Trans Safety During this (Latest) Anti-Trans Wave Series —Part 2 of 3: Where Do We Go from Here?
This article is one of a three part series which includes:
In part 1: ‘Where We Are and How We Got Here’ We laid out our trans-acceptance history and the foundations of our detractors’ beliefs and positions. A quick summary includes:
The Make America Great Again [MAGA] and Trans-exclusionary Radical Feminist [TERF] movements have the trans community in their collective cross-hairs. They are actively seeking to oppress, exclude and, in some cases, erase trans people through state and federal legislation. This attack is existential to the trans community and is a threat to all of us even if we are in blue states and / or trans safe regional bubbles like the San Francisco Bay Area. The reason that it is all of our fight is because if we are fighting just to have our existence acknowledged, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make headway in being included and accepted in the broader community. While community and political allies can help us, the fight is the trans community’s to win.
We are faced with a target rich environment for our efforts at hand. So, the first question to answer is, “Where do we focus our efforts?”
Narrowing Our Focus
In my work life I lead big, difficult organizational changes. I focus much of my effort on, among other things, how to bring various audiences on board with the change. My goal is always to usher in the change with little to no stumbling and to hit targets for adopting, over time, the new order of things. As applied to our trans plight, my instinct is to separate the various audiences so as to have more focused plans for ushering in trans acceptance. In this case, let’s label the audiences as trans community, allies, opponents, and enemies.
Trans Community — Includes anyone for whom their assigned at birth and publicly perceived gender is at odds with their own internal identification and experience of self. This internal self belief varies from the historical cultural binary that includes women and men only. We could spend multiple articles exploring the variations within the trans world. The simplest way to put it is that we do not want to ACT LIKE a woman / man / non-binary, we fully identify with being women / men / non-binary and feel as strongly about it as cis-identifying people. It is not about dawning attire and affectation. It is about expressing who we truly are.
Trans Allies — Those that support our right to express ourselves outside of the standard binary. These folks generally identify as cisgender (4) within the historical binary. While they may not understand us, they are inclusive of trans folks as a natural human variation and expression which are full and equal members of society. They may not always support us in the way that we might wish. But, they do support us in the way they can.
Opponents — Those that do not support trans people in expressing themselves, because they are uncomfortable with variations from the binary and usually have little to no experience with trans folks. They are persuaded against trans rights, and may feel that trans-ness is indicative of the feminization of the nation. However, they do not hold fundamental beliefs that trans people are evil or a danger to society. Opponents represent a large, uncomfortable crowd. While this group may reflexively reject us, they intend no personal harm. On the face of it, these folks seem anti-trans. However, their beliefs are malleable. This group is our focus.
Enemies — Those that hold a fundamental belief that trans people are evil and a danger to society. Eliminating trans people from their midst is a feature of their platform. These values are fundamental to this group and inextricably tied to their identity. They are committed to the full erasure of trans folks. These folks are few in number, yet an incredibly active and loud minority.
Note4: In 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary added the word “cisgender” to its ever-evolving listing. It defines the adjective as “designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds to his or her sex at birth” and is contrasted with “transgender.” It is a Latin derived term that is widely used to describe organic molecules based on the way groups attach to them three-dimensionally, on the same side or opposite sides.
Understanding Our Audiences
Thinking about that ‘pronouns’ seminar that I attended, the target audiences were ‘friendlies’, only trans folks and ardent allies. It was a preaching-to-the-choir presentation. It was telling us how to talk to us. Important knowledge for sure. That said, it does nothing to shift the more existential threats we are facing. For that, it is critical for us to engage unfriendly, unsupportive people.
The distinction between opponents and enemies is critical to this effort. I have read critiques and participated in discussions that label anyone in trans-opposition as enemies. This cannot be further from the truth and has the knock-on effect of dusting off our hands and giving up on people we need. It is self harming to call all these folks enemies. We need to engage our opponents.
Those that are truly trans enemies are actually a small number. That they are a small number is a good thing because they will not be convinced to alter their beliefs. For these folks, trans people as evil is part of their fundamental identity. While I might hold that framing as an abhorrent position, they feel completely justified to hold that belief. It is not going anywhere. So there is little point in engaging these true believers. The good news is that those who fall into the ‘opponents’ category are open to shifting beliefs that are not fundamental to their identity. Our work is to give them a gentle path to work through their discomfort.
Goals by Audience
In championing a national cultural shift to have trans folk be fully participating, fully expressed, fully equal members of society, we have specific goals by audience. No one shifts because they are told they are wrong, no matter how many facts you pile on them. People shift their beliefs because their own experiences put their current beliefs in question based on their own insights. We cannot MAKE them change. But we can ease their discomfort through non-confrontational engagement.
You may be asking the question, how do we tell our opponents from our enemies? By and large, we cannot make the distinction until we engage them.
Trans Community Goals
Empower and fortify ourselves to champion the change in society perspective. As noted in the LGBT sentiment timeline above, the medical community is supportive. Media was trending positively but is now mixed, highlighting right wing talking points as they pass trans-prohibitive state laws. The political / legal arena is a mess. Dobbs has shifted a lot of legislative power to the states. So the work to ensure trans rights is both national and regional.
Trans Allies Goals
Prepare our allies with accurate trans information and point them at things they can do to both empower our community and help get protections in place. Because their fundamental beliefs align with the trans community they will be able to process the information we provide.
Opponents Goals
From a change perspective this is the most important audience. Much like swing voters they are persuadable. Trans considerations likely do NOT hold primary, or even peripheral, position in their pantheon of daily concerns. They find trans people foreign to their experience and they are uncomfortable with the thought of a gender spectrum. The goal with this audience is to ratchet up their familiarity with trans folks as real people, experience positive portrayals of trans folks, and see where we have foundational commonalities. Note that this analysis is all about walking in their shoes and not about what they need to do to make trans people more comfortable. In fact, it is about making our opponents feel comfortable. This approach is focused on their fundamental beliefs and their immediate emotions.
Enemies Goals
True enemies will not change their perspective. Their beliefs are foundational to their identity. We are not going to influence this audience. The goal then is to neutralize this group. We not only want to repeal these draconian state laws, we want to eliminate the possibility of future anti-trans legislation. The chief way to do so is to build a much larger coalition for trans support by moving our opponents into the ally group or at least into no longer being an opponent. That provides for both a general cultural popular acceptance and a larger stable of potential future politicians and legal experts that support the trans community, which in turn means more supporters with legislative power. The concept is not about punishing enemies. We do not want to operate at that level. It is about removing their capability to legislate against us. They will continue to feed the media narrative. But with the increased support we are developing, our ability to feed media perspectives will outpace theirs. That voice will persist, but will be drowned out, media-wise and legislatively, by trans-positive voices.
Empowering and Fortifying Ourselves
How do we, in the trans community, shift the narrative? It starts with building our personal capacity. For those of you that want me to rail against our enemies, prepare for disappointment. Railing against our enemies is like peeing in dark pants. It feels good at first but we have nothing to show for it and ultimately it gets cold and uncomfortable. More bad news. The change we want in the world is on us.
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” — Mahatma Gandhi
With that in mind, how do we build our capacity to drive this noble work of garnering societal embrace. Again, as we dive into what we trans folks can do, I want to acknowledge that I have the resources and spaciousness to develop my capacities. Many trans folks living in survival mode may have far less wherewithal to do all of these things. That means that those of us that can, must!
Building Agency
Agency implies that we are able to exert power and take actions on our own behalf. It means that we self-empower to advocate for ourselves. Studies have shown that upper middle and upper class children are taught from a young age to question authorities and engage experts as partners, taking charge of navigating their own health care, education and other life aspects. [By authorities I mean medical, legal, academic, and other expert practitioners or in engaging government bureaucracies.] My takeaway is that agency can be taught and developed. To develop that agency we need to focus on how we generate our agency. There is a world of things on which we can spend our time. Our interests and passions automatically narrow our horizon. However, we need to do a bit more active narrowing.
Knowing Our Value
The most valuable thing that I have done for myself has been learning to love all of me, faults and all. I wish I could say that my self-love came together after I transitioned, but that would be a lie. First, I had to overcome my own internalized transphobia, [read the section on shame]. I had only heard negative things about trans folks before I transitioned. As mentioned earlier, my media-enforced trans role models were sex workers, serial killers and a few tragic figures. I had no role model for a tech industry leader, operations expert, or anything else resembling a powerful actor in the world. I was operating off the map and had to build my own road, integrating my suppressed feminine aspects and working through my rage. I also, as a trans woman, accepted the love I thought I deserved, enduring mediocre relationships and one really horrible one before I stepped off of the relationship merry-go-round to learn how to love my own company. I spent several years not dating, learning to love myself. I had completely given up on having a romantic relationship when I met and eventually married my wife. During that interim I learned to really love myself and to be comfortable with my own company. It certainly made me a better spouse.
What Do I Care About?
I have a bottle on my desk filled with wooden cut-outs of the word ‘FUCK’. That bottle represents for me all of the FUCKs I have to give in life. What I mean by that is that the bottle represents my capacity to truly care about various topics. Each of us has only so much of our attention to spread. For every new thing that comes my way I look at that bottle and ask myself, “Am I willing to give up one of my FUCKs for that new thing.” Most of the time, it’s a NO. I am not willing to give up one of my precious FUCKs for that new thing. This practice limits me from spreading myself too thin and diluting my focus.
What am I Going to Take Action On?
A step up from ‘Giving a fuck’ is being committed. When I make a commitment, it is concrete. For example, writing this article is a commitment that I made to positively add to the national transgender conversation. I only make commitments for things that I intend on doing, and I hold myself to account on completing that commitment. That way, I trust myself to deliver on those things that are most dear to me. When I make commitments to others, they trust me. Being trusted is a leg of the agency stool. While I ‘give a fuck’ about lots of things, my commitments are surgical. At any one time I only have a handful of commitments, and keep it that way. Through commitment-making I stay focused and productive.
How do I Grant Myself Safety?
Part of building your own agency is creating a personal safe-space as a way to remain grounded. For much of my life I have associated sanctuary with my home-space as a place to refresh and renew myself. My layout, cleanliness, and art pieces all reflect that sense of grounding and sanctuary. Unfortunately, a specific space is not always possible. If you are in a roommate situation, having a personal physical space may be limited to a room or even a bed. Creating that sanctuary may be only a temporary moment. My wife and I had a period of living apart, in temporary circumstances. When we were together during that period, my sanctuary lived largely in my head and was accessible only through meditation. That said, visiting that sanctuary often keeps me grounded. My sanctuary includes my own sense of peace, my family and close friends, and whatever personal space I can eke out at the moment.
Agency vs. Victimhood
For oppressed communities, people of color in the U.S. and Europe, Native Americans in the U.S., LGBT everywhere, etc., it is easy to feel victimized. With such virulent, continuous messaging that we are ‘sick’ or ‘evil’ or both it is easy to feel powerless. Unfortunately, reacting to circumstances as a victim at best provides no power and at worst gives permission for us to do horrible things. MAGA, WCN, and TERFs all operate on the grievance of victimization. They believe they have been wronged by trans folks in different ways. That sense of victimization justifies awful behavior — disrespect, bullying, objectification, demonization, and murder.
I acknowledge that we have been and are oppressed. Being a victim of that oppression does not serve us. It allows us to either do nothing, letting things fester as we rot from the inside, or exhibit the sort of hateful behavior I just described. Agency is the opposite of, and in many ways is the antidote for, victimization. It requires that we be in action instead of in grievance.
Maintaining Curiosity
I went on a date shortly after Trump was elected to office. We liberals were soul searching for how his ascendancy could have happened. My date was an attractive, bright middle aged optometrist. She spoke to me intelligently with well formed ideas. When our conversation veered into the MAGA movement, I asked what she thought was driving MAGA folks. Her reply was, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” Surprised, I followed up with, “If you don’t understand their motives, how will you persuade them differently?” She responded, “They need to get over themselves. I’ll wait.”
In my mind, her answer gave her a pass on any responsibility for making things better. She met intolerance with intolerance, a sure way to stop healthy engagement. To me, she was in essence saying, “Those people over there are wrong. They need to do the work to get themselves right and then come back to my position.” She effectively positioned herself as ‘right’ with no responsibility for the cleft between her side and their side. I guarantee that most of the MAGA constituents were doing the same about her position. Given the stasis she created with her dismissiveness, there was nowhere to go with those in opposition. She was completely incurious.
Don’t get me wrong. I find most of the MAGA, WCN, TERF positions abhorrent. That said, unless I try to understand the proponents of that point of view as people, our divide will continue to worsen. Rather than cut them off as the optometrist did, I set my judgments aside, and seek to understand where they are coming from via a couple of practices.
Adopting a ‘Beginner’s Mind’
For anyone practicing meditation or taking on spiritual practices rooted in Buddhism ‘beginner’s mind’ is a recognized fundamental in which we approach the world through a beginner’s eyes, taking in every engagement as if it is our first experience. Setting aside all of my previous knowledge and judgments, I approach each perspective as I engage them. I allow each voice, for at least that moment of consideration, to be my mentor so I can take in and fully examine what they are sharing. My agenda, when asking questions, is to obtain a pure understanding of them and their drivers.
Providing Empathy
By empathy I do not mean sympathy, feeling bad for them. I mean I attempt to walk a mile in their shoes. If I was them, why does that point of view make sense? What are my drivers, my fears, my passions? How am I the hero of my own story, given that perspective? Again, I do not have to believe in or even agree with their point of view. I simply am seeking to understand it.
Growing Our Confidence
When mentoring more junior folks, in my professional capacity, I give them confidence-building assignments. The assignments are designed to stretch them from their comfort zone, yet lead to a successful conclusion. Once they complete the challenge I give them a larger, more complex assignment. Incrementally they grow their capabilities. It’s a great way to build confidence.
Unfortunately, growing confidence as a newly-minted-out trans person is more complex than providing escalating challenges. A newly out trans person gets all the challenges all at once. Post transition, a trans person is faced with determining their expression via outward expression such as clothing, style, personal care, and extracurricular activities, and navigating dating in a new gender form, engaging in social interactions while being seen in a new way. I can say from experience, it is quite discombobulating.
Post transition a trans person is doing on-the-job training while making plenty of mistakes. Unless we transition when we are young, we do not have the luxury of making those mistakes as a teenager, when the stakes are lower, and then correcting ourselves into a polished adult. Rather we make those wardrobe choice mistakes and so on in front of everyone. We are in a deeply uncomfortable discovery process. As we work through that discovery process, we may be uncomfortable with ourselves and in engaging others. As we are mildly struggling and making those very public mistakes, our audience, the people around us, are generally unsupportive, ranging from queasy to hostile. My discomfort engenders discomfort in those around me. The dynamics are natural on both sides, However, for the trans person, it is not exactly a safe space.
To that end, many trans people become narcissistically focused as a way to not tap into the external negativity around us. In that narcissism they obsess over superficial looks as something they can control. They continuously ask that question, “Am I passible?” While we all labor with our own vanity, when it becomes an obsession, all their ‘fucks’ are consumed with superficial looks, surgery, clothing, and style as a way to make themselves socially desirable. It is a losing strategy in that superficial looks become the only conversation and effort. What underlies the obsession is the fear of being ‘found out’ or making up for something that is missing, so there is never enough one can do to erase the past. They throw their efforts into their own black hole of need. The effort never ends. Additionally, it is simply giving a new form to the shame of being trans.
In saying this, I want to be clear that I am NOT saying that people should not get cosmetic surgery, or develop their style of expression. I’m all for doing procedures that make me feel like I am expressing my internal self-view externally. However, I do those things for my own satisfaction, not to impress others out of a need to compensate for my unique origins. In other words, I maintain an internal locus [self-satisfaction] for my appearance rather than an external locus [pleasing others].
I realize that my real work is in relieving the socially-informed-shame for being what I am — a trans person. While I have certainly spent time, effort and money on my appearance, I spend most of my time getting okay with who I am as a human being. I let others have their reactions to me, positive or negative, without personally integrating it. I believe that others’ reaction to me is their work, not mine. I, on the other hand, focus on healing myself and ensuring I meet my commitments.
To summarize, I do enough physically to please myself. I am open about being trans and let folks have their own reaction while not taking their energy on in the process. I focus on my commitments and let the chips fall where they may.
Being an Ambassador
The last thing that I provide as a free-of-charge service to the world is ambassadorship. I am transparent about my transgender status and make myself accessible for those that have questions. I have found that most people struggle with the mystery of trans folks. They have questions that they do not feel that they have permission to get answered. I provide that permission. Ask anything and I will explain it. Those engagements are usually short. Someone has a question. I provide a perspective. Once their question is answered they are relieved and move on trans-demystified.
This approach helps me meet one of my life commitments. I am committed to shifting our opponents to allies. Giving non-transgender people a safe space to work through their discomfort is part of my gig. Ambassadorship does not excuse bad behavior. Ambassadorship simply provides potential allies a place to work out any hurdles to their acceptance. Bad behavior should not be tolerated and must be called out.
Addressing the Threat
Now that we have empowered and fortified ourselves what do we do? Let’s first review what we have done, so far, to prepare ourselves.
- We have acknowledged that our arrival as equal citizens here in the U.S. is fairly recent. Only in the last decade have trans people gained general societal acceptance, or at least tolerance. That said, the box is open. The current attempts to close the LGBT, and specifically the trans, box may win some battles but, in the long run, will lose the war. [Unless our democratic institutions are torn down.]
- We have additionally acknowledged that the issues at play are around fundamental beliefs. Beliefs can change. However, simply providing facts, or confronting others as wrong headed, is not going to do the heavy lifting. Rather, personal connections and positive imaging work indirectly to slowly shape beliefs. For those whose beliefs and identity are tightly intertwined, they are unlikely to adjust their beliefs.
- The work in front of the trans community and trans allies is to focus on our opponents. Again, that effort will be borne out in personal connection, personal stories, positive imaging, and relieving opponents’ discomfort by de-mystifying the trans experience.
- We have established an approach to strengthening our individual and communal capacity via building agency, maintaining curiosity, growing our confidence, and being an ambassador.
- Finally, I want to acknowledge that the effort outlined above requires an inordinate amount of COURAGE that our enemies do not have. It requires a level of vulnerability, transparency and willing exposure to negativity that is challenging for anyone. I understand that this proposal demands an UNREASONABLE level of COURAGE. I have no judgment for those unwilling or unable to make this leap.
With that covered, what do we do next?
Change Management Lens
In my professional work I have spent most of my career leading organizations through big change. In fact, in my professional blog I have written a series of articles on changing culture and how to lead change. I am going to extract some of that work to describe the path forward.
As mentioned above, people shift their beliefs because their own experiences put their current beliefs in question, based on their own insights. So our job here is NOT to point out how wrong they are. Rather it is to give them experiences that will ultimately have them, in their own agency, reexamine and adjust their own beliefs. This work is much more subtle than confrontation.
I have done a lot of public speaking to give the general public insights into the trans phenomena. I call it my trans 101 talk. A few years ago I was in a personal development course that required group sharing. I openly discussed the challenges that I had in being a trans woman and the things that I was doing to navigate those challenges.
At one of the breaks a burly man approached me. He said that he had been quite uncomfortable about trans people. At some point in the previous year his fiance had come home from her college psychology class excited about the trans guest speaker they had had that day. He would not let her finish talking about her experience because the thought of trans people made him uncomfortable. However, when I talked to the group about my experience he found parts of it that he could relate to. He thanked me for shifting his perspective. I asked him what college his fiance attended. When he told me I laughed. I told him that that guest speaker that he did not want to hear about was me. This work is subtle. You never know how or when it will impact people. But, I know from experience that it works.
Using the Available Social Infrastructure
In my culture series I framed the concept of governance, communications, and accelerator infrastructure.
- Governance Infrastructure — The policy, values, practices, and leadership delivered to the organization has the strongest, most defining impact on culture. In this case it includes legislation, judicial decisions, and other governmental institutions. Governance infrastructure establishes the house in which culture lives. Governance is where we institutionalize our trans rights.
- Communications Infrastructure — Executive messaging, newsletter publications, vision/mission statements, guides, training, slogans, icons, and even the decor provide spoken, written, and visual cue communications that can guide the culture shift. Communications infrastructure is the active element driving culture shift while addressing why we are changing and what things will look like when we get there, figuratively painting the picture for the desired tomorrow. Media portrayals and direct engagement are the actions we need to take to shift hearts and minds, driving toward institutionalization.
- Accelerator infrastructure — Infrastructure that is engaged in the cultural shift but not necessarily actively or directly changing it. Its relationship to change is catalytic in nature. Anything that injects intelligence is derived from expert input, and provides factual rationale that can be leveraged as an accelerator. In this case it includes governmental and non-governmental institutions for medical, education, public service, etc. The medical community is our greatest trans accelerator.
The medical community is generally trans supportive. Over the past several decades a reasonable body of expertise has been developed around trans issues. Since the medical community is an accelerator its efforts are purely catalytic. We have that in our collective back pockets for when facts are needed to support beliefs.
Political institutions represent governance. Because the Dobbs decision empowered states to create anti-trans laws, the legislative demand is now widespread at the national and regional effort. A large number of states have or are in the process of legislating against trans interests. Working on all of that at once is overwhelming. And, those states enacting anti-trans legislation have decidedly anti-trans politicians. The laws will not change unless hearts and minds change. With effort, some will change and others won’t. So simply focusing on legislation alone is a heavy lift with little leverage.
The Road Ahead
So the main focus is toward communications via media imaging and direct connection. We need to replace the evil predator narrative developed by the right with real stories about real trans people. For those of you that are more long-in-the-tooth as I am, we remember a time when Black Americans were narrowly portrayed as complacent servants or angry, violent thugs. Those were the options fed to us through the dominant media. Today, while it is not perfect, we see a wide diversity of Black expressions and experiences. Black people are no longer depicted as simple stereotypes. They are people. While we have made some progress in positive and diverse imaging, the current state of things is that the right wing evil trans stereotype is the dominant headline. We need to continuously and assertively integrate more positive real people imagery into movies, shows, advertisements, stories, political engagement, educational media, and most importantly in our day-to-day engagement with coworkers, communities, friends, and family. We need to make non-trans folks’ experience with us personal and real.
In terms of engaging, we are doing our work on four potential levels — awareness, engagement, commitment, and championship. Each audience we described above has a different set of needs to move through the change phases.
Active and proactive efforts to shift governance and general beliefs toward full trans integration.
To that end, we cannot be victims or reactive when well meaning people make pronoun mistakes or ignorant assumptions. We need to help them navigate their understanding. Frankly, reacting to purposeful mis-pronoun or deadname usage is a bad idea. That reaction is what our enemies are hoping for. They can show how emotional and disempowered we are. It is a way of dehumanizing us, then using our own reaction to prove their point. Their world is one in which Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity [DEI] are ‘woke’ and ‘weak’. We need to have the strength to NOT enjoin that battle.
Rather than fight the battle that our enemies want to fight, we need to change the narrative and battleground. One key narrative they have is that the U.S is being feminized and it makes us look weak. I believe that the real narrative is that toxic masculinity has created a world of conflict and no shortage of victims and enemies. The ‘honor culture’ of “you wronged me, now I need to get retribution” is the key feature of the toxic masculinity culture.
Only through shifting away from the toxic masculinity culture lauded by the right, and adopting a more inclusive, diversity-embracing culture can we grow and adapt to future challenges. In the reframing, DEI and other ‘woke’ efforts result in finding the best people to do the work ahead of us. It actually strengthens us.
This is the work ahead of us, using our media channels and personal engagement to shift the narrative and shift our broader culture. It is the job of the trans community. We are our own heroes and saviors.
The Takeaways
This fight will not be won with facts. Deeply held beliefs are facts-resistant. We will not change those beliefs. Only the belief-holder will make that shift. So the challenge ahead is to address their beliefs of our detractors non-confrontationally through media and personal connection to provide a nuanced, three-dimensional understanding of trans people to reduce their discomfort and move away from trans-caricatures. For this work there are four different audience:
- Trans Community — Those whose gender identity does not conform with their birth-assigned gender.
- Trans allies — Those who support trans acceptance and integration.
- Opponents — Those that do not support trans people in expressing themselves, because they are uncomfortable with variations from the binary and likely have little to no experience with trans folks. [This population is the largest group of trans detractors.]
- Enemies — True enemies see trans people as evil, sick or both. They will not change their perspective. Their beliefs are foundational to their identity. [This group is a small but loud and passionately active group.]
You may be asking the question, how do we tell our opponents from our enemies? By and large, we cannot make the distinction until we engage them. Some folks have made their position clear. The politicians that have deployed anti-trans legislation are clearly in the ‘enemies’ camp. Vocal activists such as J. K. Rowling, who continuously doubles down on TERF talking points, are obviously enemies. But, many vitriolic folks, when engaged, are only superficially transphobic. They can and will, with empathy, shift.
Shifting Opponents to Allies
Engaging opponents from where they are in their beliefs and providing them an initial real, positive experience. We do that through 1:1 engagement and media positive, three-dimensional experiences that move them through the change phases — awareness, engagement, commitment, championship.
Trans Truths, Myths & Facts
If you are looking for a consolidated list of trans truths, myths & facts, please take a look at this summary.