Trystan Reese and Biff Chaplow Oral History Interview, February 5, 2020

MINA CARSON: Good morning. This is History 368 at Oregon State University. I'm Mina Carson. I'm the instructor. Did I say the date-it's February 5th, 2020. And we're delighted to have two guests today, Trystan Reese and Biff Chaplow. And I'm going to ask them to give their pronouns and say anything else we've talked before about what they might do in here, tell some stories, and then entertain questions from the class. So, without further ado, how do you do, and thanks for being here.

BIFF CHAPLOW: Of course. I'm Biff. I use they/them pronouns. I'm married to Trystan. We've been married for, coming up about ten years. Is that ten years?

TRYSTAN REESE: We've been together for about ten years, yeah.

BC: Yeah.

TR: A long time.

[Audience snaps]

BC: Thank you, both of you. Yeah. That's it, right?

TR: And I'm Trystan. I use he/him. And I'm married to Biff. I think we're supposed to start by telling our stories.

BC: Sure. You can go first though.

TR: Damn it. [Laughs] Ok, I am 37 years old, which sounds really old when I say it out loud. Let's see-I live in Portland. A little bit about me-I'm from California, but not any of the cool parts. I'm from the Antelope Valley, which is hours - hours - northeast of LA in the middle of the Mojave Desert, next to Edwards Air Force Base. Not sure if anybody else is from a small town here, but shout-out.

I was assigned female at birth. And I had a pretty normal, I guess, girlhood, 00:02:00two parents who are still together. Except they were Canadian so they were just a little bit cooler than everybody else's parents. [Laughs] For many years, it felt like there was something going on with me, but I didn't know what it was. This is kind of dark ages, like the 90s. It was just dark ages in trans years. It really is. And it really wasn't until I was 18, 19, 20, and living here in Corvallis that I realized there was a word for this thing that I always felt was different about me.

It was here where I met my very first transgender person who actually, for some of the queer nerds in the room, was Micah Bazant who is a very famous trans artist and also spent time here in Corvallis. And we met. I was like, "Holy 00:03:00shit. I'm not broken. I'm just trans." Then I realized there was a solution to these issues that I've had.

I started transitioning when I was around 20, which is early 2000s. When I first went to the doctor to transition-well I've been taking hormones on the black market for a long time. I didn't think of it as black market. My friends were just giving me their leftover hormones and I was just giving them money for it. But in retrospect, I'm like "that was illegal," in addition to not being a good idea physically, because the doctor should be checking you out. But the first time I went to see a doctor, an oncologist as the best I could find cuz I finally had health insurance. And he told me that when I started testosterone, it would render my uterus an uninhabitable environment. It's now been 16 years and I still remember that phrase so clearly cuz it's very stark. At the time, I 00:04:00didn't care. I was like, "Give me the beard juice." And at 20, who's thinking really about having a kid? Not a lot of people. So I did not care.

And then I went to performing arts school. I transitioned while I was in performing arts school. Emerged into the world looking pretty close to what you see today like every other gay guy in Portland. Yeah. And then I had a bunch of years in there where things were shitty. And then I met Biff who saved me just by being awesome and not mean to me and-I mean, low bar!

[Audience laughs]

Then we met and fell in love. And Biff was the best person I've ever met, and the cutest. And a year after we met, a year in change, we ended up becoming parents overnight to his niece and nephew. Then 3 years ago, we legally adopted 00:05:00them. We became their forever family. Then I decided that I wanted to get pregnant and have our baby. I told Biff that I wanted to do this. And Biff was like, "That's stupid." But after a long period of time, Biff was like, "fine," which was not really romantic, just what I was hoping for, what I imagined having a baby with someone. But you take what you can get. And then we had a baby who's now two and a half.

When we told our story publicly, we worked with CNN and People Magazine, and Washington Post, some reputable outlets I wanted to partner with to tell our story.

If you're curious at all about professional stuff, professional life overlay, for most of my early adulthood, I was a national organizer with the National Gay 00:06:00and Lesbian Task Force, which is now the National LGBTQ Task Force. I spent seven years traveling the country, working on LGBT ballot measures. I got to do other things in there too. I got to work on the campaign of the death penalty in the state of California. Got to work on a lot of pro-choice issues. That's sort of the professional overlay. Now I get to do queer parenting work for a living, so I work with Family of Quality. And I get to help queer people figure out how they want to form families. Yeah, that's a little bit about me. BC: So I'm 34. I was born on the East Coast. My parents moved also to a California desert town. A lot of people don't realize this about California, but what we see in the media and in the movies, it's very much the liberal parts of California which do contain more people than the shitty parts. But there are some parts of 00:07:00California that are really shitty. So that's one of the places that I grew up. My parents moved there when I was 12.

In fact, Kevin McCarthy-you all who know Kevin McCarthy is, he's the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives for the Republicans-represents Bakersfield which is where I grew up. He's been representing them since I lived there, actually.

I was a very gay kid, always. I never really had this process of discovering myself. People definitely were telling me I was gay before I was really thinking about that. And that's fine, I don't mind. I don't mind being a gay kid. But it always meant that I never had the experience of-the truth is, you have privilege 00:08:00when you can hide that and you could choose when people see that, when people don't see that. But when you are feminine as a man, people always assume that about you whether or not it's correct. I never had the privilege to hide that, or the option to hide that. Looking back, I see that as a privilege because I've seen a lot of friends, family go through experiences where they really struggled with their identity because it wasn't forced out there all the time. But it was never an option for me to not deal with it. So pretty early on, I just accepted that.

I trusted my instincts in what felt right and what didn't feel right. I was raised really religious. My parents are evangelical. Not that way anymore. So 00:09:00there's a lot of experiences overlaid with being raised in an evangelical life. There are many positive, good things about that. For real, there are. But then they're overlaid with judgement and rejection, and the not-Christ-like behavior that I experienced after coming out publicly or taking the steps to actually live a gay lifestyle, i.e. having a boyfriend.

So yeah. When I turned 18, I was intent on leaving Bakersfield. I knew that that was not the place where I was going to excel, that everything was an uphill battle always, in the workplace, in school, socially. I was assaulted in 00:10:00Bakersfield. So I made the decision to move to Los Angeles, where I stumbled into a career of homeless work. Some shelter gave me a job in a position I was way not qualified to take. But it turned out that I was good at it. So yeah, my break into being radicalized was a combination of college debate-I don't know if there's any debaters in here-

TR: No.

BC: Okay.

TR: Thank goodness.

BC: -and in my work of homelessness, you really see the impact of all these systems that we talk about when you look at issues of poverty. I'm always interested in and feel really impacted by the ways that poverty intersects with our lives, especially as queer people. I would say by the time I met Trystan, I 00:11:00was definitely radicalized. And I mean that in the most positive sense.

TR: We say "woke" now.

[Audience laughs]

BC: I'm not going to use that word. But I had never dated a trans person before.

I would say my upbringing as a young adult was definitely gay male upbringing, mainly because when you live in a small town, people can't afford to divide themselves up very much. There's one bar, it's a gay male bar and that's where you just have to go because you would risk getting assaulted at the other bars. I would say I was very much entrenched into gay male culture. I was doing a lot of things in L.A. to try to affect or change gay male culture. There was a lot of problems then-and still now-with gay male culture. I feel like there could be 00:12:00a whole course on the microcosm of gay male culture and how it really reflects the disparities between feminine people and masculine people, and what is valued and not valued, cuz it basically just replicates what straight culture's doing all the time.

In any case, by the time we met Trystan, I had never dated a trans person before. But I had lots of friends that were-the people that introduced us were-gender queer. This is ten years ago where that was not really a widely known thing. We were introduced by those people. And it's not like "I never dated somebody trans", but that was really just about happenstance. I also never 00:13:00really thought about it.

So yeah, I met Trystan. It was not love at first sight.

TR: On their part. But I might.

BC: But that's mainly because I was with somebody at the time. And I didn't want to cheat on that person, I guess. So we got together, like Trystan said, pretty early on in our relationship. My niece and nephew-Lucas and Hailey are their names-needed a place to live. And we just jumped in to take them, not really knowing where that might go. But it definitely went to a permanent place very fast.

Like a lot people in queer circles and culture, we had to grow up really fast in 00:14:00that regard. I mean I had to grow up fast anyways, not having family support, financial support from people-you just gotta grow up. When a lot of people are 18 and out having a good time, or maybe traveling, like studying abroad and stuff like that, that was just not an option in my life. That's why I didn't finish school. There just wasn't any-I didn't see a-path forward for me. And when you're really poor, which we were also very poor, things like student loans do not feel accessible. Your family is not socialized to be financially smart so, there, you don't even know about things. Needless to say, I didn't finish school. And I feel okay about that now.

So then we met, had a relationship. I'm still very much in love with Trystan. We were pretty much from the beginning. We know we'd end up head over heels. And we 00:15:00had a really great first kid-less year. And then Lucas and Hailey came along. They're wonderful, beautiful creatures. They really are. I decided to start sitting home with Lucas and Hailey when we moved from L.A. to Portland. That's almost seven years ago now. I started staying home with them, mainly because they had come from a traumatic background, so it felt important to give them as much support as possible. Also honestly, not working sounded kind of nice at that moment in time. It turns out, though, it's pretty miserable when you start sitting home with your kids. I think most parents would tell you, even if it's just staying home with an infant or something, you just lose yourself completely 00:16:00and you're totally thrown into mom culture. It's like straight mom culture everywhere. Everything involving kids, it's just like straight mom culture, which is not entirely bad. But it's just not a place that I entirely belonged-and I still don't really.

And then eventually Trystan pops the question of having a baby, of making a baby, which is something that we had literally never talked about before. As a gay man, you just know that you're never gonna be with a pregnant person, you know. So your mind never even explores anything beyond that. It was a lot of things happening in my head and learning. And everything, from the very much things that I know that straight cis dudes might go through, where I'm like, 00:17:00"what if I'm totally repulsed by this pregnant person," things like that, to just feeling really weird about like "what is my role in this?" "I've been staying home with the kids full time. He's working. What am I supposed to do?" And all of that stuff. Not to mention, Trystan was very interested in his pregnancy, I mean obviously. And I really wasn't interested. [Laughs] So he always would just be like, "Oh, my app is saying this and this today. And did you know, look and this is the size of Leo's hands today." Anyway, it's just like there was a lot of tiny little [inaudible].

MC: That's so cute.

BC: And so yeah, it was a really complicated, interesting experience. But like anything, you learn that all you can do is commit to it, commit to being 00:18:00genuine, and being opening, and learning and doing your best, which is what I'm trying to do. And then, you know, it worked out. Trystan had a baby. And the baby is beautiful and healthy. That is undoubtedly the most meaningful and tense experience of my life. The moment that Leo was born, is like the closest to God that I think I have ever been, just being in that moment. And when Leo came out, the room just burst into-I don't know how to explain it-laughter. There's laughter and crying, and just this burst of emotion that I've never experienced in my life before. But it was an amazing, meaningful experience.

If you are able to witness a baby be born, you should do that. There's just 00:19:00something unspoken there. I think part of the experience was, that is an experience that queer people have been robbed of, historically, especially in our modern culture. When we were younger, I was told "You are a pervert. Your kids should not be around you. You don't have anything to do with kids. That's not your role." And at some point, as gay male culture especially embraces that, they say like, "Ok fine. So we'll just have these parades with naked people and go-go boys can just be a regular part of our thing. And that's totally right to embrace that stuff. We should embrace sexuality more, but not at the cost of experiencing family and children and ignoring that.

Leo will be coming at the end of class. You all can see him. He's truly adorable.

TR: He does have a scratch down his face right now.

BC: He is like a black-eyed kid.

TR: He scratched himself. It was like, how did any of us survive childhood? He went to go move something off his face and literally cut his own face. [Laughs] He got very mad at me for it.

AUDIENCE: There's some instances where my little brother would scratch his own face. My mom's like, "Looks like he got in a fight with his hand."

BC: I will say every major injury that Leo has gotten has not been under my supervision.

[Audience laughs]

Anyways, so yeah! Now Trystan does a lot of activist work, especially around trans stuff. And trans fertility has been a lot of his work lately. I stay home 00:21:00with the kids full-time still. I do a lot of work for an organization called Beyond These Walls where we work to support LGBT incarcerated people in Oregon. I'm doing stuff like all new to prisons or forming state-wide LGBT personnel coalition this year. We're both very much involved in a lot of activist sort of work. We've been really committed to making the lives of our fellow people better. I think we'll always be committed to that. I don't know that either of us would ever be taking a job at a corporation somewhere. Although for the right price, I might consider that. [Laughs]

So yeah, I stay at home with the kids full-time. A lot of our life very much looks normal-that's a weird word I guess. But you know, the kids have piano 00:22:00lessons. And they have these school functions that we have to tolerate. It's terrible, like pancake breakfasts that the school does. So I'm very much a part of it. You don't have a choice but to just engage with mainstream family and parent culture.

TR: But also, like, last week when I came home, our daughter Hailey had dressed Leo up as a fairy. He was wearing a little fairy costume. He had a full face of makeup on, our hair clip. And he was wearing perfume. And they were practicing model poses. And Biff is like, "Hailey has been entertaining Leo for two hours. It's amazing." We do go to drag shows. We watch Queer Eye as a family. They travel a lot with me when I go away for work. So they're seeing all my family building queer stuff all the time. We go to Pride every year. They also see, I think, a totally different dynamic in their parents than they might in a 00:23:00heterosexual household. So, in some ways, we're like everybody else. And in some ways, we're literally nothing like anybody else.

BC: In our parenting, queerness comes up a lot in our parenting. Lucas is like a bro, a straight bro.

TR: Our 12-year old.

BC: It's a really interesting challenge to feel like you're raising one of the kids that very much seems like the kid that bullied you. He's sweet and obviously our hope is that he's not one of those kids, that he can learn to navigate masculinity in a positive way. But that's challenging. Our daughter Hailey is very girly and feminine. But she's also really open about things. She's already saying that she is pretty sure she is not totally straight. She's 00:24:00just open. It definitely feels easier to raise a girl for some reason. I know that that's probably has been not historically true for many people. But it definitely feels easier. Then Leo's been great because we've known Leo since he came out. So there just isn't anything that exists there that isn't familiar to us like there kind of is with Lucas. Yeah, I think that's it.

MC: Cool.

BC: What do you all want to know more about? Yes.

AUDIENCE: I remember in high school, when I was in high school, which was 2010-ish, there was a big thing about the first pregnant man, I guess. I don't remember what his man was.

TR: Yeah Thomas Beatie.

AUDIENCE: And I was just wondering how that affected your decision to have a baby.

TR: Thomas had his child about 10 years after my friend Matt Rice did, tip into scope. Matt's son Blake just turned 21 in November of last year. So for 21 years at least, transgender men have been giving birth to their own babies. And Matt's stories about that time are wild.

I was in the queer and trans movement when Thomas went public with his trans pregnancy story. I think it was pretty upsetting because he was really monetizing being the first when he wasn't the first. A lot of trans folks told him: "Bro, it's so amazing what you're doing, but you're not the first." I think for me, as a trans person in the movement, it felt like there was not an acknowledgement of all the work that people had done before then which was really hard. And also, again being in the queer movement, I did not feel that it 00:26:00was the right time for someone to tell that kind of a story publicly. I did not think that people were ready. And he got destroyed in the media. Destroyed.

It was incredibly painful to watch out of empathy for him. It was incredibly painful to witness as a trans person. So since then, I've really committed. I do a lot of work with the media. I do a lot of work approaching people to talk to the media. I do a lot of background with media people to be like, "Say this/don't say this. That's not what that means. This is what this means," because I want people to tell their stories responsibly and not inadvertently trigger a backlash in the ways that he did.

And I had really thought that in ten years, maybe American culture had shifted so I wouldn't have the same experience. But that was not correct. It was a miscalculation on my part. I thought we were a little further ahead than we actually were.

BC: One of the weird parts about Trystan's pregnancy, Trump was elected when Trystan was pregnant. Yeah. And Trystan was just starting to show. So the overlap of that stuff was really weird and scary to deal with.

TR: Pretty much as soon as he got elected.

BC: It also means that people just felt really empowered-they still do, they felt empowered-to come out and hate speech.

MC: You say, in one of your marvelous story videos, that-again, repeating what you just said in a sense that-initially you thought that to tell your story 00:28:00would be a very positive thing. And then you had that experience with the Daily Mail. Was that, that's at UK?

TR: Yeah the Daily Mail, which I'm sure everyone in this room knows, is a UK-based tabloid. It has over a million independent viewers per day. So it is the biggest tabloid in the world.

MC: But then you got real blowback from that. Is that correct?

TR: Yeah.

MC: And you hadn't decided at that point, "are we really going to keep showing our family in the public."

TR: Yeah. I had really thought it wasn't going to go that way-

MC: Yeah.

TR: -which, I mean, was shocking to Biff. I remember specifically there was a moment where I just had a huge meltdown. And Biff was just like, "Sweetheart, how did you think this was gonna go? What did you think was going to happen? When we told our story publicly, this is what I thought we were agreeing to." And I was not in that. I was off in some kind of rainbows and fairy land-that's 00:29:00where I live. So it was really, really hard.

I'm very good friends with the man who leads the trans-messaging project at GLAAD which does all the media and messaging work in the country. And I do work with him very closely throughout my story. And I called him, just sobbing. I was like, "Look at these comments. I made it worse for trans people." And he lovingly reminded me that I did not invent transphobia, which I appreciated, and that trans people already know that transphobia exists. And it's not my job to try and protect them from that, because we already know it exists. And he encouraged me to keep telling my story as I did then so that things didn't just go down that weird 4chan pipeline, but they kind of stayed in a more positive space.

I asked Daily Mail to change the language of the story but I did not hear back from them. Yeah they suck. Yes, Ray. 00:30:00AUDIENCE: In my experience, I had received a lot of hate from the gay community-the times that I have been in dating apps, Grinder-and a lot of fetishizing. And I just wanted to ask you how did you navigate that, cuz I'm just in and out all the time, like bi. How did you navigate that, overcome it, all that stuff?

TR: I think a couple of things. Number one, I came out and started dating in the gay male world before apps-I know, the dinosaur would just take the messages between each person. [Laughs] But we did have dating websites. So I think this 00:31:00draw of immediacy and "50 feet away" wasn't there. And then also I have learned, through working at the task force, how to message things, how to talk about thing. So, on all my profiles, it was like, "I am a transgender man. That means that I was born with-and still have-a vagina. I'm interested in blah blah blah. I'm not interested in blah blah blah." And that way they could have their own reaction to that news very far away from me. And I don't ever have to see it.

And even then, right before we got together, that was just when some of the apps were starting.

BC: Grinder just started.

TR: And there was still, like, Adam for Adam, and all these other ones which I got kicked off of for being trans. But that just started. And that was similarly-I was just so clear this is what I am. If you're interested in that, cool let's talk. If you're not, bye-bye.

And also, I just developed a very high level of resiliency. My job at the task 00:32:00force, for the last four years, was to go door to door and find people in an area where they're voting on something queer-I'm looking for people who say they're homophobic or transphobic-and then changing their mind. That was my job. Now they call it deep canvassing. But it's basically long-form persuasion work through one-on-one conversation, and then teaching teams of people to do that, and then teaching teams of people to teach teams of people to do that. That was my job. When you've had 800 strangers tell you that they think who you are is bad and wrong, and you've trained yourself how to stay present with them through that and to help them get to the heart of where that comes from and then try to do the work that changes their mind. Like, some dude on the internet being like "Yo that's gross" that can't touch me. You know what I mean? Just block that guy.

BC: The other thing is, gay male culture, to its credit, has a very open line of 00:33:00communication about sex and hooking up. I have not been on a dating app or hooked up with somebody very recently. But you know what you're gonna do before you meet up with them. You'd plan out everything from are you gonna top, are you willing to this sort of thing or that sort of thing. And that's something you can use to your benefit because gay men really do talk about what's gonna happen. I had girl friends all the time that would be like, "I don't know if we're gonna have sex tonight." And I would be like, "What? Why don't you ask?" [Laughs] Because whenever I would hook up with somebody, we talk in detail about what we were willing and not willing to do, what our boundaries were, if we were to use protection or not, you'd say that right away. And I assume that it's very similar still. So you can use that to your advantage, because gay men are willing to talk in detail about things beforehand. But they're still going to be ignorant.

TR: But if you're not used to that kind of a culture, some dude'd be like "yo I'm not into that," if it's hitting a trauma for you, if it's hitting a point of sensitivity for you, you're gonna be like "Oh my god, he thinks I'm disgusting." He didn't say that. But it's part of gay male culture. They will message you and be like, "how close are you", "what are you into". If it's not a match, they'll be like "cool, bye." Right? And they're not offended. It's part of the culture. And in fact, that was a cultural difference between Biff and I when we first started being intimate. It was just like, Biff was from this world where they're like "you do like this", "you don't like this". I'm not necessarily from that world. And it's much harder for me to say "I don't like this" or "I do like this." Something you have to learn.

BC: Gay men will say like, "No offense. If you're feminine, I don't bother hooking up with you."

TR: "If you're short, I won't hook up with you." "If you're tall, I won't hook up with you."

BC: "If you're this or that race..." It's all over the place. And the communication part is good. Y'all, before you hook up with somebody, you should talk about what you feel like you're comfortable doing or not. You should talk 00:35:00about whether or not you're gonna use protection or not. That should be decisions made in the moment. It should all be talked about. But, it shouldn't also mean match with ignorant-

TR: Offensive comments.

BC:-no fats, no femmes.

AUDIENCE: The fact that I have to out myself in these type of environments-here's a double view, I guess, if I don't out myself and I'm outed at that point, it can lead some violent experiences.

TR: I came out when Boys Don't Cry was released. And Boys Don't Cry, right, it's about a hate crime against a trans guy. So I'm not messing with coming out to someone on a date. No. No. So that's my cultural context I want you to know, way ahead of time. And I've just always accepted that if you have a body that's different than what they're expecting, you should just tell them. And I know 00:36:00that that's not your generation. "Well, it's on them for assuming." Fine. But does that help you get a date? And does that help you not have a date that goes bad? That's all I cared about.

AUDIENCE: If we're not talking about apps like this, if we're talking about, I don't know, you go to a party, blah blah blah, things happen, when do you have to out yourself? Cuz for me, with girls it's way, way easier, it's way safer. With boys, I feel like I'm in danger 100% of the time. So that's one of the reasons why in the past, I've used these apps instead of trying to meet men right on, cuz it's way more safe for me. And I've experienced these aggressions and these hate crimes basically when I didn't out myself. But if I don't out myself, this happens. And if I out myself, I just face rejection and hate. So 00:37:00it's wonderful being trans.

TR: Yeah, I had lots of negative experiences. And then I had lots of positive experiences. If it wasn't for bi-dudes, I would've been screwed. [Audience laughs] I would've been SOL. So it's also about filtering by only dudes who had said that they were bi.

AUDIENCE: Honestly.

TR: Pro-tip.

AUDIENCE: You were discussing being a part of gay male culture, but now you're going by they/them. How does where you are as your general gender fits in with that kind of assumption of sexuality?

BC: There's two parts. There's parts of our identity. But there's the way that 00:38:00we're perceived by the world. And then there's the way that we feel and interact with the world from the inside. I am perceived by the world as a gay male. I understand that. That's no mystery to me. And it's aggravating when there are people who are non-binary, which is what I am, they can't seem to understand or accept that part of it. They're like, "I move through the world with cis-male privilege."

It's just one of those things where I feel like as long as my gender presentation stays like this, I can't separate myself. In fact, I think it's disingenuous to separate myself from taking responsibility for gay male culture, or being involved or connected to that.

So for me, I've always been somebody who, I think, is gender-open. There's been times in my life, as a teenager, I was very feminine, often mistaken for a transwoman. I would wear lots of makeup and shop exclusively at Forever 21, still do sometimes. My experience or exploration of gender my whole like has always been in the context of being a gay man and then exploring femininity and trying to figure out that part of it. And then it's been the recent years that I went through this whole thing and I'm like, "I'm non-binary. I know that." Because the truth is, if you put me in a circle of women, I honestly don't feel super comfortable, but the same is true if you put me in a circle of men. So that brought me to this place where I'm like, "Yeah, that's how I am."

Then, for a while, I felt like there's such an emphasis on pronouns and the 00:40:00pronouns people use for you. I understand why that's important for a lot of people. It never has felt important to me-still doesn't feel important to me. Maybe that's because I carry the various privileges that I do. But I was always like, "Well, if I don't care enough to ask people to call me they/them, maybe I'm not really non-binary." "If I don't want all this pronouns stuff, that must mean it's not that big of a deal for me."

And then I came to this place where I was like, "Wait a minute. That's a really problematic way to look at identity," because part of my identity that I often neglected in my life is how actually feel or how I'm actually feeling, and not about how I'm always perceived or taken. So, things have changed. The truth was, as a feminine person, feminine man, I was very much in the minority when I was younger. Things have just changed. I meet guys now that are more feminine than I am that are straight. Things are just different now.

So I use they/them. And I really don't care if somebody doesn't call me they or them sometime. You'll hear Trystan say "he" or "him, people will say "he." Sometimes-and this is no joke-I am misgendered. People will say "ma'am" or "she." That's fine too. I honestly don't care. It's like kind of amusing when it happens because then people feel, like, embarrassed about it. And it's fun to just sit with them in their uncomfortable feelings. So yeah. There are people, though, that are nonbinary and really feel strongly that they don't want those gender pronouns on them. And that's fair. That's a totally fair way to approach it.

But more and gay men, I think, are embracing that idea that sometime being really feminine or embracing the more feminine qualities, or just being effeminate-sometimes it does mean that your gender is either more fluid, or more 00:42:00towards the middle of a spectrum, or maybe just not even on the spectrum.

TR: I think I almost use exclusively them/them at home. But then I worry about outing you in public sometimes so I don't-

BC: Yeah. I mean, Trystan has started to say they/them to the kids when talking about me and stuff like that, which I do appreciate. It feels better. At the same time, I honestly-just like a lot of other people-I don't know if anybody here uses a pronoun different than the one you were assigned at birth. I know some of you do. But there is labor in asking people to use the right pronoun. Every time somebody does it, you have to go through this thing where you're like, "Ok, do I say something? And if I say something and they're not open to this, it's just so much emotional labor that, to be honest with you, at this point in my life, I'm not willing to deal with. I would rather just have anybody call me what they want because I don't have the emotional energy to put towards that.

TR: We're old and tired.

BC: I mean, I have kids, three kids. And it's not like that isn't important. It's totally important. But I'm gonna let, maybe, the other people that have the energy focus on that stuff, fight those battles. [Laughs] But it takes a lot of energy to tell people all the time.

AUDIENCE: Sorry if this question is too personal. You remembered when you were going on hormones, how the doctor had said your uterus basically is going to be unusable. Was he just plain wrong, or were there extra steps that you've had to take to have Leo?

TR: Yeah, it was a common misconception-and still is-that testosterone causes sterility. There's actually never been any evidence to show that testosterone 00:44:00causes sterility. In fact, all of the evidence is to the contrary. A brand-new study just came out in November of last year, it's an eight-year retrospective study at the Boston IVF where they looked at the medical chart. It was the best kind of study, right? They were not asking someone to tell them what happened. They're like "Yo, let's just look at the data." They looked at eight years of collecting eggs from transgender men for IVF purposes, either for them to have an embryo implanted in them or their partner, or their surrogate.

The egg harvesting-this is getting super nerdy-basically the quality and quantity of the eggs that they harvested from transgender men were the exact same as cisgender women who share their other demographic identities, like same age. So it is now concrete proof of what we've been saying for a long time, which is a little bit like, your uterus is an egg processing plant and it just shuts down if you're taking testosterone the right way. You can ovulate when you're on testosterone. It's rare. If you're taking it the way you're supposed 00:45:00to be, you shouldn't.

But the processing plant just shuts down. And then when you go off of your testosterone, same as from birth control, it just starts back up again. And it starts maturing eggs and kicking them out of your fallopian tubes for possible-

BC: We got pregnant before we knew that we could. We had made the decision for Trystan to go off hormones so that we could try to make a baby. But then all of a sudden, Trystan was like, "Well, I'm pregnant." And we thought we had a good six months still to think about or plan that.

TR: The data shows that your cycle returns three to six months after you stop taking testosterone. And that your rates of conception are the same as anybody else once your cycle is back. But I apparently slept through 7th grade biology because I didn't realize you ovulate before you menstruate. So I was fertile before I knew I was fertile. And then I was pregnant.

BC: I didn't know [inaudible]

TR: Well, now a lot of the work that I do is fertility education. So now I'm like, "Here are the fallopian tubes and the egg comes down. And it's on alternate sides." All kinds of weird shit that I know about now. But yeah.

So there were extra steps which is just stop taking testosterone. That's it. But I still hear from trans folks all the time whose doctors are telling them testosterone will cause infertility, which is not true.

BC: But estrogen, though, does affect-would affect, if they're somebody that were taking estrogen.

TR: Sure. So what we know right now about the way that HRT, estrogen-based hormone therapy, what we know right now is nothing. There has never been a single study on transgender women and fertility. It was an article written last year that was a case study. Guess how many transwomen they were looking at in the study? Two.

[Audience gasps]

I'm not a scientist. But that doesn't seem to me like useful statistics. So, what we know right now anecdotally is it seems to be completely random, that it seems for some transgender women, they can be on estrogen-based hormones for ten years, stop taking them, and knock up their partner right away. Other people can be on estrogen-based hormones for one month and they're permanently sterile. And from reproductive justice aspect-this is the number one thing that keeps me up at night-is transgender women infertility, that we know nothing about what hormones are doing to transwomen in terms of their reproductive ability. And that really pisses me off. I have a whole Google Drive folder on research on trans-fertility. There's 42 studies on transgender men. There's this one article with two transwomen in it from last year. So that's the thing that I push for the most when I'm in front of researchers: transwomen.

AUDIENCE: So back to testosterone, my favorite, I was also told-I was not told by my doctor, but before I was like, "Ok, I'm gonna become sterile." I didn't care cuz I don't have any plans of children.

TR: Beard juice.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, beard juice, basically. And this is extremely transphobic because they pretty much don't want us produce and have little humans. That's how I perceive it. They tell us that we're sterile forever and we can't have kids or whatever that is. And same with transwomen. They give us all this false information so we can't reproduce. And I actually remember-I don't know if this is, here, the same, but-in Spain, they offer you to take out the whole thing, the whole ovaries and all that.

TR: Hysterectomy.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, hysterectomy, cuz technically testosterone fucks with it. In fact, I went back to Spain this summer and I got it all checked up. And they told me that they have to give me the hysterectomy. So they offered it. Cuz if not, cancer and all these overused stuff.

TR: Never showed any evidence.

AUDIENCE: So that's extremely transphobic. And if I didn't know that this was super transphobic, I would have done it. Cuz right now, it's just like, yeah sometimes it does weird things, so in case, just get rid of it. And it was so unfair. And trans-kids that are extremely dysphoric or just don't have information, they're gonna go under those surgeries and get rid of stuff that they might want in the future.

TR: And y'all are studying history. You know our country doesn't have a great track record of deciding who shouldn't and should have babies. And in many countries around the world, in order to transition legally, you have to have a 00:50:00hysterectomy, you have to-in some other way, maybe surgically-sterile before they will even let you change your paperwork. And in some countries, transgender men have had babies, and then the government has changed all their gender documents back to their original one. They have to be legally female in order to give birth.

BC: There's also this narrative that to be trans means to hate your body. I think a lot of people make the assumption that if you're a transman, having a baby would be a traumatic awful experience, that it's something you'd never want to do. The more that we view things through this binary, the more assumptions we make that are just wrong. There're lots of trans-people that have no interest in altering their body in any way. And that is a version of trans that exists. But if you don't know it exists, then you don't know that's an option for you. And then you get pushed into things like that.

TR: The data shows that about 50 to 70% of trans-adults wished that they had preserved their fertility pre-transition, because the rates of desire for kids are the same for trans-people as other LGBT people. And those are almost the same as their cis-gender or heterosexual counterpart. It's not quite, but almost. So yeah, it sucks. Audience: I have a question for "what would you do." I'm sure you guys know who Ben Shapiro is. And I came from a town where confederate flags are shown as a thing, you don't openly show your gayness so you're a cool gay-things like that. So a lot of people bring up the Ben Shapiro argument. How do you go about that on educating them? What do you do in that situation?

TR: Yeah man. I spent many years doing this exact work. I don't really know who Ben Shapiro is-some high-schooler asked me that too, I don't know-but I assume he's a transphobe. The important thing to know the way that the psychology of that bias works-is that we go through stages. This actually comes from the anti-racism movement. So, that's where most of my background and training is in, is doing anti-racism work with white people. And the way that our brains perceive difference, it's in stages. So people who're in the Ben Shapiro's super transphobic land, I'm never gonna reach them. Psychologically the way that bias works, they need to hear from someone who is like them. I couldn't talk to them compassionately, not yell at them in the face-they ain't gonna change. It's just not how bias works.

I've just sort of spiritually, or psychically, let go of those people because it's gonna waste my time and maybe hurt my feelings. And they may even actually get more transphobic at the end of our conversation because of how far away we are from each other.

For people like that, they really need to hear from people who are like them. They need to hear from other old white dudes, like a pastor or someone who can reach them. Honestly, elected officials who have been conservative but having a kid come out as gay, they've done a lot of work in changing people's minds. I just sort of let those people go. It's the people that are one step closer than them, that's who I can reach. People who're like, "Ok, I don't think it's gross and bad and wrong, but I don't get it." Yes, I am here for you. You just can't win everyone.

BC: And there's a huge portion of population-in fact, it's probably the bigger portion of the population-are people that are like, "I support you but I don't want to know what happens in your bedroom." Something like that.

[Audience agrees]

TR: Those are my people.

BC: Ok, this is a good place that we can have a conversation about why that's problematic.

TR: Yeah, those are my people. That middle section, those are the people who're mostly likely to be moved to action and move to support. And to me, that's the 00:54:00parents of trans-people, that's the bosses of trans-people, that's the people writing articles about trans-people. Those are people who can really shift and change culture and also lived experiences, I mean the differences between their kid getting kicked out or not. So that're the people that I like.

AUDIENCE: What're your guys' identities with parenthood? I have a nine-year-old brother. And my mom is very extremely straight, she's a little homophobic. How do you break down, when your kids come to you from school and they're like, "Something happened. This happened." How do you break it down for their minds to understand, without scaring them, like, making them more confused?

BC: The interesting thing is that we tend to have this idea that things are so complicated for kids. The truth is things are so simple in their mind and world. It really is a matter of just being like, "Some men have uteruses, some men 00:55:00don't have uteruses. And daddy is a man that has a uterus. And that's how he's gonna have a baby." And they're just like, "Ok, yeah." And then they have these conversations with their friends. And for the most part, their friends are like, "Okay."

There are conversations that we have to have that'll definitely go to that next level of complicated. It happens way more with Lucas around rape culture. And he changed his name. The reason he changed his name, initially, was that the name that he was given was a girl's name.

TR: Because a girl in his class named Riley and his name used to be Riley. And he was like, "Oh my god, Riley's a girl name. I don't want that."

BC: Yeah he's like, "I can't be called Riley." So we had to be like, "Ok, you can totally change your name-

TR: -but this is really sexist."

BC: But Dan Savage also has a good principle that he says, like "When your kids 00:56:00ask you something, they're ready to know that thing." If they're in a place where they're asking you, it's ok to give them the answer. And our kids, for the most part, them and their friends-Hailey has a best friend that's non-binary.

TR: Who's nine.

BC: Nine-year-old kid. Nobody really-It's just a lot different, I think, for kids right now. That's not true everywhere though.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. I'm trying to teach him to be more open to things. Cuz he grew up with me and my mom, so he doesn't have a father figure, anyone in that. It's all been women. All my mom's single friends, they all group together and talk about how their kids are horrible. So it's really hard for me to be like, "You don't have to act this way to fit in at school." He won't wear certain colors cuz he knows he's gonna get picked on. There's once when I put a hat on him, and 00:57:00I was like "This hat looks really cute." And he goes: "No." But now he uses "pretty." He's like "That's so pretty." So I'm trying to get him to be comfortable, not being ashamed of using feminine things and assuming that only girls can use that stuff. But it is hard, cuz I only see him a couple times a month. So I come home and I'm like, "Forget everything mom has accidentally taught you. This is what you need to know to survive this world."

BC: Also try to give him examples. Show him grown men that are showing different expressions of gender.

TR: When I work with high-schoolers, we talk about The Rock a lot cuz The Rock is the like dudeliest dude that ever duded. And he's also a rad-ass feminist. He's super gentle and kind. I never talk about toxic masculinity, I only talk about positive masculinity, like "don't tell me what not to do but tell me what to do." So I think those kinds of examples are always great.

AUDIENCE: I wanted to ask how you handle the teachers. Cuz I have a friend who's a teacher, and they are out in their identity. And they were wearing a button. And one of the kids in their class asked about it. So they answered the question very thoroughly, not talking about anything explicitly sexual or anything-cuz that's not okay in the classroom environment. They are middle-schoolers. So they answered the question pretty thoroughly, like "Well, this is what this is. This is what I am. These are the other different things." And the principal came up to them a few days later, and was like "You cannot do that." Because the other parents and the other teachers said it was inappropriate for a classroom environment. And basically threatened my friend with being fired if they even thought about talking about this subject again. So how do you navigate that minefield? Cuz kids are pretty much like Play-Doh, but the parents and the other teachers are all always super set in their ways, it seems.

TR: I mean, for us, we're in the Portland public school district. We are the only queer family in the whole school. And teachers are falling all over themselves to try and be supportive, the other parents even. One time, one of the neighbor kids said something like our house was silly or something. And I mentioned it to his mom. And she's like "Oh my god, did he say it because you guys are gay?" And I was like, "No. He says cuz we don't have a TV in our living room." They just really go for it.

BC: There is an amount of privilege wrapped up in this. But there is a portion of life in modern society today that's really lovely where it's like the opposite of discrimination. Like, we will take a flight with Leo and they're like "Would you want your own row? We'll give you your own row." Whatever they can to do not seem homophobic, they wanna do.

TR: And we're gonna ride that wave!

BC: Totally. We're like, "Yes. We have two rows please."

[Audience laughs]

TR: I mean, I've been tokenized into a lot of places I have no fucking right to be in. But they were like, "We need a trans-person." And I was like, "I'm your man!" Because I know that there are so many doors that have been slammed in my face because people are like "We don't want a trans-person here. He's going to always point out what's wrong. He's going to cancel us on Twitter. Blah blah blah." So I feel like any opportunity that I have, I'm going to make the most of it. And that's how I've gotten into the leadership positions I'm in today. It's cuz I snuck my way into these places where I learn things that I didn't really have a right to but they wanted to check that box. Ok, I don't care.

BC: Yeah we just end up having that weird thing. But keeping in mind that people are not as normative in their presentations, people who maybe are not traditionally attractive, people of color, don't get that same-

TR: People living in poverty, certainly,

BC: -don't get that same treatment that happened. It just so happens that we do often get that. We have to really be upset about something to complain. But if we do complain, they really take it seriously. And I'm just like, "I just wanted a fork." [Laughs]

AUDIENCE: They fire the person that just brings the fork. [Laughs]

TR: It could also be a little bit, we have pretty advanced resiliency skills and advocacy skills. So if something does go wrong, we do feel pretty peaceful about saying "Hey, this thing is happening and we don't like it." So yeah.

AUDIENCE: What age did you, both Lucas and Hailey, right-that's the name-come live with you? What were their ages?

TR: They were one and three.

AUDIENCE: One and three. I'm just in a developmental psych class right now, like a human lifespan one. So it's really interesting.

TR: Yeah, turns out the first three years of your life are super important. We really hope, since we got them when they were so little, that Lucas maybe wouldn't have any memories or that there wouldn't be any lasting impacts of his life before. And it is a constant-I would say even more than daily, like hourly -challenge to support him and to show him patience and grace.

BC: He's hopelessly insecure.

TR: Profoundly, chronically sad, and insecure. And everyone, all these therapists are like "Yeah. Kids that are neglected, they may always have a hole there that nothing can fill." It's rough. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: I was curious, because you talked about the Daily Mail and the tabloids and how there was just essentially a media circus that happened around 01:03:00you being pregnant and everything. I'm just curious about how you parented though that, cuz there was so much public attention happening and you guys still taught all the time. Just how parenting pretty young children around that sort of environment where there's a ton of hate speech coming in and what that's like. I'm from Portland too, so I don't know how much of that necessarily will be coming directly from communities that they will be in because Portland, in certain areas, can be really understanding. I'm just curious what that experience was like.

TR: I mean, we blocked everything from them, from coming to them. And there was nothing in person that was negative. It was truly the opposite. Yes, everyone knew our story. But it meant that when we're in line at Starbucks, the barista was like, "Oh my god, congratulations! Free coffees for everyone!" It was like an antidote. It was like the anti-troll, that we're getting this incredible 01:04:00in-person support. So we've just blocked them from all of it.

I would say two other things. One is I'm still digging out, from under the emotional bubble, of having sustained that long and that intense and onslaught of hate speech for that period of time. So I think that impacted my parenting in some ways. I'm just not able to always be as present, and as positive and as patient with them as I wanted to be.

I think the second thing would be-I think it was six months ago, Hailey and I were on a trip. Then, she asked me: "Did people say mean things to you, or about you, when you were pregnant?" And I said: "Yeah, they did." And then she started crying. And I was like, "Oh no, I've gotten too far." Hailey and I are very emotional, open people. And she said: "Well, what did they say?" And I was like, "Oh, sweetheart. I'm not going to share that with you, cuz you're just too 01:05:00little." And she was like, "I'm not too little. I'm big. I'm almost ten." But I just said that I care a lot about her spirit and I was worried that it would hurt her spirit. So that was enough. So, they know that we had something.

BC: Another aspect about our parenting is that we are very restrictive with technology, or we traditionally have been. We do not have a TV. We don't have a TV on, things that are watched or-

TR: The kids don't have a phone.

BC: Not everybody has a phone yet, which they're up in arms about.

TR: These are porn studios in your pocket. How do parents not know this? They're so young, 12. Most of the kids in Hailey's class have a phone. Audience: I didn't get a phone till I was 15 and it was for emergencies. And it was like a Blackberry-looking phone.

TR: Did you look at porn on it?

AUDIENCE: No.

TR: Exactly. Yes, it's horrible.

AUDIENCE: I'd just text my mom, like, "I'm going to lunch."

TR: So anyway, they don't have access to any of that stuff.

AUDIENCE: So y'all are about my age. And I know that at my school-I was in, I call it "so-lame"-Salem, there should have been support. But I had to basically kick and scream of every single other queer kid in my school to try and just open the PFLAG chapter at my school. Was there some kind of similar thing where in the dark days when people don't even have words for half of what we is in this room? What were some of the efforts at that time when you were trying to just express some aspect of yourself that you just got kiboshed real hard?

TR: We tried to have a GSA at my high school and we were told "no" by the assistant principal.

AUDIENCE: GSA?

TR: Gay-Straight Alliance, GSA.

AUDIENCE: I think it's called Gender-Sexuality Alliance.

TR: It was called Gay-Straight Alliance back then.

[Audience agrees]

TR: Yeah, we're talking in this time.

AUDIENCE: And this is in school?

TR: Yeah, 1998. And we were told "no" by the vice principal who was Mormon. And then after I left, he was actually arrested for having a relationship with a male student, which explains a lot. So I was like, "Oh, that's why that dude was so fucking weird and homophobic." So yeah, any attempt at support that I try to get at that early age. I went into theatre when I was a kid and that saved my life."

AUDIENCE: Yeah, truly.

TR: What about you?

BC: My survival mechanism as a young person was to fly under the radar, kind of. Because I was very-I wore makeup, I wore girl's clothes. I was not under the radar in that way. But I just decided that I'm not here to make waves, I'm not 01:08:00here to try to do anything. I'm here to prove to you that I deserve to be here and that's all I wanted to do. I think for a long time, that's where I came from. But you know, I make waves professionally often times. [Laughs] And it's always around gender stuff.

There's big dress code issues at my work when I worked in homelessness in Los Angeles. And I would just be like, "If I were a woman wearing this, would you be approaching me about not being professional enough?" And the answer is "no". Because they're basically wearing what I'm wearing. Because I used to wear really low-cut things, or things that were definitely more low-cut than a man would traditionally wear.

So anyway, I've always been shut down in those ways. Professionalism is a big way that queer people are silenced in the workplace. It's also where people of color are silenced in the workplace and pushed out. It's also where poor people are silenced in the workplace and pushed out, as we create these standards, that are arbitrary standards, very gendered. So, that's where I've always been shut down. Even now. I have to go into a prison on regular basis, and that's always really hard cuz they have-

TR: Extremely strict rules about what you can and can't wear, colors.

BC: So it's a constant bell of learning when to compromise and when to fight. But I usually am on the side of fight, so.

AUDIENCE: Changed a little since you're a kid?

BC: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Good.

AUDIENCE: That makes sense. In my high school, we had a Gay-Straight Alliance. But it was so small. And I didn't know about it till my senior year. I was like, "It's too late. I have two months left." But most of the kids I hung out with 01:10:00were all LGBT kids. And we were in theatre, and debate and radio. So the places you could be the loudest, that's where all of them went. We were all spread out and then we came together. And I was like, "We should have picked this up a lot faster with our personalities."

BC: Yeah. Anything else?

AUDIENCE: This is kind of off topic-but what would you say is the key to working through adversity in a relationship and being a good partner and whatnot.

BC: That could be an hours long conversation.

TR: I always do-I'd look at healthy queer relationships workshop for queer students unions at colleges. Cuz that's what brought me there when I was 20. It was like, "Just tell me how to say 'no' and not feel like shit." That's all I wanted.

BC: But I would say that, step one is at the beginning of a relationship, where 01:11:00you have to respect yourself enough to not put up with shit. Like, I'm not going to have you texting other people and doing this bullshit if that's not what we agreed. And I'm not going to hang on, holding for this or that, no.

TR: I never did that, by the way.

[Audience laughs]

BC: Yeah. My understanding is that, like, you're going to shout at me, I'm not with somebody that shouts at me, don't shout at me. That's not what we're going to do. I think setting the stage there is really important so that you develop a relationship that is honest and genuine to each other. And there's nothing that's weird and stupid. If you're thinking about leaving the person you're with, you need to leave them. I've never, not once, thought about leaving Trystan. If you're thinking about it, you're in that place, you should just do it.

In terms of overcoming adversity, it gets really fucking hard. And the truth is, you don't like each other at times. You know what I mean? You're not having much 01:12:00as sex as you want because you're so stressed out. So much happens. But it's about doing your best to come back together and constantly communicate and talk. One thing that, thank god, Trystan has always been really adamant about this, is we have regular date nights. Trystan is always like "We haven't gone out to dinner with just us in a minute and I'm going to put our schedules together and just do it." So in a relationship, you have to just have that time alone and together.

And then you have to have just an endless amount of compassion for the other person. There has been so many times where I've had to bring something to Trystan where I was positive that he would be pissed. Because that is what most people might be. And he would just be like, "I'm so sorry that you're going through that." I've had substance abuse issues and I have to bring that to Trystan. And he was just like, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. What can I do?"

TR: Or even if I'm fucking up somehow, and Biff comes to me and it's like "Hey, I notice this thing you're doing, and I want you to stop." I have an initial defense, like, "Well I do that-" And I always am like, "Ok, no. I want to be the kind of person someone can come to when I'm doing something bad." So I really, really try to be like "You're right. I'm sorry." And see where is my partner right, how can I change?

And we did the New York Times' Love Challenge last summer, where it's seven activities over seven days. It's all evidence based. They looked at the roomful of people who have been together super long time, what did they do and then how can you build those things into a relationship as you go. And one of the practices that I use all the time is, when you're disagreeing, try to see what value your partner holds that is at the heart of their actions or their belief. So if Biff and I disagree with how much support we give his family, for example, 01:14:00and I'm like-"oh my god"-angry, but then I'm like "Ok, but why, what value does Biff hold that is driving Biff to have this level of commitment to their family?" And I'm like, "Oh, Biff would do anything for their family." That's a really legit value to have in a partner.

[Audience agrees]

When there's a disagreement, I always try to think what value that I care about and love, and appreciate, is this coming from, and then going back to that place and affirming that, and showing appreciation for that. That's something that I've been trying to do since we did the Love Challenge last year.

BC: It's also really instinctive in a relationship, in any non-romantic relationships. When you have a disagreement, you want the person to agree with you. That's what you want. There're so many times where he'd be like "I'm giving you what you want. What else do you want from me?" And I'd be like, "Well, I want you to believe what you're doing." But the truth is sometimes somebody getting you what you want, or doing what you're asking them to do, has to be 01:15:00enough. If the thing that I'm asking of Trystan is to just not do something, it doesn't matter if he is happy about it or not. If he's saying "I'm not going to do it," the whole argument should just end there. That took a long time for me to learn, cuz I'll be like, "Well, I don't want you to do it regrettably." We get so caught up in that. Sometimes I think we should have a more transactional approach in relationships, not about everything.

AUDIENCE: Yeah I definitely agree with that one.

BC: Also, I just married the best person. I mean it sounds cheesy but I just married the best person. So, that helps. And so cute. Ten years.

MC: All of a sudden, you became internationally famous. And there's got to be 01:16:00positive stuff about that, as well as negative stuff. So that's one part of my question. And the other part is about your background in performing arts. Both of you are incredibly articulate. Did you have that same kind of thing and how have you, Trystan, used that? Was it just part of you that you took the training of performing arts, what have you learned from that that's helped you along? The other thing I should mention is you have this extraordinary stage presence, so when we watch your videos, it's like, "That's so funny, that's so moving!"

TR: It's this weird thing where I just have this serpentine, or circuitous, root of where I am today. And every twist and turn made who I am today possible. So me going to performing arts school means I'm not nervous in front of a room. It means I know how to craft a story, the beginning, middle and end. It means I 01:17:00know how to be really authentic and vulnerable in a way that stills feels safe to the people that are there. It means I know how to read the energy of a room. Those kinds of things. And then stumbling in the work in the taskforce, stumbling into this team of people who learned how do you change someone's mind about queer stuff, that informs everything I do too.

I'd map out my audience mentally ahead of time, where are they on the spectrum. What can I give the people in each stage that's gonna move them forward, that's gonna be compelling? Where am I gonna be funny? Because-I'm sure you all know this, but-there's an actual psycho-physiological that happens when you laugh. It short-circuits a lot of bias and bigotry. If you can make someone laugh, then you're literally hacking transphobia and finding new ways to reach them. It's all a craft. It's not like I was born doing this. It's all very carefully worked out. And all of it is evidence-based. It's all science. That whole story, all 01:18:00science. Every stage is doing something. Hopefully-what did they say in theatre-you can't see the choreography, which means hopefully you can't see the blueprint through me. But all of that, I think, has made what I do now possible.

And also, like Biff alluded to, I'm just really good at taking notes. If someone says do it this other way, I'm like "That sounds great!" And so I just really, really try to be humble. At The Moth, those people worked with me six times. How much could I had paid for The Moth to teach me storytelling for six sessions? There's no limit to how much I would have paid for that. I worked my ass off to get into The Moth because I knew I would get those things. I'm just always looking for opportunities to grow and learn. After every story, during my trans-pregnancy, I would sent the link to trans-messaging director at GLAAD and be like "How did I do? What did I miss? What can I do differently?" He would get on the phone with me and then he would coach me based on that CNN story, or that 01:19:00People Magazine or that Cosmo, whatever. And then I would iterate and change for the next one. Every single stage-because I owe it to my trans people to do this right. Not all of us are given an opportunity. When was the last transman who was in the spotlight in the way that I had a chance to be in? It's rare. And I wanted to be really responsible.

And then Biff was in debate.

BC: Yeah, I don't have a theatre background, really. But I also am not nearly as thoughtful about all of this as Trystan is. The truth is I don't accompany Trystan on most things, like I don't do well in interviews and stuff. I don't want to censor or shape what I'm saying. That's not an experience that I enjoy or like, but I know I'm useful in different ways.

You know we did a series of podcasts? You can go listen to The Longest Shortest 01:20:00Time. And I said some things that even after I hung up, I was like, "I gotta call her back and tell her that she cannot include that in her podcast." So I have a tendency to do that.

TR: Go off message.

BC: To just totally go off message.

I can talk to people and be articulate. But I'm not somebody that's going to be leading a training or standing on The Moth stage.

TR: But they do perform for us a variety of skits such as reenacting the birth of Jesus every Christmas Eve in puppet form.

[Audience laughs]

AUDIENCE: You do have good facial expressions.

TR: Oh, it's good. It's good.

BC: I'm a fan of comedy. I love funny and I want things to be funny all the time. So I appreciate that. I'm just not nearly as developed. I'm also not nearly as open to advice and criticism as Trystan is. I'm not going to ask 01:21:00anybody what I can do better. But I would love to be in a place where I could do that.

AUDIENCE: What are your zodiac signs?

[Audience laughs]

BC: Oh lord. We both have strong opinions about this.

AUDIENCE: I want to hear 'em.

BC: I don't understand anybody's obsession with this. It's just one of those things I'm like, it is so far removed from anything that is scientific or even sensical. People that really love it, no offense to you. There's people that really love it. But they can be like, "Sagittarius is stubborn" or anything. I'm like, you can basically say anything about it and everything is like "Oh yeah, Leo." So both of us feel that way though, there's no disagreement.

TR: But I would never say that. This is an example of it right now. Just say Libra and keep moving.

AUDIENCE: My mom once told people that way, she's like "You're acting like such a Capricorn right now."

TR: I know, and people view it as a weapon and they use it like an escape hatch 01:22:00out of accountability.

[Audience cross-talks]

BC: I really truthfully just don't get it. But I'm sure that there are other ways in which I use them and constantly that is also similar. It's just not called that.

AUDIENCE: You're definitely a Virgo, right?

BC: I'm a Sagittarius.

[Audience laughs]

MC: And you've taken your children back to church, you said. Not "back", but to church.

AUDIENCE: Sorry, what was the question?

TR: Take them into church.

AUDIENCE: All I heard in that was "church, church, church."

TR: That was the question.

AUDIENCE: Okay.

BC: Yeah, having been so rejected by the church as a young person, but also having church been such an integral part of my upbringing, my whole value system is based on Christian principles. That's what I was taught.

TR: "Do unto others." "Love thy neighbor."

BC: Right. The story of Christ is one that's been so muddied over time. But it's a pure, wonderful, beautiful story. It's a message of endless, radical compassion that the people that we should embrace, and help are the most rejected members of society. So, I believe so strongly in that. Being rejected was really hard and I came to this place in my life in recent years where I was like, "Wait a minute. I can reclaim that." I can find a church that I do agree with their values, and go and reclaim that. Because it was taken and it was traumatic that it was taken. It also meant that I was just like "I'm an atheist." I'm still an atheist, actually. But I really believe deeply in it 01:24:00would be wonderful it we could reshape what effect the church has on our society. Because the message of Christianity, as the message of Islam or almost any other religion, is a positive message. It's a beautiful message. It's the right thing. So, all the time, I'll engage with family members. They think I'm very conservative on Christian things. And I'm like, "Would you really believe that that's what Jesus would do?" "Can you really stand in front of me and say that Jesus would deny healthcare to somebody? That's what he would want you to do?" It's so easy to engage on those terms because it's simple. It really is simple.

And so yeah. I'm just back to this place where it's like "I'm just going to reclaim some of that." I enjoyed going to church. It was fun as a kid. I want to have my kids experience some of that too. So I take them to church. MCC, it's 01:25:00Metropolitan Community Church. It's a historically gay church. It was founded by gay people. And oddly enough, my church is a bit what they call charismatic. It's not liturgical, it's not like "in the name of the Father, the son-".

BC: It's very much lively. It's like what you might expect in some of what black churches are known for, being rowdy and lively. So yeah. I really felt like my kids would benefit. It's fun to force them to sit through church. I'll tell them what I told you, which is that when I was younger, my parents would always be like-I was like "I'm so tired. I don't want to go to church." And they would be like, "Jesus was not tired when he died on the cross for your sins."

So all the time now, I just bring that to my kids where I'm like, "Listen, Jesus would have gone to church for you." And they know I'm joking. They're always like "You can't make us believe in God." And I'm like "I don't believe in God. I'm not trying to make you believe in anything." But yeah, the church is complicated, especially for queerness. The church has been a big oppressor in queer culture in history.

Trystan does not go to church with me usually. Holidays, he's the holiday churchgoer.

TR: Even then, I'm just chasing Leo around in the lobby. Honestly, social justice history-that's always been my spiritual connection to the divine and to what has been, and to what will be.

MC: You talked about the experience of birth as being as close to God, and you talked about it as being a miracle. That wonderful moment.

TR: It was like an out-of-body, once-in-a-lifetime, totally bizarre and miraculous experience. And it's oxytocin-it's what Biff was describing when they say that the brains of people who are in a room when birth happens, the brain changes. The brain produces oxytocin which is the love chemical. Everyone in the room, not just the birthing person, but the doctors as well, and the baby. So that's what that is. You just get that hit of really good stuff.

[Audience cross-talks to Leo from here to the end.]