Queer Pride Parade - Community Care, Trans Advocacy & What Real Allyship Looks Like ft. Ben Greene

Welcome back to another episode of the Hella Chisme Podcast.

Happy Pride Month, Cheese Mates. This one is for the community, all of it.

This week, host Dana sits down with internationally recognized transgender advocate, educator, and storyteller Ben Greene for a deep, honest, and joy-filled conversation about what it really means to show up for one another, especially right now.

We talk about community care beyond the buzzword. We talk about the very real divide happening inside the LGBTQIA+ community between the gay community and the trans community  and why that conversation is long overdue. We talk about advocacy fatigue, what it feels like to be the only person speaking up in a room, and how queer people keep finding ways to heal collectively even when the world keeps making it harder.

We play "Who's In Your Chosen Family?"  a love letter to all the roles queer people play for each other. We built the Official Queer Survival Kit for 2026. And we close with a community check-in that asks the questions we need to sit with after the parades are over.

Ben Greene is the author of My Child is Trans, Now What? A Joy-Centered Approach to Support, creator of the Substack Good Queer News, a GLAAD Media Award nominee, and a relentless voice for trans youth and their families at the Missouri State Capitol and beyond.

Pride is not just visibility. It's protection. It's my responsibility. It's love that refuses to disappear.

San Diego Pride is July 17th — let's celebrate all the way there.

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📚 Find Ben Greene: Good Queer News on Substack | My Child is Trans, Now What?

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Topics to include:

LGBTQ+ Pride Month 2026, Pride Month podcast, transgender advocacy, trans rights 2026, community care queer community, Ben Greene transgender educator, My Child is Trans Now What, Good Queer News Substack, GLAAD Media Award nominee, trans allyship, queer chosen family, LGBTQIA+ division, trans community support, advocacy burnout, queer healing, queer joy as resistance, Stonewall history, Pride Month history, San Diego Pride 2026, LGBTQ+ mental health, queer survival, Black queer community, trans youth advocacy, mutual aid LGBTQ, chosen family podcast, intersectionality LGBTQ, queer community care, trans inclusion, real allyship, queer podcast interview, Pride special episode, Hella Chisme Podcast, Dana podcast host, San Diego podcast

Transcript

Pride Month Joy And Resistance

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Yo, June has arrived, and this home section is ready to celebrate. Pride is wrapped in color, celebration, resistance, and reflection. Pride Month is more than just rainbow flags, parties, and parades. It's a reminder of people who fought and protested, who loved loudly and created spaces for generations of LGBTQIA plus people. And it gave us the space to live openly and authentically. It is a month rooted in history, resilience, and community. And for many people, pride is joy. It is seeing yourself reflected in the world around you. It has chosen family, music, laughter, dancing in the streets, and moments of freedom that once felt impossible. It is the feeling of being seen, affirmed, celebrated exactly as who you are. But Pride Month is also deeply personal. It holds the stories of queer and trans people who continue to navigate discrimination, violence, and rejection, and the emotional weight of simply existing in a world that still debates their humanity. It reminds us that Pride began as a protest, led by activists, many of them black and brown trans women, drag queens, and queer activists who fought back against injustice and demanded dignity, safety, and liberation. June became Pride Month because of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, where members of the LGBTQIA plus community resisted ongoing police harassment and violence at the Stonewall Inn. What started as frustration and resistance became turning a turning point in the modern LGBTQ plus rights movement. One year later, the first pride marches were held to honor the uprising and continue to fight for equality and visibility. And while June is recognized globally as the kickoff to pride season, pride itself does not begin in just one month. Communities across the country celebrate pride throughout the year for different reasons, whether local history, accessibility, andor just a reason to celebrate, pride is celebrated in many different areas. From summer celebrations to Black Pride events, trans pride gatherings, Latinx Pride, and local community-based pride festivals, each one reflects the diversity and intersectionality within the LGBTQIA Plus community itself. This June, Pride feels especially important. Across the country, around the world, LGBTQIA Plus communities continue to face attacks on disability, healthcare, education, and basic human rights. And yet, despite all that shit, queer people continue to create art and build families, care for one another, and show up with courage and love. Pride Month is also a call to community care. To check on one another, to make space for difficult conversations, to support queer and trans voices, not only in celebration, but in protection. To recognize that healing is happening. It needs to happen. It needs to happen in community. And that sometimes the most powerful form of self-care is knowing you don't have to survive alone. At its core, pride is about people. It is about authenticity. It is about freedom. It is about the right to exist fully, loudly, softly, unapologetically, and safely. And maybe this month is also the opportunity to ask ourselves, how do we continue showing up for each other after the pride parades are over? How do we protect the most vulnerable within our community? How do we create spaces where everybody feels like they belong? Because pride is not just a moment, it's a movement, it's a memory, it's healing, it's a community. And it is love that refuses to disappear. And that is the real cheese bang. Happy Pride Month. Hey y'all, I just wanted to let you know that we have a Patreon channel. That's right. If you did not know, we are on Patreon. Our Patreon is $8.99 a month where you can come and watch all of our visual elements to our podcast show. So all you have to do is click the link in our description box and it will take you right there. It's only $8.99 a month. Make sure you go and subscribe. Bye.

Host Check-In And Pride Reality

SPEAKER_01 5:57

And welcome back to another episode of the Hella Cheese Way podcast. My name is Dana, and I'm your host. Hey y'all, how y'all doing? Um it's hot in here. It's been a little mini. I mean, it hasn't been that long. Um, but welcome to Pride Month. It is June, honey, and I'm so excited to celebrate Pride Month this year, uh this year. Um, I know but San Diego Pride happens in July, but anyway. Um how's things been going? You know, we haven't really had a moment to check in for real. Like what's been going on? Uh with me, I've just been working hard, living my life, like it's Golden, like Jill Scott say. Um and doing all the things. Um you know, my birthday is next month, and I'm gonna be 36. I can't believe it. Um I don't really know what I'm gonna do for real. Like, I wanted to have a dinner party, but there's a trip that's kinda calling my name, so I can't really make a decision on what it's gonna give. But, you know. We'll see. Um the work has been crazy as usual. We're gearing up for our pride celebrations, uh, and trying to, you know, rally the troops to march in solidarity with the rest of the Hummel's. But I'm excited. Pride is always fun. Um Pride Month is always fun for me. Um, you know, I've had some I've had some really good prides, I can say. That's another story for another day because I'm too sober to tell that on camera. But anyway, as I mentioned, it is pride month, and you know, June is the kickoff for pride. Many, many different folks are having their pride in June, but you know, San Diego Pride is not until July 17th. But it don't matter because I am always celebrating my uh my pride and have always been very clear that I am a proud dangling loving Manchester hugging homosexual, and I will always be in none of that is ever gonna change. And let me just say that if you listen to the show and you did not know that, I'm sorry, I just came out of the closet for you, but I've been out of the closet. And I'm so sorry if this is news for you, but this is the truth. Um and if you don't support it, guess what? There's the door, honey. And don't let it hit you on the way out, honey. Alright. Now, let's get into what we're talking about today. Um I think we talk a lot about pride, and you know, we I think pride and how it um its reputation. No, how we see it nowadays, you know, especially with a lot of corporate backing of pride, it's it's always giving glitter, parties, and celebration. But I don't think we talk about um the emotional labor of being a part of a community that's constantly fighting to survive enough. Uh, nobody talks about what happens when career people start turning on each other, uh, when trans people feel abandoned, uh, when allies get exhausted, get tired of fighting, uh, when people want visibility but not want the responsibility to do the work. Um, and somewhere in the middle of that, we are still trying to also heal from what we have going on in the world right now. And um, and you know, every day we just live in our lives, going through things, working, uh, you know, feeding our babies, uh, feeding our fur babies and taking care of ourselves. Um, and then when you turn on the TV and you see your community always a topic of conversation, whether it be, you know, just the gay community or the black gays or the black trans or the trans people, no matter where in the community and how the interest things intersect, it's always of topic and it's always it's always it's heavily under attack. And I mean, and I have to tell you, honey, I'm tired and not just actually tired because I've worked all day, but mentally tired because it's just a lot of shit going on. Um, so that brought me to today's conversation, especially with it being Pride

Community Care Beyond Self-Care

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Month. Um, I wanted to uh talk about community care and not the buzzword version, but the real version and just get into a real conversation of what community care is and um what it means to check on your people and their level of survival. Um, but to give you a little bit of context, community care is the practice of people showing up for one another emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, spiritually, and sometimes financially. Can you loan me $20? Uh, especially during times of hardship, healing, or survival. It is the understanding that we're not meant to go through life alone and that care should not only exist on an individual level, but within the relationships and communities we build together. Unlike self-care, which focuses on caring for yourself, community care recognizes that healing often happens collectively. It can look like checking in on a friend, helping someone access resources, protecting vulnerable people, sharing knowledge, creating safe spaces, offering emotional support, or simply reminding somebody that they are not alone. For many marginalized communities, especially the LGBTQIA plus, communities, black and brown communities, disabled communities, and immigrant communities, community care has historically been a form of survival. When systems fail to protect people, communities learned how to protect and care for each other themselves through chosen family, mutual aid, advocacy, activism, and collective support. Community care is also accountability. It asks people to think beyond themselves. How do we support each other? How do we make people feel safe? How do we create spaces where people can exist fully and authentically? Which are important conversations when we're thinking about this. In the queer communities, especially, community care can mean affirming someone's identity, defending trans lives, supporting queer youth, protecting each other's form harm from harm, and celebrating joy and making sure nobody feels abandoned in moments of struggle. At its core, community care is about love and action. It's about empathy with responsibility and it's about healing through connection. And it is the reminder that sometimes caring for others is always a way of caring for ourselves. Now, I'm looking forward to this conversation today. I have a wonderful guest that I'm bringing on. Um, but before we get into all that, we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna get into the conversation and our wonderful guests. Bye. Alright, y'all. Quick pause. If you've been watching, listening, vibing, and you're not subscribed yet, that's suspicious behavior is given sus. Go ahead and subscribe to the Hella Cheese May Podcast on YouTube. That's at Hella Cheese May Podcast. Follow us on Instagram at Hella Cheese Maypod. And yes, we're on TikTok too. Hey. You can follow us at Hella Cheese Mate. And to remind professional June scrolls, if you scroll for 52 minutes straight but can't hit follow, be serious. The algorithm is already fighting us. Don't join it. Leave a comment on this episode, tell us what you think, drop your favorite moment, argue with me respectfully. The comments help more than you know. And wherever you're listening, whether that's Apple, Spotify, wherever, make sure you subscribe there too. Don't just consume the cheese man, participate in it, girlfriend. Help us beat the algorithm before it decides we don't exist. Subscribe, follow, comment, share, girl. You know, being a part of this community, just to let you know, it's fun over here because we're building something and we're building something beautiful. Make sure to be a part. And we are back.

Ben Green On Joyful Advocacy

SPEAKER_01 15:42

So today's guest is Ben Green. Uh, he's an internationally recognized transgender advocate, educator, and storyteller dedicated to creating spaces rooted in empathy, education, and joy. After coming out at transgender at the age of 15 years old in a small town, Ben turned his personal journey into a mission to support and uplift transgender people, uh, also youth and families across the country. Uh, through his work, Ben has spoken to organizations including NASA, which I tried to get a job at NASA, but that's another subject. Uh, Johnson and Johnson and more uh and more than 150 P flag chapters. A past 200. Look at you. I mean, we're gonna we're gonna get into this because I'm trying to tell you, I really am trying to get to get into my public speaking bag. I want to do it, I want to make it happen. Um, Ben has been leading conversations around transgender inclusion, belonging, and understanding, and known for his compassion forward approach, which I can definitely uh vouch for. Ben believes education is most impactful when it begins with humanity and leads with joy. Ben is the author of the Substack Good Queer News and the book My Child Is Trans Now What? A joy-centered approach to support and a transgender loved ones. Well, Ben nominated for work. Uh Ben regularly speaks at the Missouri State Capitol in defense of transgender rights and protections. No matter the audience or where the conversation begins, Ben is committed to leading with compassion, authenticity, and the belief that joy itself can be a powerful form of resistance. I want to welcome Ben to the show. Welcome, welcome to the Hella Cheese May podcast.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

So excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Thank you for coming. Thank you for joining. Um, I'm so happy to have have you on the show today. How are you doing? How are you feeling?

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah, I'm I'm feeling solidly okay. I've been deep in the trenches of research for a new book that I'm working on about the role of joy in the fight for queer rights. Uh it's a great book, and it's so much work. It's so much work, and it's like I'm, you know, I'm I'm giving birth. I knew I needed to write this story, but figuring out what it wants to be and how what the voice is, how it wants to be written, is labor and it's hard and it hurts, and I love it. And this will be one of the most difficult projects I've ever written. So I'm excited and it like terrifies me. So I've been doing that all day, and I'm like, ooh, okay, okay, I could put it down.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

I mean, what does the when you're doing background research, what does that look like when you're preparing to do like when you're doing research for a book so that you can get everything you need and everything? Tell us a little bit about what that looks like.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah, I mean, it's everything. It's setting up interviews with people who have written about this, it's reading books that are similar, both in content or in style. So who are people who've written about joy in the climate justice movement and in the civil rights movement, or who else is writing about queer history? So I'm finding those books. I'm reading those books, I'm interviewing the authors, I'm looking at every source they cite and going and reading all those sources. I'm looking for podcasts and Substacks and, you know, because publishing is crazy, full of gatekeepers, full of like tone policing, which means that a lot of stories don't make it all the way to the bookstore. Doesn't mean they're not worth getting told. So I also have to look at what are the different avenues that people will share those stories, who's posting on social media, who's writing articles about it, who's trying to get published talking about these things, or who's not worried about a book at all and is out there in the world doing the work because the applications matter even more than the history to me. Uh, you know, I'm I'm not pretending to be a historian. I'm framing it as that I'm someone who carries history. I have Lou Sullivan and Marsha P. Johnson and Magnus Hersbeld on my back. I am carrying their torch, I'm bringing their legacy forward. I'm not gonna, you know, discover some brand new story you've never heard of before, but I'm here to tell the stories that I hold in my heart with how I move as an organizer and as an advocate. So I'm talking to people who are carrying history in their own way, people who are blazing some really beautiful, joyful trails. So it's I literally can never turn it off. Everywhere I am, I'm like, that's the name for the book. I need to talk to them. Oh my gosh, I need to do this person. My notes app is a hurricane of queer joy right now in like the best way possible.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

I love it. You know what's funny? I um if you would have asked me, I want to say what 10 years ago, if I would how much I use my notes app now is ridiculous. I that's where I've started a lot of my projects. That's where I've started um where definitely my grocery list. Because I can share it with my husband, and then you can uh they let you now put little check marks in the little bubbles. Um, but otherwise, I use my notes app for everything. I start writing papers in there, I start writing my essays in there, my my episodes. If I'm like not at a computer or I don't have a notebook, I start writing it in my in my notes app and it's a lifesaver.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Yeah, it really is. And like I love my notes app, my dictation app. My brain lives in there every single day. I go for a walk for like 45 minutes, and I just braind out my to-do list, and then whatever like the art of the day is gonna be, I'll just talk it through and then I'll go back and read through it and like edit it and turn it into a chapter or an article or an essay or something. I gotta I think in motion.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

I love it. I love it. So, wait, you have a notes app and a dictation app?

SPEAKER_00 21:54

I used to dictate into my notes app, but I literally would like have to hold my phone out to my face, press the little microphone. Microphone button, dictate one sentence and then it would turn itself off. So now I have a dictation app that like I just turn it on and then I put it in my pocket, I have my AirPods in, and it'll go for half an hour. And it doesn't show you what you're dictating live, which means I'm not I'm not able to edit while I write, which is what stops me fucking. They call it the tyranny of a blank page. It's so hard to stare at a screen and write a sentence that I feel like has to be perfect. But if I'm talking it out and I can't edit it while I'm writing, it takes that barrier away. It forces me to just keep doing a first draft and then I can sit down and edit it, which is so much easier for me.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

I mean, I wish um you're gonna have to first tell me about this app because I get so lazy sometimes when I'm like talking or when I'm creating a note for something, and I you're you're exactly right. I have to put it to my face, I have to, you know, say what I want, and it will end. And sometimes, you know, and maybe it's me, it's my pronunciation or how I pronunciate words, maybe improperly, but you know, I'm I'm a human and I say shit, it's fine, but it but it will even if I'm saying it properly, it my notes app will take and say something else and or put something else uh that into the app. So I'm gonna need this app. Um I got you. So you're located in Southern California, right? Yes. And uh what's the weather giving in Southern Cal right now?

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Like is it warm or what the sun has come out, it is beautiful out today. I just moved to Southern California from Missouri, so the weather is not tornadoes, and that is perfect.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yes, and did you grow up in Missouri? Is that the small town we were talking about in the beginning?

SPEAKER_00 23:53

No, actually, I grew up in small town, Connecticut, and then my wife in 2020, who was my girlfriend at the time, was like, I just got into medical school. Do you want to move in with me? I was like, Oh my god, yes. And she said, By the way, it's in Missouri, and I was like, Oh my god, what? And I did not know what to expect, and that's a whole other fascinating tangent. Missouri made me into the person that I needed to be. I got yeah, derped my ass on a platter in a way that was so vital to me being an actual effective organizer and human. Um, so I'm not from Missouri, but I like to say I was forged in Missouri.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

I love it. And so, what was it like growing up in the small town that you grew up in in Connecticut?

Coming Out Young And Carrying Others

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah, you know, Connecticut is a very there's a tremendous amount of privilege, a tremendous amount of wealth. It's a lot of really like, if you've ever heard the term NIMBY liberal, not in my backyard, of like, yes, affordable housing, like go equal rights. And then someone would be like, cool, what if we put an apartment building in our town? And the pushback immediate was like, but they're gonna ruin the town, they'll destroy the streets, these apartment people, like which is just racism. It's just, it's just racism. So I grew up in a town that was 98% white, it had 10,000 people in it. Diversity was in any respect disability. Like our school had a back dark hallway for the special ed kids and the disabled kids, and like we I was a complete bubble. So me coming out as trans was so nobody knew what to do about it. They weren't cruel about it because it was 2015, so they kind of it was early enough that they didn't know they were supposed to be cruel about it, they didn't know they were supposed to be angry, they were just confused, and I'm it was safe, which is amazing. I'm really fortunate for a lot of people, it's not safe. It was safe, and beyond that, everything fell to me. I became an adult, I taught our health classes, I wrote our school policy, every kid was finding me in the hallways to say, You're trans. What does that mean? How does it how does it feel? Does it feel like this? Am I trans? Do I have to come out now? Can you help me come out? I I became the Pied Piper of queer kids in my school. And so it was isolating in a lot of ways. I became only trans. I wasn't all these things, but I learned so much about how to do effective organizing, about what it meant to carry a lot of people on your back and through the different youth all across Connecticut, because Connecticut's like a hundred suburbs in a trench coat. There's no real place in Connecticut. All the towns are so small that none of us really had a big GSA. So we had a Facebook group for queer youth in the whole state of Connecticut that I was the president of, that I now know was like incredible youth organizing that was like, okay, how did you all get gender neutral bathrooms at your high school? Can you share the sample policy and let's practice coming out to our parents together? And who needs a date to the prom to pretend to be straight? Or like, who needs uh a gender firm enclosed? Does anyone want to swap a talks for a dress? Like this amazing space of safety that we created, totally youth-led. So I learned a lot, and I'm I'm glad to be out of there to have gotten to meet people outside of that 98% white 10,000 people bubble.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

I mean, I can only imagine, especially, you know, it's being a small town, being um one of the only kids or the only kid, um, and then people having so many questions. Like, and and then but I think uh you trying to figure out for yourself, but now having to figure it out for other people and how to give them the proper answers.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah. And in the beginning it was, it was so frustrating. It was so exhausting. And like in the very beginning, I would snap at people, I'd get frustrated, and I'd be like, I I why do you keep asking me? I don't want to do this. You know, I I just want to be a kid. I don't know. And then I would realize that that person was now unsafe for the next kid who was going to talk to them because they were learning, okay, transgender people are angry or it's not worth it for me to engage. And all these other kids were coming to me to say, is it safe? How did it go for you? Do you think they're ready for me? So I kind of deeply internalized this understanding that my boundaries did not matter because whether or not, like I was already out, all these other kids were waiting. They were depending on me to make it safe for them. So I learned how to ignore all of my boundaries so that they wouldn't have to do that. I had already given it up. I was already out. Cats out of the bag, least I can do is make it a little better for the next kid. And that has driven a lot of my work of making it better for the next person. With fortunately, as an adult who's now been in lots of therapy, I don't violate my boundaries for other people anymore. But that was hard fought. It was exhausting for a while.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

I can imagine. I mean, you know, being in high school and is first of all, being in high school itself is exhausting. Then being a uh kid, a part of the community, whether queer, trans, or uh gay or bisexual, and then being in high school, and then that is exhausting. Then try being gay and then being black in a predominantly black high school, and you know, it's just when I follow up on the intersectionality of it all, and you know, just how it all just piles up on all the different areas, it becomes um, it becomes a fucking hamster will. And um, you know, I've talked on I talked about it before on the show about uh being gay in high school and in middle school and not really knowing what it was that if that's how I wanted to identify or and not really understanding what that meant or what that looked like for me. Um and then, you know, my friends kind of being the ones who would say it for me. And I'm like, hold on, like that's not that's not what I don't know that that's what I want. You can't attach me to something that you see or that you think you know that I don't even know for myself.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Yeah, and sometimes like I understand the urge to be like, I can help you figure it out, I can save you the pain of not knowing who you are, but that usually just pushes people even further into the closet. The times that I've been sure someone's identity, most of the time I'm usually right. And when I try to tell them I know who you are better than you do, even if I have guesses that are often accurate, that's gonna push them further away. Only that person can figure out who they are. All you can do is ask the right questions and provide them the safety to figure it out for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so let's talk about let's let's let's run the clack forward a little bit.

Pride History And Queer Celebration

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Let's talk about uh today. Uh so it's Pride Month. Uh where it's you know, things are happening. What does pride look like for you? Do you go out? Do you what does celebrating pride look like for you uh in Southern California?

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Yeah. So I haven't actually lived in Southern California for a pride before, so I don't know what it looks like here. Um I know what it looked like in Missouri. I'm I'm not a big going out kind of person. I am kind of a hub body. I love dinner table, long conversations, and board games and movie nights. Um the big thing for me that pride looks like, honestly, I'm a trans public speaker, so pride looks like making a third to half of my annual income in one month, which is my pride is July. Um that's what I'm really celebrating. But honestly, um I think a lot of it is honoring queer history. You know, I'm really I'm in it for using this as a mile marker to notice how far we've come. I resent both both extremes where people are either like, I just want to party with my favorite neighborhood corporations and like get really drunk, uh, and are like pride is only for partying. And I don't like the people who are like, the first pride was a riot, and if you're partying, you're doing it wrong. Um, it's both, right? We need that celebration. Going to a pride festival with my shirt off as a trans man and seeing a trans kid see my top surgery scars and my wedding band, me holding hands with my wife, seeing that kid see me for the first time heals something in both of us. We need that. We need that celebration. We need that gathering, that dancing, that togetherness. I don't know if we need, you know, my favorite neighborhood bank there, but uh, we need to be together. And what they were fighting for, right? The Stonewall riot wasn't just, you know, about pushing back on police harassment. It was also police harassment of our ability to gather and party and celebrate and dance and drink and dress as ourselves and live as ourselves. And the pushback was saying, you cannot stop us from gathering anymore. And they trapped the cops inside that bar for hours. They threw rocks at them, they had the cops hiding inside. It was amazing how we pushed back, how we celebrated. That was a days-long standoff between the queer community and the police that's been totally mythologized in a way that is kind of cool and kind of unhelpful sometimes. Um, so I think the pride for me is seeing our history, seeing, okay, how far have we come? What have we fought for? Right? They were fighting for freedom from three articles laws, which say that you had to wear at least three articles of clothing for your biological sex. My outfit right now would be literally illegal. I would go to jail at that time. So for people saying we haven't achieved anything, everything is terrible, we got to use this as a mile marker. Look at where we are, look at how many P FLAG chapters are marching in the parade, look at how much public support we have. Do we have further to go? Yes. But I really use pride to remember how far we've come and to engage with as much queer art as I possibly can. I read queer and trans authors almost exclusively. I re-watch my favorite queer and trans TV shows and movies. I try to see live queer and trans theater. That's what I want is to engage with the art and the celebration and the dreams of my community. It's about the past and it's about the future for me.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Yes, I love that. I love it, I love it. I mean, I think for me, um I first of all, I have always whether they've been good or bad, I've loved a good queer uh movie, uh, some cinema on and Amazon, Amazon Prime has the best, well, for out TV and for um it's out TV and I can't think of it right though, but but there's a few other ones. And I love a good uh movie on Sunday, and I'll go through I'll go through a bunch of them. And I don't care if it's five dollars, two dollars, I'll buy it and I'll watch it, whether it's good or bad, it's fine. Just to just to support, you know, and I because if we're not supporting, then they're not gonna make them and or they won't get an opportunity to make uh more of them, I should say. Yeah, exactly. Um so so Ben, I think what I when we first uh started getting connected and uh in conversation, uh what really piqued my interest when meeting you was taught and uh that I enjoyed and thought was really cool about you was your huge book collection. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Enjoy the visual side of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

Such a cool thing. And I just felt like, and I first of all, I loved how beautifully displayed they were behind you or are behind you. And I was just like, oh my gosh, like I aspire. And as you can see, I have my own unit. You have a gorgeous office. I have well, okay, so here we'll get to that in two seconds. I have, you know, these are all my little babies back there, you know. I'm I'm working on it. Um, but it was really just like all of the reading that you do, and what um was really what brought me, brought my attention, and then obviously all the work that you do. Um, but I was just curious, have you always been an avid reader? And um how did that go from you being a reader and then transitioning into you being a writer?

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Yeah. So as a kid, I read constantly, voraciously, obsessively, like any other weird kid pre-transition. I knew I was weird, the other kids knew I was weird, nobody knew why. I just knew that books were the best friends I was gonna have at that time. So I read a lot, and then I went to high school and took high school English classes, which were like, Did you know it's possible to be bad at reading and you're stupid? And I was like, Okay. So I kind of stopped reading for high school and college. I was not reading for fun. Um, and then I moved to St. Louis and it was COVID. And as a birthday present, my family got me a private browsing session for one hour at a local independent bookstore called Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Missouri, best bookstore of all time. I go in and there are five other people in my browsing appointment, and they are in and out. So it's just me and all the people who work at this bookstore. So I go up to the counter, I've been working up the nerve to ask this question the whole time I'm there. I said, I don't know if this even exists. I'm sorry if this is a weird question, but are there any science fiction and fantasy novels with trans protagonists? And the person behind the counter starts to kind of laugh. And I was like, Oh, I knew it. I'm about to get beat up. And she laughs and she goes, Buddy, everyone who works here is trans. And so she brings me downstairs to the science fiction fantasy section. She sits me down at this table. All the staff members who were on shift, Danielle, Phoebe, and Shane, my besties, come downstairs and start running around, collecting all of their favorite trans and queer books off the shelves, running up to me one after the other, saying, Here's a trans author, here's a queer author, everyone in this book is a lesbian. Piled me up. I think I left with like 10 queer books, which I'd never seen queer, certainly not trans books, and definitely not in the speculative fiction world. And they really opened me up to these incredible authors and this world of reading queer and trans books. So I read those books, and then I was back in the bookstore every week being like, okay, give me more, tell me something else, tell me someone else, becoming great friends with these booksellers and realizing what it meant to me to see myself in books. So as I started to get more into advocacy work, started to do more legislative advocacy, started to do more uh, you know, education, doing those P Flag presentations, I realized I'm not bad at reading, I'm not bad at writing. I was just bad at writing, you know, to the specific rubric in an AP English class. But I'm I'm good at telling stories. So I was falling in love with storytelling, with realizing I was a storyteller, and decided to, I needed to write a book for parents of trans kids because there weren't any that were written by trans people. So that book was kind of like, okay, I need to write this book. And that I didn't necessarily think I wanted to be like a capital A author. I just needed to write that book because I needed to get the information out into the world. I didn't know what the publishing world was like or what the writing process was. And as I went through the publishing process, I learned a lot. And I was like, man, this is the best thing ever. It's crazy, it's terrible, but I love it. And so then I really started writing more in fiction and in poetry and in more research-backed nonfiction, and have totally fallen in love with storytelling and with realizing every story deserved to be told. Every voice is a voice worth reading. You know, even if I'm not writing in a highly academic way, I write how I speak. I write in a way that's friendly and silly and approachable and warm. And that reaches people. That is something that people want to read. So I've just continued to fall in love with queer books, with being an author and realizing what my work gets to mean to people, but it's been quite a journey.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Yeah, it's interesting how um I had another, I interviewed another I interviewed. Oh, I don't like to say interviewed. I talked to another author who was on the show, and um it's interesting to hear how authors decide or how they lead into writing and then how it feeds into what type of genres or what type of stories they choose to tell. Um, and you know, which is kind of led into how I've been navigating into writing in my little journey. Um, I haven't got there yet, but you know, it's it's on its way.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Excellent. That's exciting.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

Um, okay, so we'll pause and I'll tell you about this office. This office used to be um was obviously a bedroom. And um I started working from home during COVID. I worked from home a little bit. And so it kind of switched. Like I went to, I used to work in the living room at one point. Then uh me and my husband was like, uh, I need to feel like we're off of work once you know you're off of work. So then the person we have living here moved out. Um when I want to say now that the podcast is gonna be three years old in a month, um I before was like, okay, well, I want to make this into a full-on like room, creative room, creative space. So I actually I started it in, I want to say I started doing it November, December, and I didn't really finish until maybe March, April-ish. It took me a very long time. Yes, it's still fairly new. So what was the problem was that I A was working, so that was that was the first thing. And then B, I was like, I wanted to be a creative space, but I also wanted to be me at the same time, and I wanted to have a very artsy and eclectic feel. So I want to do, you know, some different shit. So I started with looking for like a paint, like the color theme that I wanted to do, which teal and greens have always been a thing for me. Um, so that started with you know choosing the wall color. Um, this wall is a crushed velvet evergreen um wallpaper.

unknown 43:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

And I got it from Amazon, and then this panel, this mantle behind me was actually a mantle that it was like stained green, and so then I painted it and then I tiled uh the top back with like um with like art deco tile and like some uh Latin Spanish uh tile and I did it all myself, and then everything else is like acrylic uh green things, and then the art is not even finished. Uh this piece right here I got from my office, and then um the That's a family, that's my cousin, and then that's a engagement photos of my me and my husband. But the goal was to put up all different, like, you know, queer people of color artists, artwork. So as I get it in, you the over time it'll start to fill up. Um, but this is what we have right now. And then I went on a huge hunt for coffee table books, and that would be, you know, that, and that's my diploma next to it. But that's what most of that is over there. But, you know, I tried. I put it together. Well done. Connecticut collapse. Thank you. Thank you. You know, it was a journey because I definitely was like, I don't know when I'm gonna finish this. I was getting tired. Um, and I was just like, I don't, I want this to be a good space for creating. Yeah, I want it to be a good space for, you know, doing the show. Um, I was tired of just the blank white walls, and I just wanted it to be a continuously inspiring space for me to go into to do the work and do the things that I enjoy and love doing.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Yeah, you want to get excited to sit down at your desk and make something beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Exactly, exactly.

Good Queer News Versus Doomscrolling

SPEAKER_01 45:20

And speaking of making something beautiful, uh, so I wanted to talk about good queer news. So tell us a little bit about what inspired you to start it and what you feel like the community that reads it is getting from or and what or and or what you want the community to get from good queer news.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Yeah. Okay. So when right before I got involved really in Missouri politics, it was January 2023 when the wave of anti-trans legislation really picked up quite intensely at the beginning of 2023. I was feeling terrible. I was scrolling on social media for so many hours a day, looking at all these horrible videos of testimony and hate and seeing people saying words like um, you know, complete erasure and genocide and devastation and all these things to say, here's what's happening to the trans community right now. I was terrified, I was isolated, I was totally disempowered. And then I saw the advocacy organization post and say, we need people for a hearing. The hearing is tomorrow at 8 a.m. Sign up for a carpool group. And I was like, hmm, I should do that. And I kind of signed up. Honestly, I don't know why, but I did. And it and I was bustled off to the Capitol, and I, you know, it was 24 hours' notice. I had to leave at 5 a.m. So I had basically 12 hours to write my whole testimony, prepare myself mentally for it. I thought it was gonna be terrible. I show up at the Capitol. There were over 200 people gathered in support of the trans community, and in opposition to the trans community, they had four people. Um and that moment blew my mind. And the people that were in the room, I was in Missouri and I had a lot of expectations of what somebody who cared looked like. And instead, what I found was that it was mostly old white people, priests, pastors, nuns, rabbis, grandparents, farmers, rural folks. It was mostly not trans people. It was allies showing up and saying, I'm here so my trans kid doesn't have to be. And it kind of blew my mind. Every single week we had hundreds in support and a handful, if any, there against us. The more time I spend going to the Capitol, the more victories I'm getting to see. The bills that we defeated, the strength that we had, the amount of hearts and minds that we were able to change of our legislators who then made different decisions based on the conversations we had with them, these amazing victories. And then I'd go home and I'd tell my friends about it, and they'd say, wow, that's not what I'm reading about at all. I realized more and more that good news was not making headlines. I had thought it was because it wasn't happening. But as I started to get deeper involved into it, I realized that was the point. The despair was keeping people from showing up. Even if there were only five bills that were actually threats, constantly saying Missouri has, you know, proposed 70 anti-trans bills. The 70 was so overwhelming we couldn't get people to show up for the five. And that was the point. As I looked more into it, as I learned more about social media algorithms and the news, I developed this mantra, which is that your despair is someone else's business model. That's right. And so I started good queer news because it was early 2024. I'm in this writing group, and every week we're getting on the call, and people are just looking so gloom and doom. They were so hopeless. And I was like, hey, this amazing thing happened. Nobody's heard about it. And could I start the call by giving you all a recap of the good queer news? And they were like, sure. And I did, and they were like, wow, I feel better. So then every week I would start our group by saying, Here's the good queer news of the week. It lived in my notes app. And they'd be like, Can you like write that down and text it to me so I can send it to all my friends? And I was like, Yeah, sure. And eventually they were like, Ben, you gotta post this, you gotta put it on Instagram, put it on YouTube, do something with it. So I started writing about it on Substack and it blew up. And it kind of blew up. And then after the election, everybody was like, Well, there will never be good news again. All hope is lost. I'm going to crawl into a hole, and the world has now officially ended. And in particular, that attitude was most common among my friends in blue states, my friends in big cities, my friends who are like white, non-trans queer people and white liberals, people who had not been into shit before. Everybody in Missouri was like, okay, my sleeves are already rolled. It already smells like shit book shit in here. I'm just gonna get back to work. So I brought that attitude I'd learned in Missouri of we persist, we survive, there's still good news worth celebrating, right? That that election night, I was in a giant ballroom with two TV screens in the room. One was a TV screen tracking the presidential race, one was a TV screen tracking the ballot initiative to overturn a full abortion ban. Missouri was the first state to overturn completely a full abortion ban with a constitutional ballot initiative. It was incredibly hard work. And we simultaneously watched both those screens, understood that we were going to lose one and win the other. And we had to hold in our hearts that tension that we worked incredibly hard and in some ways we would win, in some ways we would lose. It's always going to be like that. And we couldn't just say we cannot celebrate, it's not worth it, because we lost something. We won something incredible. The number of people whose lives will be saved, who will be safer, who will have access to the health care they need to survive, to build lives that they feel good about. We won that and we lost something terrible. Learning to hold both and writing that into good queer news was so important. So then it really took off. And I think that's what people are getting away from it is that it's not toxic posity. I'm not putting, you know, heartwarming. This trans kid raised money with a lemonade stand to be able to flee the country. That's not heartwarming. That's dystopian. That's not a good queer news story. A good queer news story is today, May 15th, Missouri has ended their legislative session. They defeated every single anti-LGBTQ bill proposed. There are so many states recently that have ended their sessions, beating every single one with incredibly hard, strategic, brilliant work. So I bring good news and put the bad news in context, saying, I'm not here to fearmonger you. Here's what's happening, here's what isn't, and here's what we're going to do about it. So my hope with good queer news, honestly, what I want to do with it and what I have begun to do with it more and more is that I built up a platform where people trust me. They trust that I'm going to be honest, that I'm going to talk about hope, that I'm dreaming about how we move forward and what we can build. And that means that I have the social capital to bring up really difficult conversations. I can write about, you know, racism within the white queer community. I can write about transphobia within the gay community. I can write about misogyny. I can write about how I want white queer people to stop using AAVE. I can write about toxic positivity and, you know, the hopelessness and despair of people on the coasts who are mostly safe. I can use it to be a safe container for difficult conversations that help us say, well, if I'm dreaming of this future, maybe I do need to act differently or think differently if I want to get there. So I'm really excited at the space that I've been building. And it seems to be giving a lot of people a uh the ability to act. Empowerment is really what I want people to get out of it. The understanding that it will take all of us. Something is better than nothing. No one is coming to save us but us. And that attitude, I think, is what people are taking away from it now.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

I mean, and it's just good. It's just a good blog. Like, and is it okay if I call it a blog? Like, is it Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 53:12

I don't really know what it is. It's a blog. It's a project.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

It's like it's a good project. Let's say good project. It's a good writing project, it's a good space, it has built it builds good community. Um and you know, I I don't people know this, but I also don't think people um think about it enough that uh the negative news is someone's paycheck. Like literally, there are there are platforms, there are um the news channels are specifically built uh to keep sometimes to keep you scared, to keep uh feel on fear mongering, and to keep you your eyes peeled to know, but and always want to be in the know, but it's always the negative stuff. Yes. Um I used to say for a long time that I didn't watch the news. Um, and for those exact reasons, um, it wasn't until I got older that I would actually watch the news just to keep up on what's going on in like my area and neighborhood. But um, I definitely am not sitting around here watching OCN all the time. Definitely not Fox or ABC. It's not happening. I'm not doing none of that.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Yeah, we have to find the balance, right? Don't put your head in the sand to pretend nothing is going on. But my kind of goal is to empower myself to know less, to do more. I am not the most aware person that has ever lived, but I am one of the most engaged. And that matters so much more. No one is helped by me staying informed, by me posting an Instagram story, making all my friends feel bad for not knowing enough about a certain issue, or we all just agree and pat each other on the head that we all feel that trans rights are human rights. I know, and I know that everyone following me on Instagram knows that I don't need to be playing, you know, moral politics with raising awareness. I'm just gonna get to work and help my neighbors survive.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Community Care Means Real Effort

SPEAKER_01 55:07

And I mean, speaking of neighbor, it actually comes into what we're talking about today, which is uh focusing on community care. And really what community care means is, you know, me, us showing up for the people that we love, the people that we support, and supporting them in different ways and um making sure that we we give them the the support and the love that they need in within our communities that we've built, and or you know, family can always be community as well. Um, how would you define community care and what are some examples of community care you feel like people may overlook?

SPEAKER_00 55:48

Yeah, you know, community care is having the love and the courage to be there for one another in a way that keeps us safe, in a way that empowers us to thrive, and in a way that equips us to grow without forcing people to be in a certain way. So, what kinds of community care do I think people overlook? Uh, is uh the courage to stay and fight with your friends. Fighting with your friends is community care because the alternative is walking away, is recreating the police state in our relationships by saying, You said the wrong word, you're done. You and I don't agree about this issue, you're done, you're out, you're uninvited, you're canceled, you're blocked, you're not part of this anymore, you are not aligned. Being able to say, let me sit with you, let us lovingly fight with one another because I want to see you grow, or I need to grow right now. That will be uncomfortable. There is harm, and I want to sit here and figure it out with you. Um, you know, I'm not gonna fight to hurt my friends. I don't mean fight with your friends, so insult them every chance you get, but I do mean be able to disagree with your friends. That's one of the things that this convenience culture is really training out of us is that it should always be convenient. That if you are uncomfortable, something is wrong, that if you are annoyed, something is bad, that if something is inconvenient, it's violating your boundaries. No, loving relationships will be inconvenient. If I am free, no one that I know should ever have to take an Uber from the airport. I will pick my friends up from LAX because that is community care, because I am free. I will make an effort to inconvenience myself because every single commercial is selling me. Look how much you don't have to rely on anyone. You don't have to be annoying, you don't have to be a burden, you don't have to talk to anyone. We'll just get you this medicine, we'll get you this delivery, we'll get you this food, you don't have to talk to anyone. We've got to resist convenience. So community care is inconveniencing ourselves, being willing to get uncomfortable, being willing to challenge each other without writing each other off. I have plenty of friends I disagree with profoundly and I love them, and we make each other better people. Sometimes we move towards agreement, sometimes we don't, and that's okay. So I think being willing to do that and show up for each other and to make it easy for us to show up for each other, you know, like if you want somebody to rely on you and you have your favorite types of support to give, just tell people that. I tell my loved ones, you're struggling. Can I give you five ideas of things I'm able to do right now? So right now, this weekend, I could say, I have two hours free on Saturday. Do you want me to come over and clean your house or run errands for you? Because I'm in the middle of a really good audiobook. I would love to do a driving task for you right now. Or can I make a phone call for you? I love to cook. So my number one thing I offer to people is food. You want to come over for dinner? You want me to meal prep for you? How can I use what I love to do to make you feel loved? And when I give people offers of things I'm willing to do, I convince them that they can trust that I will set my own boundaries and they don't have to try and make up boundaries for me. We have to be able to trust ourselves so that we can trust each other.

SPEAKER_01 59:09

I love that. And I, you know, I um I struggle sometimes with uh sometimes offering too much of myself for people and for things. Um but then on the flip side of that, I am very independent and I don't like a lot of people doing stuff for me. Uh so I struggle with, I have a great deal of both that I struggle with. Um, you know, my I think I don't remember where we were, but my husband's like, can you just let me do something nice for you? I was like, all right, let me go sit the fuck down somewhere. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's it's you know, I also think it's how you grow up. It's how it's things that happen in your life where you're like, you know, you don't want to just let go of that control sometimes, uh, to let people take care of you or to let people help you, um, or to let people just do something that is gonna at the end of the day uh be better for you rather than you always having to do it for yourself and to take care of yourself at all times.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

Yeah. And for me, honestly, it really is so much of like what we carry from how we grow up, my people-pleasing nature, because I used to be the exact same way. Never ask for help, always offer help. Um, most of it was a perpetual apology for my transness. I felt like my transness had used up every bit of goodwill that I had available to me. It was too different, too weird. I was asking so much of people, how dare I ask for more than that? So that weighed on me. And then then I was a man. Then my beard grew in, and people started forgetting to ask if I was okay. They started forgetting to ask if I needed something. Both my girlfriends, my guy friends, my non-binary friends. It's it's baked into our society, a, that we need to apologize for our difference in conveniencing people, even people who are also different. Uh, and people don't think to give love to men. And that's fucked up.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:25

That's deep.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Um I mean, I know that's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:35

Um when we're thinking about where we are currently in this country and uh where things are uh currently with um all the different legislation and things that are coming up with the community.

Queer History Lessons On Care

SPEAKER_01 1:01:52

Um, why do you think community care feels especially important right now?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

Yeah, because who the fuck else is caring for us? That's right. It is only us. We are all we have. And and if that is all we have, then it's so much. Then it's so beautiful the ways that queer people know to love each other, to become family to each other. Our community has such a legacy of care and of love within it. And tapping into queer history and seeing the ways that we have known how to love each other reminds me how desperately we need each other. You know, I think about the AIDS epidemic. The L is the first letter in LGBTQ. Why is that? It didn't used to be the first letter. And when uh Men Who Loved Men and trans women and so many people were dying from AIDS, lesbians were largely insulated from that. Mostly they were not impacted by the AIDS epidemic in the same scale. And the hospitals would not take anyone with AIDS. They were too worried it was contagious, they were letting people die in the hallways, on the streets. So lesbians opened up their homes and became the caretakers. They created these beautiful, painful, loving spaces where people with AIDS could die with dignity in their homes for all these spaces for people to pass through and feel loved and then die knowing they were loved. And so the L was put at the front of LGBTQ to honor the sacrifice and the love that the lesbian community gave to the whole rest of the queer umbrella and their caretaking. That's fucking beautiful. That is what we need right now. When people are frightened, when they are alone, we are we feel so isolated. We don't want to rely on each other, we feel like that's a failure. And that's on purpose. The more disconnected we are, the less power we have. So being able to interdepend on one another is the whole point. If we want to be able to organize, to share ideas, to share dreams, to realize we aren't alone, we have to rely on each other. And I'll say to anybody listening who's like, well, I'm gonna do it alone. There is no medal, there is no prize, no one is keeping track, no one will say that they are proud of you for never asking for help. That is not good. There is no win condition for that behavior, you will only lose. Nobody likes to hear that, and I gotta say it anyways. Just ask for the help. Everybody wins when you ask for help.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:19

That's right. And you ain't gonna get a raise, and you ain't gonna get a better job, and you ain't gonna get none of that, girl. Because they guess what? They as long as far as they're concerned, if you're doing it alone, they don't need to backfill anything. Exactly. Exactly. Somebody wins, it is not you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:39

Well, that is right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:41

I mean, oh, that's a fucked up truth, but it's the truth. Like, oh gosh. Um, and so thinking about all of all of this time, right? And all of the uh different things that you know you've been through or um that you've encountered, do you feel like your uh definition of care has changed or how you care for others during when things like this come up or when shit like this is happening in the world? Do you feel like it's changed as you've gotten older? 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:16

Yes. I think in part, as I've gone to therapy and worked through my like obsessive need to please people to apologize for my transness. And as I've worked through the like modern day social media weaponization of therapy language, I was when I was going through that healing arc, I entered into the we don't owe anybody anything era, which is so fun and popular. And like, and seeing these posts that were like, we deserve softness, we deserve love, we deserve grace. From who? I don't owe anybody anything, and I am owed gentleness from who? If I am owed gentleness, I owe gentleness to others, and like that was something that became really Important to me is like recognizing that if there's a world I want to see, 98% of that world will not be legislated. Well, some of it will. There is some legislation, some structural change we need. If I want a future that is warm and kind, and I read these cozy science fiction stories that everybody loves, we're not fantasizing about, you know, the spaceship that has a hole in the airlock. We're fantasizing about found family, which is just people loving each other in space. We can do that now. If I want a world where men get to be affectionate with one another, no one's writing a law that says I have to give my homies a forehead kiss before they go home. I have to be willing to say I love you to my boys, even if that makes them uncomfortable at first. Now they've learned, oh, wait, I deserve to be loved. I can talk about love, I can talk about platonic love, I can build family. That is not a muscle any of them had, and they will build it because we're doing it. I will build the world that I want to be in by living it. That's Miss Major. How much longer until we're free? She said, Fuck that shit. I'm free now. I do not need permission. So for me, that gentleness and that care is embodied by me because that's what I want built, and it will only get built by me living it now.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

Yeah, and I 100% hear you. I mean, it's when you talk about, you know, especially for friendships and for, you know, people that the space that you've created around you. I think about my family and how accepting they always have been and how they've been so supportive. And um, you know, my dad loves my husband, um, like ridiculous, almost to where I'm like, if you want to go marry him, you can. Love that. Um, but it it's it's important, right? And then um, you know, care for has definitely changed over the years. How I uh choose to care for my family, how I choose to care for myself and my f and my now my my immediate family, um, especially with all the different things that are happening. Um well, we're gonna take a break. Okay, and we are going to come back and jump into the rest of this conversation. We'll be right back. Bye. Call in all artists, musicians, designers, creatives, and entrepreneurs. If you're building something bold, intentional, and rooted in culture, the Hella Cheese May Podcast wants to hear from you. The Hella Cheese May Production LLC was created to amplify underrepresented voices, to build community through storytelling and create platforms where creativity and culture are taken seriously. I know we love the Cheese Mate over here and we love to talk all the good gossip in the Juicy T. But this is about sharing your story, sharing your history, your lived experience, and to build connection. We want to talk about the process, we want to talk about the passion, we want to talk about the purpose. This is not just a promo for your business. It's storytelling, it's legacy, it's documenting the journey behind your art. If you're creating with intention and building something that deserves to be seen, please tap in. Reach out to cheesemade helipod at gmail.com is in the description box below. Let's tap in and we're gonna create something powerful together. Bye.

Division And Solidarity Inside LGBTQ

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

And we are back. Um so moving on into kind of talking about um diving a little deeper into our LGBTQIA plus community. Um, I wanted to talk about how often uh the conversation comes up about division within the community, uh, especially between parts of the gay community and trans community. Um, and I do think part of it comes from people being scared to talk about it and to ask proper questions uh and you know, being fearful of saying the wrong thing. Um, I also will say that I do feel that um uh there's a certain bit of it where either folks will just choose to act like uh, you know the community doesn't exist, or they'll choose not to uh connect in ways to where they can ask the right questions or make friends or uh have conversations. Um but really my first question for you is you know, why do you think people in the LGBTQIA plus community struggle with uh showing up for uh the trans community?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:08

Yeah, some of it's respectability politics. The fear that you can look at somebody who's slightly more different than you and say, you are the reason I don't have rights. We've been doing that the whole time. We had white, traditionally masculine gay men doing that to femme gay men. We had white gays doing that to gays of color, we had gay men doing that to lesbians, we had gays and lesbians doing that to bisexuals and drag queens and trans people and asexuals. We like we always point at the person who's the most or the who's a little bit more different than us to say, you are the reason. I would be acceptable if only you weren't attached to me. And we all point at somebody who's more different than us because it's really scary to point at the person who's actually taking our rights away. People feel disempowered, and so they try to find a way to feel empowered, which we take out on each other. So I think that's a big part of it. I think a lack of education, you know, I don't think it's necessarily cruelty. There is not trans topics taught in most public schools. There are not trans characters in a lot of books that most people are reading, and most people aren't really reading that much anymore. Not on TV shows, not in movies. A lot of people have never met a transgender person before or don't know what they're allowed to ask. So people get really nervous. And I think within the LGBTQ community, I there's also, and people don't really want to admit this, a lot of bioessentialism, which is essentially the idea that certain biological characteristics are predetermined based on sex and cannot be undone. And in particular, the bioessentialism that shows up is that masculinity is evil. And that anyone who has touched masculinity, whether that is a trans woman who people say, well, she still has male privilege, or I still don't feel safe around her because she's clocky or she doesn't pass, or she speaks loudly and it triggers me. Um, or trans men, you know, the second that I grew a beard, people started treating me incredibly differently. So I also think there's a lot of bioessentialism that shows up in how people treat trans women and how people treat trans men because people are feeling uncomfortable and don't know how to navigate the weirdness of bodies and attractions and doing the you know mental algebra of my genitals feel this way about your face, but your genitals are different. So what does that make me? And we get so confused, and we want to put people in a box, and trans people break the boxes, and that makes people really upset. So there's some discomfort, some fears, some privilege, it all stews up together to make a little bit of a mess.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:45

Mm-hmm. Agreed, agreed. Uh, and I guess another quite good question is just to talk through why trans advocacy is not a separate issue from the liberation of all of us within the community. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

Number one, it's the same fucking people taking my rights away as a white trans person as they are taking your rights away as a black gay person. They're on the same team, they know they're on the same team, which is part of why they're so much more effective. And by the way, they're on the same team against rural working class white people, they're on the same team against women, they're on the same team against immigrants. They know they're on the same team. We act like we don't, and so we lose. So solidarity across so many movements is important. And here's an example of what that liberation looks like for all of us. A lot of states are starting to pass bathroom bills. And whether or not they have a bathroom ban, we're increasingly seeing what we call transvestigators, which is people who've taken it upon themselves to bounty hunt transgender people in bathrooms, whether it's because their state will actually pay them like a bounty hunter, or just because they feel in their heart that that's right. They guess who looks trans, they follow them into a bathroom, they harass them, assault them, call the police on them. They do that often. You know who they follow into the bathrooms? Nine times out of ten, it's black women who are not transgender, but who they say, you don't look like a woman to me. The trans athletes, you know, those bans on transgender sports and the suspicion, nine times out of ten, the girls getting called out for genital examinations are just black women. None of us are safe. If you are not perfectly performing femininity, which is perfectly performing white femininity, you are assumed to be trans, trans is assumed to be bad. Now you're going to be a victim of violence. So, you know, these standards and the rules of gender norms hurt all of us. Transgender people happen to be the vehicle of trying to enforce those gender norms, but we all lose when we let those rules be enforced as militantly as they are.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:54

And I mean, it's just like you said already, um, it if we can do it together, then it makes a stronger force. Like it's all the same. We're all losing the same shit all at the same time. Like it's and if we don't get to the point where we're like, hey, let's let's actually band together, then we're we're missing the plot, is what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:19

Yes, their strategy is divide and conquer, teach us to hate each other, to fear, to compete, to disrespect. Those seeds are sown and harvested bountifully by the people who want us not to work together. That's happening on purpose. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Calling In Without Shame

SPEAKER_01 1:16:37

So I guess a question for you, another good question would be Um, I've always thought about, I've always think in the terms of calling in versus calling out.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:47

Um, but what would you say um is a great way to help navigate a person through a hard conversation without making sure they don't feel shamed?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:57

Yeah. Okay. So there's a book on this called The Persuaders, which is one of my favorite books of all time, cornerstone of how my brain works. Uh, there are so many things I could say about that, but the biggest thing that I will say, number one, is we have to be able to release our frustration. And if you can't, that's okay. It means that you shouldn't be having that conversation. If your goal is to change their mind, frustration is not the tool to accomplish that. Frustration is a tool to let us know that it's time to walk away. Um, so release the frustration. My mantra is even if the best day was yesterday, the second best day was today. Right? We can't be mad at somebody because they're trying to start. So if somebody asks me, hey, what's the deal with transgender athletes? I'm not going to get mad at them. They're trying to learn. If I shut them down, you know who's so much more welcoming? The far right, moms for liberty will never ever yell at you for asking the wrong question. They will welcome you in, they will let you sit with them. They are much more welcoming of bringing people in. We cannot shame people into agreeing with us. We've tried it already. It has not worked. So be willing to sit with somebody or say, I'm not the person to have this conversation. Here's who I think you should talk to. Here's a book I think you should read, right? We don't have to be friction on somebody's journey to learning. We don't have to be the journey, but don't be friction either. And the other thing I'd say that I learned from this really wonderful book, again, The Persuaders, is to offer someone the golden gates of retreat. So let's say I have a family dinner, somebody won't stop misgendering a trans kid. If I come to them and say, you are being so transphobic, why can't you get their pronouns right? Their back is against a wall. What are their actual options? Number one, admit I am transphobic. I am the villain in the story of my family member. Disengage completely or dig your heels in because you're embarrassed and your back is against a wall. And when people are cornered, they freak out. The Golden Gates of Retreat gives people an opportunity to change their behavior while protecting their ego. So instead of saying you're transphobic, I'll say, hey, me and you both want this family member to feel loved. Could we practice their pronouns together? I think that might make them feel really loved at this gathering. Do you want to help me make them feel loved? All of a sudden, I'm agreeing with the shared value. Even if I don't think they're acting on that value well right now, we both love that family member. We both want that family member to be at this gathering. What's an action we can take together that allows that person to continuously think of themselves as a good person and engage with that value differently? So that means that I'll give people options of ideas to actually protect women's sports. I'll give them suggested allyship strategies to actually build safety for women. I can align on a value and offer them a different way to live something they know to be true about themselves rather than try to get them to admit that they're a villain. They're not going to do that. And they're not a villain. They're just a person who's got their own baggage, their own misinformation. I'm not talking to Donald Trump at my family Thanksgiving. I'm talking to Uncle Steve. And we got to work on it because he's just a person.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:21

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love what you did there.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:25

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:28

Um so you bring up a great point because essentially you're you're what you're also talking about is sticking up for someone and speaking up for someone in a especially someone who can't speak who doesn't feel comfortable speaking up for themselves, or speaking up in a moment uh where you're calling out something when you see it happening. Um and I want uh and I um and this brings me to my next point and just talking about um just advocacy and uh uh speaking up and um sometimes being the only one that's speaking up for people and or things that should be spoken up about, um, and how much work that takes. You know, I know that working in what you know people hate to call diversity, equity, and inclusion, but now in my workplace, and just in the work that I do, we call it culture uh work and um internally still having to advocate for things, still having to kind of be the one who's making sure that we're recognizing uh the different communities that we serve, uh, whether it be internal and external. And I want to just talk a little bit about of the emotional burnout that that can sometimes um uh happen and or that comes

Burnout Boundaries And Choosing Joy

SPEAKER_01 1:21:53

up. Uh, and how you how do you keep uh making sure to advocate even when you're burnt out and when and without losing yourself during those times?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:04

Yeah. You know, joy is a choice that I have to make every single day. Joy is different than happiness. Happiness is an emotional state based on circumstances. Joy is a choice that defies circumstances. That means I limit my news and social media intake. That means I choose to connect with my community. It means that I find rest that actually recharges my batteries. Uh, you know, most of my rest is a little bit active, reading a book, playing a video game, going for a walk. I have gotten really burnt out at times. And a couple of years ago, I remember it was really bad. I had become really viral on TikTok as your trans older brother. I had this whole wholesome, wholesome persona. I was doing all this public speaking, all this legislative advocacy. It was a lot. And I was getting the most amazing feedback, literally all the time. Kids were messaging me saying, I saw your video and I decided not to kill myself. I was gonna run away from home, and then my parents read your book, and now I'm safe. And it was amazing. Everything I did felt like it was saving somebody's life, which meant that if I took a break, I was sacrificing someone. And that became incredibly heavy. And so I asked another advocate, Skylar Baylor, who's way more visible than I am, incredible, brilliant trans advocate and author. And I said, How do you carry that? And he said, We understand how to have a bubble around ourselves to keep out criticisms and that we hear the criticisms and sometimes we bring them in and say, Maybe I need to grow, maybe I need to internalize this and do something differently. But mostly we leave them outside the bubble. We know they're not who we are. He said, I do the same thing with compliments. Sometimes I bring it in, I hold it close for me, but my perception of myself and my worth and my identity has nothing to do with my impact on the world, which means that when I take a break, I still have myself. So I love the work that I get to do. My whole job is education, it's world-changing. It is constant. And my identity, when somebody asks me who I am, the things that come up first are I'm a nerd, I love science fiction, I like writing, I like cooking, I love pasta, I love my dog. I am a lot of things in addition to somebody who is set out there to change the world. I let myself be an entire human being first. I remind myself that nothing was ever meant to be fixed by one person. And releasing myself from the responsibility of fixing all of it allows me to actually rest, get that peace. So I can actually end up doing more by telling myself I have to do less. I know where my exits are. I'm allowed to leave. I'm allowed to not answer a question, I'm allowed to not say something when something difficult happens because I'm usually always the person who says something. And sometimes I'm not. And that's okay because I'm just one person. And I'd rather be able to do it over 30 years than to do it 30 times in one day once. I'm in it for the long game. That means balance and rest, and sometimes saying no and not letting myself get all the way to empty. Nobody wins if I burn out, and believing in the future is important. A lot of people are super willing to martyr themselves because they don't actually think there's something better. Maybe if I burn out, I'll die before it gets worse than this. That's the unspoken belief for a lot of organizers. I know I'm building something beautiful and I want to get there. So I'm invested in sustaining myself as I walk towards that world. You gotta have a future you're walking towards that you are genuinely excited about and fighting for. It may not end up looking exactly like that, but we have to have something we're fighting for to empower us to keep moving towards it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:59

Agreed. I agree, I agree. Um, and something worth fighting for is family.

Chosen Family Survival Kit And Hope

SPEAKER_01 1:26:06

So, which I feel like is a perfect segue into uh this next segment. Um, so I feel like one thing about the queer community and the LGBTQIA plus community is we always find a family, and whether that's our family we've born into or our chosen family.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:26

Um, and in a chosen family, everybody plays a role. There's always the protector, the emotional unavailable friend that always gives the best advice, or the person organizing the protest, or the one to go and take you to go slash that ex's tires. Um there's always the one who's gonna make the reservation. There's the elder, the chaos friend, uh, the one who um adopted everybody in the family, who they brought everybody in from the streets because they needed some home to stay in, honey. There's always some sort of chosen family. Um, in this segment, I wanted to kind of play, it's kind of a game, but not really. But it's like you get the opportunity to call out the people in your chosen family, uh, depending on this, these different scenarios. So I have uh six of them here. Um and we're gonna read them. And then you can you can choose to say their name or you can not. It doesn't necessarily matter. It's up to you. I'll let you decide. Um, but let's start with the first one.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:34

Uh the first one is who taught you the person who taught you what community care actually looks like.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:40

Adrien Marie Brown. I wish she was my friend. She's just a brilliant writer, but there is no better answer to that question.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:47

I love it. I love it. Um, let's see. A person who taught me what community care is. I would say um. I would definitely say I could say that um because my husband's older than me, he definitely taught me more of what it means to uh what community care means and how to build a community when especially being in a new space because I moved here from the Bay Area and been here now for almost eight years. Uh so I would definitely say him for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:23

Uh the person who always says I'm not going out tonight, then the first person on the dance floor uh out while y'all are out. Or you can say the person all creating the the game nights or the nights of fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:38

It is me. I'm the one who says I'm not going out tonight, and then I don't. And everybody's like, what if we went out? And I'm like, or what if I cooked you a five-course meal and then we played a board game and I plan a stay-at-a-home night good enough to convince everyone to be a homebody. That's I love that one is me.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:54

What do you love to cook? Because you've brought up cooking like three or four times now.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:58

Everything, everything. My favorite thing in the world is to ask people what recipe tastes like home and then learn how to make that food. I'll practice it all week. If I know they're coming over, I will be eating the same thing every day, and then I will learn how to make it. And I love when people tell me the whole laundry list of their allergies and their preferences. When everybody gets to sit down and be a part of the meal and be like, oh, you know that I hate tomato skins. So you peeled the tomatoes, and I'm not sitting here feeling like bad because I'm gluten-free. I'm eating something that's delicious and gluten-free. I love when everybody just sits down at my table and feels fed and feels loved. So I love, I love to make anything, a lot of plant-based stuff because I love the earth and I love the way it makes my body feel. Um, I'm I love to get creative and get weird in the kitchen.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:47

I love it, I love it. Well, I guess this is the best next question because it's the person who's bringing the snacks, the electrolights, and the emotional support.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:56

Also, also, me. I am the dad friend of every space I have ever walked into. Even before I was a boy, I was a dad.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:07

I love it. I love it. I mean, I definitely I'm good with cooking. I also cook. Um, I am a um, I'm the cook of the house. Uh, and I've always cooked. I went to college. I didn't go to culinary school. I went to my high school, it had a culinary program within it. Um, but I learned to cook from family and watching my mom and my aunts, my grandmother, and some of the men in the family too. That's where I learned most of my grilling and barbecue skills. Um, but yes, I also am a cook. Uh, the person who feels like home in a queer space.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:45

Trans men. When I walk into a queer space and I see a trans man, I feel like I can breathe. It's amazing. I love, I love trans men. We're so handsome, we're so cool, we're so smart and hot. I just love any. I do have a lot of like friends in my heart, but also I just love other trans masks. We're so great.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:06

Yes, yes. I love it, I love it. And then last one, the person who's the unofficial pride photographer. So the person who's always taking pictures at pride.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:18

I I know their name in my heart. I am not gonna do to their ego the damage it would do to say that out loud, but I want you to know I'm holding it in my heart.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:27

I love it, I love it. Um, and the next one is the queer survival kit. So this is so random, but I loved it. And I they we list a lot of things here, but I definitely want to highlight a few. So I think a therapist is definitely a queer, is like you need to have a therapist at some point, shape, or form. Or if not, if you're not gonna have a therapist, you need to have somebody that's a sounding board for you in some way.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:58

You need to have somebody who loves you enough to tell you that you're wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:02

That exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:03

We don't need no yes mean around here, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:08

Um, I would say it well. The next one is a group chat screenshots. I'm not an avid screenshotter, but I would say a good group chat is a good uh survival pick.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:24

I'm out of my screenshot era as I'm trying to release judgment, which is very hard because I love to gossip. So I'm trying really hard to trend myself out of loving gossip so much, but I do love a good group chat.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:38

Uh and then what comes next with for me is boundaries. I definitely, definitely, I've been learning boundaries. Some people don't know what those things are, they don't even know that they exist. But I definitely would agree that boundaries is another good one for the survival kit.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:56

I heard the other day my favorite thing out of our boundaries are the distance that I can love you and me equally. Oh love that. I'm gonna I'm gonna add books and reading, retraining our attention and dreaming of queer futures with science fiction. A book is always the queer survival kit.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:15

I agree with you. I mean, over the last um, I want to say over the last two or three years, uh, I've I mean, I've always loved a good smut book. That's the only one that I'm gonna read. We've talked about this, but uh over the last couple of years, I've definitely been reading more, and I just love a good page turner, and I just and it has to be gay. They there has to be sex scenes.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:41

You know what you like.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:42

I love that. I'm like, it has to be. I just I love it. Um I would also say good queer news is a good one in the survival kit.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:54

Um I've never met a non-lactose intolerant gay person.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:00

I mean, I so it's funny, I was telling my uh my um my mentor and like professional coach the other day. I was like, I'm I'm not lactose intolerant, but something, some of it just it at some point if it's too much, it just starts to fuck up, fuck me up. And I'm just like I can't do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:25

Put the lactate in the survival kit.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:27

Anything else that you would add to the survival kit?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:31

Oh god, hope, hope. We just gotta keep looking for hope. Hope you simply must choose. It's not about the world, it's about your spirit. As I forget who said it was, but hope is either in you or it isn't. So choose hope.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:46

Yes, I agree, I agree. Um, so to wrap this up, and this has been a fabulous conversation. I would like to um ask like one final thing. Um, and just really around healing in the cure queer community and kind of what you foresee um could be some ways that we could heal for ourselves and um how to just stay resilient with everything that is going on now.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:19

Yeah, number one, healing will never happen alone. You cannot heal alone. We can only heal together. Find people that give you the safety to heal. You might not have the people who give you that safety right now, so find other people, find the people who give you the safety to heal. Number two, don't be afraid to dream. I know we are so afraid to talk about joy, to talk about hope, because what if I don't get it and then I got my hopes up for nothing? We have to hope because we have to try. Because I have a vision, because I have something I'm fighting for, I'm so much more motivated. So if we want to heal, we have to imagine beautifully, communally, intersectionally what that future looks like, what it feels like, what it tastes like. How does the air smell in the future that you want? Breathe that in, fight for that, look for that, celebrate that when it comes. So we have to look for that. We have to be able to play, we have to be able to have fun, to rest and slow down and sweat and kiss and love and fight and make up and fight again and then kiss about it and just be together and be messy and be human and be in love with being alive, uh, and to be in love with what being queer is. Um, and we have to be willing to look into ourselves and to say, who do I need to be to meet this moment? We have this feeling that there's something that differentiates. You know, if you're somebody who's not involved right now, I want to say to you, I understand why. I understand it feels so overwhelming and so big. What could one person possibly do? Everything that has ever happened has been a group of just one people all standing together who did something. So just one person adds up. You are being overwhelmed on purpose. Set some boundaries for your screen time, get a screen time app, delete your social media app. I only use Instagram as a website, whatever the boundaries look like for you, use the news and social media on your terms. And empowerment feeds itself, as does hopelessness. Once you start to realize, hey, I cleaned up the community garden, and now I see somebody who's picking fresh tomatoes, who's going to get to eat vegetables this week. I did that. I'm empowered. I have community. I can do something. That feeling will grow. We have to feel empowered. And if you think there's some fundamental difference between you and somebody who's leading a cool organization, then Chase Strangio, then me, then somebody that you admire, you're on. There's no biological difference between either of us. I just happened to start doing this. I became the advocacy chair of my key flying chapter after my second trip to the Capitol because it was either me or no one. If somebody needs to do something about this, you are somebody. Become that person. No one is coming to save us. It's terrifying and it's liberating. So we will heal through taking action together, finding rest, using that rest to recharge ourselves for action, not just running away because it's too scary to look at and having something we're dreaming towards, not just something we're running away from.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:40

I love it. I love that. And I truly um appreciate you coming and joining me today on this episode.

Where To Find Ben

SPEAKER_01 1:38:48

Uh, before you get out of here, can you please tell the people where they can find you and follow you?

SPEAKER_00 1:38:54

Yes, absolutely. You can find me in the Trader Joe's in the pasta aisle, debating shapes of the pasta. I'm always there. Wherever your Trader Joe's is, I'm probably in the pasta aisle. Um, you can find me on Substack mostly at GoodQeer News, where I write about hope. Um, that's pretty much the only place I'm really active. And you can reach out to me if you want to do a speaking event, if you need support for your P Flag chapter, if you know a trans kid who wants to meet a trans adult for the first time, anything I can do to support you and accessing the love and joy and resources that you deserve, please feel free to reach out. And goodqueernews.com is the best way to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:35

Amazing, amazing. I appreciate you, Ben. Thank you for joining me on this week's episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:41

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:43

Absolutely. Uh, we're gonna take one final break and then I'll be back to close out the show. Right. Bye. Bye. If you've made it this far in this episode and you haven't subscribed yet, that's wild. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button on YouTube, follow us on Instagram, tap in everywhere, child, because apparently the algorithm only respects consistency and emotional damage. And to my professional doom scrollers out there, girl. Yes, I'm talking to you. If you can scroll for 47 minutes and not press the subscribe button, we can have a full conversation on how you need to go ahead and dedicate yourself to something, girl, because it sounds like you got some dedication issues. Help us beat the algorithm, girl. Like, comment, share, send it to your girlfriends, your your boyfriends, your lady friends, your they them friends, the ones who love the chit chat about all the tea, but never really wanted to start that podcast. Because I want them in my comment box. Don't just watch the cheese made, join the cheese made girl. Subscribe, follow, and stay connected, honey, because we building something cute up over here, and we want you to be a part of it.

Closing Reflections After Pride

SPEAKER_01 1:41:06

Well, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Um, in closing, we're not gonna pick affirmation cards or you know, do any affirmations at the end. And quite honestly, I don't know if y'all even like those for real. And if you're listening to this and you do care and you want me to keep them, then I will. But you're gonna have to leave a comment and then I'll go back and find and check it. Um, but you know, we'll see. I've been thinking about trying to change it up um at the end, but I haven't got there yet. But I'll let you know what I do. Uh in conclusion, I feel like maybe community care starts with realizing we we were never meant to survive alone, which I feel like Ben brought that up a lot in this conversation. Um, and maybe it's remembering that queer history was built through people protecting each other, which I've said and we've talked about clearly. Uh, it's about feeding each other, housing each other, marching together, grieving together, and loving each other through impossible moments, which I also mentioned like if we can't do this shit together, girl, then we're missing the pot. What are we doing? And maybe that, and it is still true now. I can't, I'm not even gonna say maybe. Um, healing doesn't always happen in big public ways. Sometimes healing looks like uh somebody texting you or um or you just call in a check on somebody. I always say check on your friends. Um your friends using the right pronouns is them healing you or helping you heal through something, or you know, affirming you in the way that you should be affirmed. Um, and sometimes it's a community event, whether that's a fundraiser or um a party at your favorite organization, or you're throwing the party, or as Ben says, having a good game night and cooking a good dinner, eating some pasta, honey. Um, or even a good group chat, or making sure that you get a ride to the airport or a shared meal after a hard week. Because when I tell you I'm hungry right now, it's time to eat some dinner. Or somebody saying, I see you, I got you. You don't have to carry this alone, honey. Um those things are community care. Uh that's queer survival and that's queer joy. And during Pride Month, especially, I think we should remember pride is not just about being seen, it's about making sure people feel safe enough to exist once they are. And if that's not clear, to exist once they are seen. So as we move through this month, celebrate loudly, love loudly, protect loudly, care loudly, and remind the people around you that they still belong here. And with that, we are wrapping up the show. And just to let you know, that's the real cheese man. I hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll see you next time. Bye.