are definitely not alone. These are not easy conversations, but they are necessary. And if you're listening to this podcast, I know you're someone who probably wants to meet this moment with integrity, with empathy and courage. So if this episode sparked something for you, please share it with someone who's ready to listen. You can rate, you can review, you can subscribe. So these conversations get out to more folks. And as always, thank you for being here.

Take care of yourselves and each other and we'll see you here next time.