Episodes

Trans 101: How to Be an Ally Without Making It Weird

Good intentions, it turns out, are not the same thing as good allyship — and sometimes they can actually make things worse. In this season finale, diversity consultant Davey Shlasko breaks down the unconscious assumptions that make pronouns harder than they should be, why trying harder often backfires, and what being a genuine ally actually looks like in practice. Woven through his advice, you’ll hear from the community voices you’ve met all season talking about what it feels like to be on the receiving end. We cover the science of why you “miscategorize” trans people, how to recover from misgendering without making it about yourself, and how to show up for trans people even when there are no trans people in the room. Plus: a pronoun exercise that is genuinely kind of fun. If you’ve listened to this whole season, this episode is where it all lands. 

Resources from Davey Shlasko:

Citations and further reading:

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Ashley: I remember the first time I ever misgendered someone. I was probably 25 dressed as Li Lou from the Fifth Element at this after party for a nerd convention. We were drinking and there standing to my right in a group of people chatting, was the first trans person I’ve ever really talked to. And at some point waiting for my turn to speak over the loud music, I referred to something she’d said and I said, he.

[00:00:47] Ashley: She wasn’t mad about it, but she was definitely annoyed. She loudly corrected me. I apologized profusely.

[00:00:47] Ashley: It took the rest of the party for me to recover. It still pops into my brain at 2:00 AM sometimes. But it’s taken me this long to see it from her perspective.

[00:00:47] Ashley: This was the end of a very long day full of meeting new people where she was probably misgendered over and over and had to stay polite about it every [00:01:00] time. Now here was this drunk girl in an orange wig calling her, he being corrected and then being weird about it for the rest of the night. It would be enough for me to just take my things and go home.

[00:01:34] Ashley: Maybe you have a story like this, maybe you don’t. Maybe you just clam up around trans people because you’re too scared of messing up. Or maybe you get so excited to signal that you’re safe, that you say something cringe like, I couldn’t even tell you were trans. Or, I think it’s so brave what you’re doing.

[00:01:54] Ashley: Why do we do this? Why can’t some of us just be normal? Part of it is just numbers. Trans people make up a tiny portion of the population, and many cis people don’t get enough experience around trans people for them to stop feeling like a novelty for us to stop treating them like a novelty.

[00:01:54] Ashley: The antidote I think is pretty simple in theory and really hard in practice. You [00:02:00] need to know enough trans people that they stop being a novelty, and until you get there, you need some actual skills. Because winging it on good intentions is clearly not working.

[00:02:21] Ashley: That’s what this episode is for. You’re gonna learn about the unconscious assumptions that make pronouns harder than they should be. The ways well-meaning people accidentally make trans people into their personal learning experiences and what being a good ally actually looks like. Woven through all of that, you’ll hear from the community voices you’ve met throughout this season talking about what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

[00:02:58] Ashley: This episode is mostly for the CIS listeners, but if you’re trans, I don’t think you’ll wanna skip it. Sometimes it helps to have words for things you’ve only felt, and I hope at the very least you’ll feel heard.

[00:02:58] Ashley: Ready. Let’s close the gap between wanting to be an ally and actually being one.

[00:02:58] Ashley: This is Taboo Science, the podcast that answers the [00:03:00] questions you are not allowed to ask.

[00:03:48] Ashley: There are a lot of ways that well-intentioned cis people can accidentally cause harm.

[00:03:53] Davey Shlasko: I do know a lot of people who would absolutely think of themselves as allies, but who don’t realize how much their sort of interpersonal behaviors are causing problems for trans folks. And that can look like mispronouning, or misgendering, especially in front of other people because that can put someone at risk even without any ill intention.

[00:04:15] Ashley: That’s Davey Shlasko, a diversity and social justice consultant who works with all sorts of organizations to make their processes more inclusive and fair.

[00:04:24] Davey Shlasko: Getting someone’s pronouns right seems like such a small thing and we know it can have a really big impact. I mean we know that just from experience, but also people have gone so far as to do research and find that the more people call you the right name and pronoun, the more the better your mental health is. Right? So we know it can have a really big impact. It’s such a small behavioral thing [00:04:00] and it seems like it should be so easy, and yet some people have such a hard time with it.

[00:04:50] Ashley: Here’s Riley Black from the first episode.

[00:04:50] Riley Black: Yeah, if you misgender a trans person, we’re gonna be mad at you. And that’s okay for us to be mad at you. You’re just gonna have to live with that. If you feel guilt, then use that guilt to try and do better next time. But like, that’s just kind of what life is.

[00:05:08] Riley Black: It really does suck to be misgendered. Sometimes it rolls off your back like nothing. And sometimes, depending on the context and the situation, it can make me doubt my safety.

[00:05:22] Davey Shlasko: I got really interested in this when I was in graduate school, and a lot of the professors and classmates in my program were like, obviously so well intentioned and like really smart and caring people, and kept saying things like. It’s hard. We’re trying, you need to have patience. And they said that for like three years. And so at a certain point I was like, what if I just believed them that it’s hard and get curious about what is so hard about it. [00:05:00] Right.

[00:05:52] Davey Shlasko: What I found through my interviews then, and also through my training work since then is it really depends on the person and, and what makes it hard is different for different people. But for many people, the kind of personal work that it requires, is like some really deep unlearning because some of what gets in people’s way of just easily using the right pronoun is unconscious assumptions that they might not even agree with consciously that kind of trip them up.

[00:06:24] Davey Shlasko: So for one example, a thing that people have said to me in real life is like. Uh, if your voice was lower, it would be easier to call you he. And so I like to get curious about like, what, what’s the unconscious assumption? Like, what would you have to believe for that to make any sense?

[00:06:24] Davey Shlasko: You would have to believe that like all men have low voices and all women have high voices, right?

[00:06:48] Davey Shlasko: And even regardless of trans issues, that’s just obviously not true. [00:06:00] Um, but part of how the gender binary works is, is it sort of trains us to believe that it’s more extreme than it is.

[00:07:01] Ashley: You probably know cis men with high voices. You probably know cis women with short hair. You probably know short men and tall women and men who wear earrings and paint their nails, and women who have muscles or mustaches.

[00:07:14] Davey Shlasko: What feels really profound about that is that for most people, that doesn’t trip them up when they meet a cisgender man who happens to have a high voice. Like they might have all kinds of judgments and biases about him, right? But they’re not gonna accidentally call him she because he has a high voice.

[00:07:14] Davey Shlasko: So there’s something else underlying it that’s like, not only am I making assumptions about the binaryness of sex and gender, but also like, trans people in particular aren’t real unless they meet all of the really extreme expectations of fitting into one of those categories.

[00:07:48] Ashley: Here’s Hibby Thach, a trans woman who wears a mustache.

[00:07:52] Hibby Thach: Like I will go [00:07:00] places and they’ll be like, here you go sir. Here man, here, dude, or whatever. even if I like wore a full beat of like makeup, I was wearing a dress, I was doing all these things. Even if I was talking in like a really feminine affect or something like that, they see a mustache and they instantly think, man.

[00:08:10] Ashley: Research sheds some light on why this might be happening.

[00:08:19] Ashley: A 2021 study out of Northwestern University found a few consistent patterns in how cisgender people mentally represent trans people. The first was that cisgender groups were rated more positively than transgender groups overall.

[00:08:44] Ashley: The second was stranger. When participants described cisgender women and cisgender men, they differentiated clearly between them on traditional gender dimensions. Cis women were seen as more communal and more feminine. Cis men as more agentic and more masculine. But when describing transgender women and transgender men, those differences pretty much disappeared. Trans people weren’t seen as having qualities of [00:08:00] both genders or even qualities of the wrong gender. They were seen as sort of lacking gendered qualities altogether.

[00:09:03] Ashley: The researchers called this de gendering. It’s not that participants thought trans women were masculine, it’s that they didn’t fully register them as women. The study also measured gender essentialism, the amount that someone believes that gender is a fixed biological, inborn category. And that turned out to matter a lot.

[00:09:31] Ashley: In the parts of the study that measured implicit beliefs, people who believed more strongly in gender essentialism were way more likely to categorize trans people according to their sex assigned at birth, seeing trans women as more masculine and trans men as more feminine. And lower essentialism participants did the opposite. They categorized trans people in line with their gender identity.

[00:09:51] Ashley: In other words, how much you unconsciously believe that gender is fixed at birth predicts whether you’re mentally filing a trans woman [00:09:00] under woman or under something else. And most of us carry some version of that belief without knowing it, which is what makes Davey’s point about buried assumptions so important.

[00:10:11] Ashley: The problem usually isn’t hostility. It’s a mental filing system that was built before you realize trans people were part of the picture. We’ll talk about how to reorganize that filing system later in the episode.

[00:10:11] Ashley: But there are some other more surprising influences on whether someone uses the right pronouns too. Like the fact that how you feel about that individual trans person matters.

[00:10:35] Davey Shlasko: I noticed it in myself and I’ve also heard it from a lot of teacher friends that, like, they have lots of students who might change pronouns during the semester who might have a pronoun that’s different than what they would’ve guessed, right. With most students, they work at it and get it right, and with students who are annoying them, who are turning in work late, who are like not good participants, they have a harder time.

[00:10:59] Davey Shlasko: And I think that’s probably [00:10:00] not like as malicious as it might seem at first. Like it’s not as simple as like, I don’t like her so I don’t have to call her the right pronoun. It’s more like because some of my emotional energy is tied up in being annoyed, that like distracts me from thinking before I speak.

[00:11:28] Davey Shlasko: And so that’s in some ways actually maybe the same thing that gets in the way when people can reflect and say like, I can get it right when I’m practicing at home. But when I’m in the moment, i’m so anxious about getting it wrong that I get it wrong. And it’s the same thing. It’s like anxiety activates the part of the nervous system that does not do critical thinking and shuts down the part of the nervous system that allows you to think before you speak. And so very ironically, sometimes the harder you try, the harder it is. And so that’s part of why I want people to be practicing is it’s not about trying harder, it’s about trying something different.

[00:11:54] Ashley: In fact, your relationship with that trans person can affect your ability to gender them correctly in [00:11:00] all sorts of ways. If you’ve known the person since before their transition, it can be extremely hard to break the habit of using their old pronouns because it’s so ingrained, and that’s especially true if you’re a family member or romantic partner since their transition also changes your role.

[00:12:16] Ashley: You are no longer the mother of a son. You’re the mother of a daughter. You’re no longer someone with a girlfriend, you’re someone with a boyfriend.

[00:12:16] Ashley: Even how attracted you are to the person can matter.

[00:12:29] Davey Shlasko: I saw this even in terms of like very like casual, low key attraction. For a while when I was in graduate school, the way that I handled pronouns was to say like, I use all the pronouns, call me anything, like mixed up, whatever. Um, and I stopped doing that, not because I don’t like it, I really, I do like being called all the pronouns actually, but, they didn’t actually mix it up. What happened is each person picked one that they were most comfortable with. And it wasn’t a coincidence which one they picked, right?

[00:12:57] Davey Shlasko: So like the straight women [00:12:00] almost exclusively called me he. Queer women almost exclusively called me she. Queer men if they thought I was cute or if they like thought of trans people as part of their sexual community called me he, and if they didn’t think I was cute or if they’re like, kind of afraid of women in the way that some gay men might be, then they called me, she like to distance themselves from me.

[00:13:20] Davey Shlasko: Right. And I, I just found, like I was learning so much about other people by what they decided to call me, that I was like, that’s enough. We just need to make one rule. Because like, I don’t wanna know actually, like, i’m, I’m learning too much about how you see me as part of your community, or don’t, or how you see me as like belonging or not into your scene, based on what pronouns you decide when you have a choice. You know?

[00:13:49] Ashley: Oh, what about, straight men.

[00:13:51] Davey Shlasko: Those straight men just avoided talking about me.

[00:13:51] Davey Shlasko: Um, or to me, they just avoided it completely.

[00:13:58] Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. I, that [00:13:00] seems right.

[00:14:02] Ashley: But it’s not all misgendering. You can get someone’s gender right and still make them feel unsafe or invalidated or just less than. Like, for instance, asking a stranger about their genitals. We’ve been over this. If you wouldn’t ask a cis person what’s in their pants, don’t ask a trans person what’s in their pants.

[00:14:14] Ashley: But there are more subtle ways to alienate a trans person too. Here’s Maya from the Trans Youth episode.

[00:14:28] Maya: This person was like, oh wow, you’re so brave.

[00:14:35] Maya: Like, I can’t believe you are doing this. That’s so cool. You’re so brave. You’re so awesome. Uh, like the, you’re so brave thing. I’ve gotten a bajillion times over. It feels a little bit patronizing. Sort of canned response to whenever a trans person comes out, like, oh, you’re so brave for that. It’s like, okay, thanks.

[00:14:55] Ashley: It’s like, what? What else was I supposed to do? Really like,

[00:14:57] Maya: Yeah. What else am I supposed to do?

[00:14:59] Davey Shlasko: I see this with trans [00:14:00] kids, but happens in all kinds of adult relationships too. That for would be allies, that person being trans is the most interesting thing about them, and it might not be the most interesting thing about them to them. it’s, It’s great to be curious about your friends and stuff, but make sure that you’re being curious not only about their gender, make sure that you’re like, not asking inappropriately personal questions and making sure that you’re being curious about what matters to them, what they’re interested in, what they’re excited about in the world, not just they’re being trans.

[00:15:41] Ashley: When we come back, how a small change to the way you introduce yourself can make a big difference. What to actually do when you misgender someone and how to show up for trans people even when there are no trans people in the room. Stay tuned.[00:16:00]

[00:16:13] Ashley: So that’s what not to do. But what should you do? Being a good ally who doesn’t misgender people or say weird shit and can hold a full conversation with a trans person where their gender never even comes up? How do you do that?

[00:16:13] Ashley: Let’s start with pronouns. The simplest thing you can do for the trans people around you is to include your pronouns every time you introduce yourself.

[00:16:36] Davey Shlasko: It will be really awkward at first. But in some settings you can just start to [00:15:00] make it normal by every time you introduce yourself, say your pronoun, and invite them to share theirs. Um, and I think it’s really important that this not be mandatory because sometimes for trans people sharing a pronoun can be dangerous.

[00:16:53] Davey Shlasko: It can be outing. People can then be much more aware of your transness and that can attract negative attention. Right. Um, and so that makes it even more important that cis people can sort of model not only, I’m not assuming anyone’s pronoun until I know, but also. I’m assuming you can’t tell mine until I tell you either.

[00:17:16] Davey Shlasko: I’m not saying like, well, of course you can tell by looking about me, but I’m gonna ask, I’m saying like, no one can tell about anybody by looking and we’re all gonna be able to tell each other how we like to be treated and how we like to be talked to.

[00:17:29] Ashley: And consider this. Do you even need to know their gender? In a lot of cases, the answer may be no. In the same way, you don’t need to make every conversation with a trans person about [00:16:00] gender, you also don’t need to make gender the first thing you talk about with a new person. You can just skip it until it’s necessary, and you might be surprised how long you can go before it is necessary.

[00:17:51] Ashley: Davy did this on a blind date of all things.

[00:17:55] Davey Shlasko: One time I went on a blind date with another person who’s also named Davey And I thought that was hilarious. They weren’t using their real name on the website, so I didn’t know that until we got to this coffee shop. Right. Um, and it was like a totally fine, okay, one coffee date. And I, I thought this was so funny, and I told my coworkers about it on Monday and they were, they thought it was funny too, and they said, oh, is that Davey, do they use she or she? And I was like, I don’t, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Like that it wasn’t, wasn’t coming up. Like, what’s that Davey’s gender? I don’t know. It was, it was not the most relevant thing, so I didn’t ask. Um, and that idea that someone’s gender is not always, not even, usually the most [00:17:00] relevant thing can be really, um, really liberatory, I think for all people.

[00:18:51] Ashley: Here’s Benny from the Trans Youth episode.

[00:18:54] Benny: Oh, the biggest thing that allies can do is try to break down our own assumptions about other humans. To remember that unless we know for sure new people that we meet may be different than we think they are at first glance. And gender is one of the ways that, that might be true. But it can be a lot of other things too.

[00:19:11] Benny: Right? We don’t know somebody’s disability status by looking at them. We don’t know whether or not they grew up with money or poor. And of course gender is the area I experience it the most, but trying to break down those assumptions and just enter into relationship with people from a more open-minded place is gonna help everybody and I think it helps trans people particularly a lot.

[00:19:35] Ashley: Here is Charlie James from early in the season.

[00:19:38] Charlie James: I am personally a fan of a sort of like blanket use of they them pronouns for [00:18:00] anyone that you don’t know. I know a lot of trans people don’t like that because they’re like, especially on the binary, they’re like, I worked so hard to transition to look like this. And if you can’t tell I’m a woman, or if you can’t tell I’m a man, then like, it hurts me that you’re not assuming.

[00:19:57] Charlie James: But I really do think it’s, it’s easier just socially to be like, I don’t know, because so many people present a certain way and use a pronoun that like you might not assume aligns with that. Um, so that’s sort of what I do. Unless, unless I’m incredibly, incredibly confident that they are, I’m picking up what they’re putting down.

[00:20:24] Ashley: The difference is what you actually know. They them is a good starting point when you’re genuinely uncertain. But if you know someone is a trans woman and you’re using they to avoid saying, she, that’s not being neutral, that’s avoiding the topic. And she can probably tell.

[00:20:41] Ashley: So say you know their pronouns and you mess up anyway, what do you do? Well, what you [00:19:00] shouldn’t do is make it about yourself.

[00:20:49] Davey Shlasko: It’s as if someone told you you have spinach in your teeth, You don’t say, oh my goodness, how could that possibly be? I would never, like, I have such good dental hygiene like that.

[00:20:58] Davey Shlasko: I’m not that kind of person, right? So similarly, if someone says, you just called me the wrong gender, you should not say, oh my God, I can’t believe I did that. That would never happen. I’m such a good ally. Like I really, that’s not helpful. It’s defensive, it’s distracting, it’s making it about you, really. And instead what you can just say is, I’m sorry, I should have said.

[00:21:16] Davey Shlasko: and then say the thing you were about to say, but with the right pronoun and continue having the communication you’re trying to have.

[00:21:27] Ashley: I know it feels like you’ve done a terrible thing, and the right thing to do is give a heartfelt apology, but that will actually make things worse. Here’s Newt Schottelkotte from the non-binary episode.

[00:21:40] Newt Schottelkotte: I’m on the spectrum and one of the things that I learned about growing up were social scripts, social situations, [00:20:00] and where we have all kind of unconsciously accepted that there is a set list of things that you say and a set way that an exchange is supposed to go.

[00:21:57] Newt Schottelkotte: So, for example, let’s. Say you’re talking to someone, you’re like, how are you doing? And they say, oh, well it’s been really tough because my dog just died. The social script in that situation is you go, oh my god, I’m so sorry. Do you wanna talk about it? Do you wanna show me pictures? They decide how much they’re willing to share, and then you move from there.

[00:22:17] Newt Schottelkotte: Right? And so when somebody accidentally misgenders you or accidentally uses the wrong name and the person in question, like quickly corrects you and you go, oh my god, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. That activates the social script of I just did a booboo right. And. You know, when we, when we accidentally mess up in any aspect of a social situation and we start like profusely apologizing, the [00:21:00] next line is from the person who was the recipient of the booboo.

[00:22:52] Newt Schottelkotte: Oh, no, don’t worry. It’s totally okay. Right? Even if we don’t consciously clock that, that social script has been activated. That’s the social script. And so now the onus is on the trans person to go, don’t even worry about it. It’s fine. You’re all good, because the next line is not. Yeah, that was a shitty thing to do because I’ve told you like seven times what my name is and you really should remember it by now.

[00:23:17] Newt Schottelkotte: It is no, it’s totally fine. Don’t worry about it. So. It is be who of cis folks to be conscious of that social script once you have been made aware of it and activate the far better social script of what happens when you accidentally bump into somebody’s cart at the supermarket and just go, oh, oops, my bad, and move on.

[00:23:46] Ashley: Another thing you wouldn’t do if you had spinach in your teeth or bumped into someone at the supermarket is come back three days later to re apologize, which [00:22:00] is definitely an urge I’ve had. Here’s Maya again.

[00:23:59] Maya: My biology professor came up to me as I was walking into school one day and was like, I’m so sorry for misgendering you in class the other day. And I was like, you misgendered me in class the other day? Why would you tell me that?

[00:24:12] Davey Shlasko: There’s no need to bring it up again, and especially don’t bring it up again, like, in front of other people or, or while the person is trying to concentrate on other things. Right. I think it sometimes can be appropriate to bring it up again depending on your relationship, not in the context of, I just wanted to apologize again, but maybe in a context of saying, like, for accountability, I wanted you to know that, like, I’ve been thinking about that and not just to beat myself up, but to figure out how I can get better at this.

[00:24:27] Davey Shlasko: And so here’s my plan about how I’m gonna not mess up again. that could be a useful kind of circle back depending on the nature of your relationship. If it’s someone you know very casually, probably not. And this is again, the sort of [00:23:00] imbalance in numbers, right, is you may have had that experience once with one person this week, and they may have had it 20 times a day this week, and they don’t have time to have a follow-up conversation about every single one of those errors.

[00:25:12] Ashley: The burden is on you to work on this privately. I’m not saying it’s easy. Habits are hard to break — even harder when they’re formed from the ways you’ve categorized the world since childhood.

[00:25:12] Ashley: But everyone can practice. Davy has a few exercises that can help.

[00:25:30] Davey Shlasko: Get really specific about what’s in your way, which might be different than what’s in someone else’s way. What makes it hard to get pronouns right? And you can do that through mindfulness exercises of sort of imagine yourself in this situation that you’ve been in, where you know what pronoun to use and you use the wrong one anyway. And what comes up. Notice what comes up in your body and your emotions and your thoughts. Notice what kinds of excuses you catch yourself making even if [00:24:00] only in your head. And then do a sort of intellectual exercise of drilling down and saying, okay, so if, if my excuse that I come up with is this, what does that imply? The same way we talked about earlier with the voice example. Maybe it implies something about how all men and all women are, maybe it implies something about trans people as a group. And then remind yourself what’s actually true.

[00:26:20] Ashley: Davy stresses that it’s not enough to just tell yourself. Not all men have low voices. Your unconscious doesn’t understand negatives very well. Instead, use positive generalities. Like people of all genders can have all kinds of voices.

[00:26:20] Ashley: People’s genders are what they say they are, no matter how they sound to me. Remind yourself what’s actually true so you can start to undo that unconscious belief.

[00:26:51] Ashley: Another exercise Davey recommends is to assign pronouns to things you own and practice referring to them out loud. I did this with my makeup. As I’m getting ready in the morning, I act like an influencer and narrate my [00:25:00] routine.

[00:26:51] Ashley: I grab my foundation sponge and I say he is gotta get some water on him before he is ready to use. And later I get my eyeshadow brush and narrate the colors that she’s gonna put on my eyes. The mascara is non-binary. Sometimes the blush gets a neo pronoun. Then the next day I switch. The sponge is a she, and the eyeshadow brush is a they and the mascara is a he.

[00:27:15] Ashley: Not only does this get you used to using different pronouns and not feeling beholden to the first one you associated with someone, but it’s legitimately fun to do. And when an exercise is fun, it keeps the shame and anxiety from creeping in.

[00:27:36] Ashley: Try this with something you use every day and let me know how it goes: ashley@tabooscience.show.

[00:27:59] Ashley: There’s one more thing you can do to be a good ally to trans people, and that’s to show up for them when there are no trans people in the room.

[00:28:07] Davey Shlasko: I think particularly in this political moment, it is helpful to say, you know, as relevant to the conversations that are [00:26:00] happening, like say that you support trans people existing in public space and having access to healthcare and having access to ID documents and all of the things that, that people are taking away from us right now.

[00:28:27] Davey Shlasko: Sometimes also I think it’s important to remember that you rarely know for sure that there are no other trans people in the room. You’re just guessing. And you especially know if someone else in the room might have a trans relative or a trans best friend or, in some other way be closely connected with trans community.

[00:28:47] Davey Shlasko: So for that reason, it’s really important to interrupt if someone says something that’s intentionally or unintentionally hostile to trans people.

[00:28:56] Em Matsuno: We are at a point where we need action.

[00:28:59] Ashley: That’s Em Matsuno from the non-binary episode. They’re an assistant professor of counseling psychology at Arizona State University.

[00:29:06] Em Matsuno: Acceptance and understanding is, is very important and needed, but going beyond that to actually fight with us [00:27:00] ’cause we’re tired as trans and non-binary people and we are constantly debating others about the validity of our identities or showing up to try to protest these bills.

[00:29:32] Em Matsuno: And so I, I think that cis allies can really play a huge role by doing some of that labor. so if you become educated about some of these things, you can help educate others, even if that’s like family members or friends. But having those one-on-one conversations and saying, that’s actually a myth because this, this, and this, and like doing that education work can help prevent like trans people and non-binary people from having to be the only ones doing that education.

[00:29:52] Em Matsuno: Or that could also mean, you know, at the legislative level, like showing up for protests or writing, emailing, calling. Make a six month plan. Like, okay, within the next six months I do have the capacity where I could, you know, write emails to legislators or I could volunteer with this one organization and I could volunteer at events once a month.

[00:30:14] Em Matsuno: Even those little things. But [00:28:00] I think for sustainability, like, planning ahead on just some kind of action that you can take goes a long way. Even if like, whatever advocacy you do doesn’t change the policy, the effort of doing it and showing up and like just that visible support helps trans people feel like, okay, other people do care.

[00:30:36] Em Matsuno: And not everybody is against me. Like there are, there are supportive people.

[00:30:38] Ashley: And there are supportive people. Davey has lots of hope for the future, including for individual people and their capacity for change.

[00:30:47] Davey Shlasko: I see it happening at an individual level, mostly when someone has someone they’re close to in their life who comes out as trans, and then they work really hard at it and start to think of all other trans people more favorably as well.

[00:31:00] Davey Shlasko: I also have hope about that in the sense that so many more young people are feeling free to express their gender younger and also more confidently and not like waiting for permission. And I think in many [00:29:00] ways, folks who are not interested in getting better at relating to trans people as peers in their community are just gonna miss the boat.

[00:31:22] Davey Shlasko: Like It’s happening, like you don’t get a choice about that. You do have trans neighbors and friends and classmates and colleagues. And the more that folks are empowered and organized and connecting with each other as well as with cisgender allies, the, the more that individual allyship is just gonna be like obvious and easy.

[00:31:42] Ashley: And even though we’re in a really dangerous time for trans people politically, davey also has hope for society at large.

[00:31:49] Davey Shlasko: There’s this old activist adage that first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win. We got to the fighting part finally. The reason there is so much backlash against trans rights is because like trans people are inevitably part of public life now.

[00:32:06] Davey Shlasko: It, you can’t put the cat back in the bag. We’ve kind of already won and the system is having these like death throes of [00:30:00] transphobia.

[00:32:26] Ashley: History says the trans community will survive this, but history also shows the cost of that survival falls on individuals, on people who needed more support than they got. That’s what this is really about. Not the arc of history, the person in front of you.

[00:32:49] Ashley: When I started this season, I told you I wasn’t an expert. I was a science writer who thought she knew more about trans people than she did, and I wanted to find out what I was missing. Turns out it was a lot.

[00:33:10] Ashley: I found that the science of gender identity goes deeper than most people realize, and that medical transition has decades of evidence behind it that rarely makes it into public conversation. I found that non-binary identity isn’t a trend or a phase, and that people have been defying the gender binary in every era and every culture. That trans people navigate dating and love and heartbreak the same way everyone does, and that they shouldn’t have to carry the extra weight of someone else’s [00:31:00] discomfort on top of it all. I found that almost nobody is right about trans kids or trans athletes or detransitioners, and listening to their stories instead of turning them into cautionary tales is the first step in fixing the mess.

[00:33:35] Ashley: And I found that being a good ally is not a status you achieve. It’s a practice. You’re gonna mess up. The goal is to get better at it and to keep going.

[00:33:35] Ashley: Thank you to every researcher, clinician, and trans person who let me into their lives and their work this season.

[00:34:04] Ashley: And thank you to you for listening, for deciding these questions for worth your time.

[00:34:04] Ashley: I’m Ashley Hamer Pritchard, and this is Taboo Science. Share this season with someone who needs it.

[00:34:31] Ashley: Thanks for listening. If you’re a paid Patreon member, stick around to the end of the credits for some bonus content.

[00:34:31] Ashley: If you’re not head to patreon.com/taboo science to join for as little as $5 a month, you’ll get ad free episodes and bonus clips that [00:32:00] you won’t find in the main feed. And because it’s the end of the season, I’m gonna schedule a Zoom hang for everyone on the $7 a month Tabooer tier.

[00:34:54] Ashley: So join in the next week to get that perk.

[00:34:54] Ashley: By the way, thank you to Brooke for joining at the Taboo Tier and to Shannon and Mike for joining at the Tabooer Tier. Thank you so much to Davey Shlasko. You can check out his company, Think Again Training and Consulting at thinkagaintraining.com, and you can pick up his book, the Trans Allyship Workbook, wherever books are sold, or at the link in the show notes. It’s got a lot more exercises than I was able to share here.

[00:35:20] Ashley: Taboo Science is written and produced by me, Ashley Hamer Pritchard. Our sensitivity reader is Newton Shottelkotte The theme was by Danny Lipka of DLC Music Episode. Music is From Epidemic Sound.

[00:35:42] Ashley: Well, that’s it. That’s the season. The show got nominated for an Ambie Award. The YouTube channel hit a million views. I talked to [00:33:00] Julia Serrano. I got an excuse to put my old college friend on my podcast. Thanks, Jamie. So many achievements. And best of all, so many of you reached out to tell me how the show has resonated with you. I really appreciate it. My hope is that this season lives on for anyone who needs some education or wants to give a loved one an easy entry point.

[00:36:09] Ashley: I’m now gonna take a few months off, and when I come back, we’re doing a garden variety Taboo Science season about all sorts of things. Circumcision, polyamory, and all the other questions you are not allowed to ask.

[00:36:09] Ashley: I hope you tune in. I won’t tell anyone.