Angela: Welcome back friends. My name is Angela and I want to thank you for joining me for another episode.

I'm really happy to have speaker, author and LGBTQ plus inclusion advocate, Ben Green, with me today. Ben is a transgendered man who is using his voice and his experience to educate parents and families as they navigate questions regarding, their child's coming out as transgender.

Ben has written a phenomenal book titled, 

My Child is Trans, Now What?, a joy centered approach to support that will undoubtedly be a go to guide for parents of transgender children, and for any parent whose child is the LGBTQ plus community, I think.

It's a guide for allyship, for navigating the awkward conversations that I'm always talking about, and for continuing the journey as a family. Even as somebody who came out years ago, I learned things in Ben's book that I applied to recent conversations with my own mom. So I want to thank Ben for helping me apply some new skills, things that I learned from his book and incorporated into my own life and [00:01:00] to the conversations that I'm having with allies and those of us still learning how to be better allies.

Trust me, you're going to want to grab this book ASAP and Ben was kind enough to join me for a podcast today to talk about it. So thank you for being here, Ben. Appreciate it.

Ben Greene: Yeah, thanks for having me. Super excited. 

Angela: Awesome. So, like, as of the day that we're having this chat, we are a week away from your book release, which is May 7th,

Ben Greene: Four 4 

Angela: right? Four days. So how are you feeling? How are things going? 

And what's life looking like right now?

Ben Greene: Yeah, it's pretty crazy. So I just found out from my publisher that we are already going into our second printing. Which is just mind 

blowing, you know, the book is 

Angela: Wow. 

Ben Greene: there are no copies left of our first run at the 

publisher. So they're all out at bookstores on 

Angela: That's great. That's great. That's great.

Ben Greene: pretty, you know, crazy to me how many people have been waiting for a book like this. , and that's why I wrote it. So I'm pretty [00:02:00] excited. It feels like I am. It feels like I am going cliff jumping and it's totally foggy beneath me. I feel like I'm about to step off this ledge and part of me is like, Oh, who's going to read it?

Maybe a couple hundred people and then they'll move on to the next book and part of me is like, and maybe it's a hundred feet, maybe it's 300. Maybe I'm going to sprout wings and fly. Who knows? I have no idea what's below me, but I. Without a doubt, I'm on the precipice. so I'm, really glad I have good people around me.

My wife has been uh, she came home from Pilates today and found me, like, sitting on the floor doing some, like, calming breathing, and she was like, hey, like, You want me to make you some tea? so, you know, there are moments where it's terrifying. There are moments where it is exhilarating and I'm dancing around the apartment. And according to my therapist, that's very normal. So things considered, I'm doing great. I'm ready for my book tour. Uh, it's all really exciting.

 That's awesome. You know, so much of what you just described to me sounded like coming out, [00:03:00] you know, being in the closet and then coming out. Right. You know, like you're terrified, you don't know what's ahead. you're just like ready to take the leap. You're hopefully met with a lot of love on the other end.

 I don't think that's a coincidence. You know what I mean?

Ben Greene: Yeah. Sharing a very raw part of myself with the world. It definitely feels very kind of a similar kind of vulnerability, except instead of being to like, Two people, or my town. It's to the whole world 

Angela: Right. No biggie. No biggie at all. But for real, I just read your, book and I feel honored that I got to read it by the way. So thank you. And congratulations on the book. I mean, really and truly, you're right. It's what parents need. It's what families need. Just the title.

You know, is perfect. It's the next chapter. It's the what's next But before we get into anything about the book, just so people get to know you and so I can get to know you, although I feel like I know you through your book, to be honest, but you know, you came out at 15. How long were you in the closet and what did that look like as you're coming out to yourself?

Ben Greene: [00:04:00] You know, I constantly wonder how different my life would have been if I had had the words to describe Things like gender dysphoria. If I had known transgender was, you know, a thing that could happen to that people could transition. I'd never heard of it. And so I, for a long time, just identified as a weird kid.

 I wasn't the kind of classic trans story of like, I'm going to be a boy when I grow up. Like, no, I would get invited to a princess dress up party and I would want to go dressed up as stitch, a little blue alien. I wasn't masculine. I was just weird. And as puberty started to come in, I was like.

Oh, oh, this isn't quite right. This doesn't really feel like how that's supposed to go. and the way that we as a culture talk about puberty is yeah, puberty is awful. Everybody hates puberty. Puberty sucks. And so I was like, everybody, like everybody does not want to be alive right now. Everybody hates this.

Does not want any of these changes. Yep. Sounds like that's what the grownups told me. Puberty sucks. Not realizing that that was probably [00:05:00] gender dysphoria, so I 

Angela: Hmm.

Ben Greene: little like stories that I'll tell to my friends as if I think they're normal stories and they're like, yeah, that's definitely a trans thing.

That's 

Angela: hmm.

Ben Greene: uh, I didn't experience that. So I think it was a lot of, you know, fairly isolating of just feeling like I was very weird. I knew I was bad at being a girl and most of the other girls also knew I was bad at being a girl. So I didn't have a whole lot of friends. and then as puberty started to get further in.

I started to, you know, people are having crushes and I had realized I had crushes on girls because I had the language to understand a crush. So I also had the language to ask, like, you know, typing it on Google, can a girl have crushes on other girls, realized pretty quickly that I was bisexual. And came out to one of the, other queer students at my school.

And he said, Hey, there's actually a Facebook group being run underground for LGBTQ youth across the whole state of Connecticut, because every, you know, small towns, each school has maybe 600, 700 [00:06:00] kids. So there's not a substantial queer community in any one place. And so we built our own across the state.

So he said, this Facebook group, do you want me to add you to it? And I said, sure, that would be great. All of a sudden I have this community around me of queer people and the safety in this community. I mean, you had to do a video interview. They

did 

Angela: Hmm.

Ben Greene: sure that nobody was in this group who was not in high school.

You had to know somebody to get added in. So you could not like, there were no adults in here. I don't think any adults knew about it. We have rules. We had debates, we had meetups. It was amazing. And so one day somebody posts, in the group saying, Hey, I'm coming out as transgender, and here's what that means. I had this moment of like a wave crashing down over me because I had been spending so much time just looking in the mirror, feeling like, feeling like falling out of my body. Uh, that's terrifying. I had no words to describe that

I 

Angela: Yeah.

Ben Greene: if I looked into the mirror, I did not recognize the person looking back. And, you know, you can't type that into Google. You can't bring that up at the [00:07:00] lunch table. so I was just so alone. And then I read this post and I was like, everything in that post. And so I came out to a very close friend who actually, funnily enough, had seen the post and also had the same moment. And so we came out to each other.

I texted him. I said, Hey, have you, have you ever heard of a thing called transgender? And he said, yeah, I think, I think that might be me. And I said, 

Angela: Wow. 

Ben Greene: be me too. so, you know, we both kind of started to go through that moment. Coming out to ourselves process together. and for a long time, he was the only person that I'd come out to.

I was out to him. I was out to his girlfriend and I was out to my girlfriend at the time. And that was it for months. And that was tremendously isolating. I really. Kind of barely made it through that period of time. and I always say, you know, Nobody in my life ever told me that I couldn't come out.

And I had come out to people as bisexual. I had a girlfriend. My parents loved her. And I had seen them react to gay people before. We watched Modern Family. There were gay students at the school. I knew everybody was cool [00:08:00] with, you know, LGBT identities. But I had no evidence that they were okay with trans identities, and this is something that I, really like to drive home.

I couldn't afford to guess wrong. So many trans and queer youth can't afford to guess wrong. And so I didn't come out, not because nobody told me I couldn't, but because nobody told me I could. I couldn't afford to guess wrong. And so that was really isolating. you know, there were some really significant challenges that I went through during that period of time.

It was, seven or eight months, I believe, until I started really coming out to people. I had a, uh, you know, stint that involved a hospital. After that moment, I said, you know, even if I, I can't afford to guess wrong, I also can't afford to keep living this way. not a life worth living. even if coming out costs me everything. I have nothing left to lose. And so I came out to my parents and then was deciding if I wanted to come out to my peers at school and got into a car accident, it wasn't that bad, but I am someone who is known for my drama [00:09:00] I, you know, was terrified and it was like, it wasn't like the car was nearly totaled.

It was not a good accident. Nobody was hurt. Everyone was fine, but I was pretty rattled and I got home and I said, well, nothing will ever be as scary as that. And I came out on Facebook that night to my whole school. Uh, and I, I pretty much haven't looked back 

Angela: Wow, that's incredible. when you described it feeling alone and isolating, during that time, like when you're Googling it, you've got that Facebook group that you're connected with. How are you, I don't even want to say hiding it, but I feel like when we were in the closet, we were all kind of hiding it from our families and our parents.

How are you dealing with that? How are you juggling with that in the household? You know? Yeah.

Ben Greene: Yeah. You know, a lot of it was like physical isolation. I was just sitting in my room. All the time watching any queer TV show I could find on Netflix, which like, were all just depressing, right? There 

Angela: Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben Greene: their house, that was the trans story you could find. or who were a victim [00:10:00] or a villain, uh, in other shows. So I I was just watching all these shows desperate to find someone to tell me that it was gonna be okay. know, not really talking to people. I had been asking my parents to maybe like think about helping me connect to therapy, but they like, you know, it was at a time where therapy was really pretty profoundly stigmatized.

And so a lot of people were like, therapy. I don't know. Um, and like, I hadn't brought it up that many times. and it looked like once I had kind of recognized, like, maybe I'm trans, I'd kind of gone pretty far in the other direction, especially right before I like officially came out to myself. Those were, that was the most dresses I've ever worn in my life.

I was not a dress as person growing up for the like four or five months before I came out to myself. I wore so many dresses because I was like, everybody's going to know everybody's going to know something is wrong. So a lot of people tend to feel really surprised when somebody comes out because they're like, but I don't understand.

He was so masculine or she was so feminine. And like, yeah, that was, that was, you know, That [00:11:00] was my chameleon stripes. That's more of like, testing it out. That was like a slingshot pull back and then 

Angela: Yeah. 

Ben Greene: of situation. I want to go back to something you said though, , and forgive me, cause I'm, I feel kind of like naive asking this. When you said I couldn't afford to be wrong in what aspect were you saying like you couldn't afford to be wrong cause you were afraid of, of like, other people's reactions , or 

Angela: what exactly?

Ben Greene: Yeah. You know, once the cat's out of the bag, that's done. You can't really uncome out. Or at least not in a way, like if there's a safety concern, it's too late once you've said it. And so, you know, we look at statistics like homeless youth, LGBTQ youth do not make up a large proportion of the population.

Yeah. LGBTQ youth make up 40 percent of the homeless youth population. There's a reason for that. A lot of kids get thrown out and people don't share good stories of coming out. The only times people posted in the Facebook group that I was in was [00:12:00] when they needed support. The only TV shows had tragic trans stories.

I had literally never heard of a coming out. Going. Well, I did not know it was possible. And so I was concerned for my safety and my parents were lovely. Right? And I think this is a note to parents. Like my parents were supportive of me being bisexual. They were kind. They always told us we love you no matter what.

And even with them. That I was like, I just, I don't know. What if they throw me out? What if I'm not physically safe? That's the level that so many queer kids are on. If we're not getting evidence either way from the people in our life, we look out to the world and it seems like right now the world is screaming at us. Don't be transgender. Right? The news, social media, those are kind of vile spaces right now towards the transgender community. Very ungenerous, very unkind, a lot of misinformation and radicalization. Being online as your kind of main connection to hearing about this community is a [00:13:00] great way to feel like everybody hates you. if you think that 

you're so supportive 

and you know you would be okay with this, you know, ask yourself, have I communicated to my kid that I would be okay with this? Or are they trying to guess?

Angela: I resonate with that so much because even though we're completely different ages, you're 25, I'm almost 50. Our coming out story and our coming out of the closet is very similar to a degree because for me I was, again, my parents were just like yours. My parents were super, supportive.

I did not have a bad experience, but I also didn't know that that was the case. I worried, you know, like we have such a great rapport, we have such a great relationship. What if all of it's ruined when they know that I'm gay? What if they don't like me anymore, much less love me? So I really understand that so much.

And then. At the time, the only thing I had on TV was Ellen, you know, the actual sitcom and she [00:14:00] came out and that clearly didn't go well. And you know, I'm watching that, so I totally understand what you mean. And it's kind of weird that's how I felt so many years ago. And , you're feeling like this so many years later, that's it's kind of, interesting and sad.

Ben Greene: My public coming out role model was Caitlyn Jenner. 

Angela: Jenner 

Oh my gosh, no, no. What were the TV shows you were watching, by the way, 

that had a transgender character? the Yeah. 

Ben Greene: Fosters. the fosters, I consider to be a master class in representation. It is about a interracial lesbian couple, one of whom was formerly married, who now fosters and adopts Children.

They have a kid who was in the prison system. They have kids whose parents were an illegal immigrant, but like all the different Stories and like really real, so much beautiful chosen family stories, including trans characters, multiple trans characters, both of whom had led the kind of tragic get kicked out of your house story.

One of [00:15:00] whom was a romantic lead. It was one of the most beautiful shows that in a lot of ways gave me hope in a lot of ways gave me kind of this comfort, and still sent that message of like, and this is what you're going to have to go through first. It didn't occur to me. That you didn't actually have to get kicked out of your 

house as a trans person. 

Angela: Yeah.

I love the fosters too. And there is one particular episode where there's a, a scene where, you know, there's the two gay characters that there's the son, I can't think of their names right now, but there's a son and he, Jude, that's it. And then Jude's boyfriend at some point in time who has the father, who's just like very, you know, he's not supportive at all once he kind of discovers the relationship.

then. Um, There's one scene where somebody says to, I think it's the husband of the blonde girl. I can't think of it. Terry Polo. How crazy that I know their real name, but I don't know their character name. Anyway, it was her, [00:16:00] husband takes him aside and says, look, , bullying going on in your house.

is much worse than anything they could experience out in the world. Like what happens in your house is where the messages they're getting at home and the things like you're sitting here telling him that he's not supportive. He's not okay. Who he is is much worse than what anybody could do to him outside of this house.

And I thought that was like the most amazing scene, 

you know? 

I love that show. 

Ben Greene: You know, there's so much of this mindset that parents have of like, you know what? I don't want to support my kid because they're going to have a hard life. I don't want my kid to be oppressed. So maybe I'm going to convince them that there is another way rather than transitioning because I don't want them to have a hard life.

And the reality is it's going to be hard either way. Which side are you going to be on? Are you going to make it 

Angela: Yeah. 

Ben Greene: or are you going to direct that energy towards 

trying to make it better? 

Angela: Yeah, absolutely. I say that all the time of like, you know, the reality is it's not going to change anything. It's just not. But [00:17:00] the reaction, the journey that we have after this, that's where the connection is. And hopefully there's no disconnect. And I'm constantly talking about that. And this is why I liked your book so much.

And just the title of your book, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so impressive. Because like when I came out, you know, we're in the closet forever. We're dealing with a lot of emotions and by the time we're ready to come out, you know, we're in this place of acceptance really and we're really ready to come out.

And then we come out and our parents are kind of like at the starting point where we were in the closet, you know, and they have that, well, what am I supposed to do with this information now? also something you said is something that. This podcast was kind of like founded on where my mom, when I came out to her, she didn't say the words, she didn't say a lot, you know, we cried to be honest with you, but I felt like she said, I don't understand this, but I love you.

Now where do we go from here? So the title of your book really resonated with me so [00:18:00] much. you also talk about, that it's founded in joy. I wanted to talk to you about that. That was clearly really important to you, Can you tell me more about that and how that came about? 

Ben Greene: Yeah, absolutely. You know, so when we think about supporting trans youth, think about all the reasons people have told you why it matters to show up. It feels to me like our conversations around not just trans, but honestly LGBTQ youth in general, our conversations begin and end with suicide statistics. that we talk about is about suicide, anxiety, depression. So supportive parents, they say, I need to support my kid because I don't want them to kill themselves. I don't want them to be anxious or depressed. I want them to feel loved. But so much of it is about avoidance and moving away from kind of the demons chasing us. That's why that when we hear things about like regret, Those regrets, statistics, that regret boogeyman is so effective with parents because all we know is that we're running away from bad things. That's just another bad thing that we kind of have to decide, [00:19:00] okay, how are we running away from this? There are so many things in this world that people regret that we encourage our kids to do. Car accidents. Tons of car accidents every year, but we teach all our kids to drive. Medical school has a huge dropout rate, but we would be thrilled if our kid wanted to be a doctor. Most people regret their college majors. A lot of people regret having kids. And yet, we do all these things because we understand what we stand to gain. We understand what we stand to learn along the way. So when we focus our conversations around trans people and what we're running away from. We don't know what we stand to gain. We don't talk about that trans people aren't just people who have successfully avoided childhood suicide statistics. Trans people are also pilots and authors and married and have kids and have lives and homes and pets and joy.

There are millions of transgender people just living their lives. normally doesn't mean it's perfect, right? There's plenty of [00:20:00] stuff that we're fighting back against like many other groups of people right now, but we are not a miserable group of people. I'm one of the happiest people that I know. I'm like a therapy dog.

I'm just happy to be around. I focus so much on centering joy because I want to remind people. It's not that, okay. Your kid came out. Now, here's a list of 100 problems to solve of all the new people who are going to hate you. It's also, hey, here's what light this is going to add. Here's the splash of color that your kid just brought into your home.

Here's the magic that waits. for yOu So it's so important for me to focus on looking ahead, on moving towards joy, and on finding joy right now. Because trans kids are not just short adults, they're kids! We want to let them be kids, and silly, and playful, and curious. If I never hear a trans kid called brave again, I'll be thrilled. That is not what I want any kid to have to be. They shouldn't be courageous or resilient. They should be funny, and maybe a little annoying, and cute, and [00:21:00] curious. So joy is the center of everything for 

me.

Angela: I love that. It's so true. It's so true. Because you're right. There's so much fear. You know, parents have so much fear because they don't know. They don't have the examples, exactly what you discussed earlier. Like you didn't have an example of trans, uh, uh, trans, uh, relationship on television or around you.

I didn't have that around me when I was younger. Our parents don't have that, you know, a lot of parents don't have that. So we're met with their fear, which, , many times it's, it's like, they're well intentioned, you know, you talk about intent versus, uh, impact in your book and, you know, it's well intentioned, but it comes across as, Oh my gosh, something's wrong with me.

I need to worry about myself. so I really appreciate that in your book you remind a parent like, Hey, this is the next chapter. There's a different journey that's going to happen here. Your child is not a different person. They're an amplified version of everything they were because now they're vibrant.

Now [00:22:00] they're, you know, happy they've stepped into themselves. You know, there is joy coming,

right? 

Ben Greene: You know, 

and I think there's something so important about 

connecting to a community not just for, the kid to 

Angela: Yeah. 

Ben Greene: community, but for a parent to find a community of other parents for so many reasons. A - cause they have resources to share. B, because your kid isn't always the right resource, right?

The answer 

Angela: True. Yeah. 

Ben Greene: to not tell your kid or to not be afraid. It's to not tell your kid that you're afraid to work through that group of people who are going through similar feelings. there's a metaphor that I have in the book that I love. We call a lot of things a roller coaster of emotions.

And I think that that analogy fits in really nicely here. Right? Because 

Angela: Yeah. 

Ben Greene: can imagine that the first person to ride a roller coaster probably thought they were going to die. Honestly, they probably did. Roller coasters are 

Angela: Yeah, 

Ben Greene: as a concept, but we go on them all the time now, right? And they're totally bonkers, the things that do, but there is a reason that we get on the [00:23:00] roller coaster. The reason is because we see a stream of people coming out the other side, smiling, laughing, looking at their pictures. We see that there are people sitting right next to us and behind us on the same cart that we are. We see that there's an hours long line of people who can't wait to be next. The reason we go on roller coasters is because they're designed by professionals, people with years of study and decades, centuries.

I don't know how long roller coasters have existed, but like a lot of years of study and of honing. a community of people to go on that ride with, because they're on it, whether you see them or not, you're not the only one who's doing this. You did not invent having a transgender child, not in your state, not in your city, not in your small town.

You are not the first one. So find other people so that you can help each other, you can realize how not alone you are. That does make it so much 

less scary. 

Angela: so true. Having a community of people who understand, your journey is so important. I recently went to a pride event [00:24:00] and I was fully expecting to hear a panel of speakers who were LGBTQ. And I got to say like 80 percent of the people who were speaking were parents and they were parents of trans children.

And I was so, Yes, I was so overcome with emotion because I was just like, this is amazing. This is beautiful. This is, you know, they're here for each other and they're like, we're learning and you know, it's just, it was just wonderful. So I think that, there was somebody in that audience for sure who was watching, you know, that mom.

Speak about her trans daughter and say, yeah, me too, . So community is so important. You know, what you just mentioned was in your book. And I wondered if it would be okay to talk about a couple of other little elements in your book and give people a little glimpse.

There's so many wonderful topics, but like just a couple of things. 

I loved what you said about the chair theory. Do you mind like talking about that a little bit? 

I thought that was [00:25:00] brilliant.

Ben Greene: Yeah. So basically when I came out in high school, there was, one other student who had come out before me, at least that I knew of. I'm sure there were others, right? Even if it we're the first, we probably weren't. but there was one other that I knew of. And so most people didn't really have that exposure, certainly didn't have that access to language. So they were always asking me, Oh, Ben, what's trans? What's non binary? What are all these words? And so I came up with this analogy. That I gave as originally as a part of a project for one of my health classes, and that the teacher then later said, Hey, this was so great. Would you be interested in giving this presentation as a part of the human sexuality unit for all the sophomores?

So I started teaching all the health classes so this analogy, the very short version. Is that we're going to imagine that for simplicity's sake, when everyone is born, they're born sitting into one of two types of chairs, firm, tall stool, and a soft, squishy armchair. And this chair represents your biological sex. So we all sat down before, right? You feel the chair you're sitting in, but if it's comfortable, you kind of stop feeling it. Most people are comfortable to stay in the [00:26:00] same chair forever, and they don't really notice it. That's Most of the people in this world probably identify as cisgender. Not a bad thing, just a vocab word. Now, sometimes the chair is uncomfortable. And there are so many different reasons a chair might not feel right. That's gender dysphoria. That feeling of discomfort when your identity and your biological sex do not line up. gender euphoria, conversely, is looking over at another chair and saying like, oh my god, I bet that chair is so comfortable.

I know we've all had that feeling looking at a TV show sofa or walking through Ikea, that, oh man, that looks amazing. Even if my own chair is not bad, that chair looks amazing. So that's gender euphoria, feeling seen as you are. So someone who's transgender or someone who moves from one chair to another, notably, I'm the same person sitting in this armchair as I was sitting on that stool.

I'm just more comfortable. sometimes somebody wants to sit in a chair that's a little softer than an armchair or a little taller than a stool. Maybe [00:27:00] someone wants to sit in one type of chair one day and a different type of chair a different day. Okay. Maybe someone says, I just don't get it.

No matter what chair I sit in, I'm uncomfortable. I'd rather just stand up. People can identify as gender fluid, agender, and a whole host of other identities that fall under this umbrella term non binary, which just means not one of the two binary identities. So not being male or female. So that's the extremely short version.

If you want the longer version, A, you can look at the book. If you want the visual of me jumping between two actual chairs and managing not to faceplant, you can look up my TEDx talk as 

well. 

Angela: I saw that and I enjoyed it. I loved it. I ended up telling my partner about that because I was like, you know, I love the way he describes this, and I kind of like did the shorter version, the cliff note version of it. And she was like, wow, that that's really, really good. That's impactful. I love that.

And I love it in your book too, you really help parents , to get some empathy for their child, to kind of get a point of view, because they're trying to figure out, you know, like, I'm [00:28:00] trying to help you with something that I don't even understand. So that's a difficult position for them to be in, I'm sure.

So I really appreciated that. And another one of the questions that I had thought of too, because I feel like so many people are so confused for whatever reason with pronouns I know you talk about this in your book a lot too. You talk about, The fact that we should be able to ask questions if you have a question, ask your child, ask somebody, and then when it comes to pronouns, you say, simply ask and have that conversation so that, you know, so I'm about to jump into that and ask you this question, because when I was doing the intro for this .

podcast. 

I was like, well, because I swear, I stand by this on the podcast. I talk about this a lot. I want people, you know, the people who are listening, who are not in the LGBTQ community to understand that just because I'm gay, I don't have all the answers And even though I'm in the LGBTQ community, I'm still learning, you know, I mean, we [00:29:00] all are, and like, I can give you insight to how I feel about certain things or what my experience is, but I don't know everything. And like, that's what we're here for. And that's kind of the point is so that we can all come together and ask questions and learn and, you know, empathize and, and just be better.

People and better allies. So all that is to say in the intro that I had read earlier, I was really grappling because on certain episodes I do share pronouns. Not in the intros. I usually ask later, but I was like, after I read your book, I was like, even though I know his pronouns, is it okay if I say them?

Because I'm kind of like you where let's just be people, you know, like, let's just be like, it's just Ben period. And I'm just Angela. And, you know, Um, what if we don't have to have clarification on things? And then I was like, or it's kind of two questions if I do know your pronouns, is it okay if I say them without asking you?

 You know 

Ben Greene: Yeah, 

Angela: the [00:30:00] answer. 

Ben Greene: absolutely. As an introduction, I think amazing, right? You know, if I'm, thinking about the people listening to this podcast, I'm imagining, okay, hopefully I said something really cool in the beginning and somebody wants to go tell their friends, I'd love to know that they know to go to their friend and say, Hey, and Angela had this guy, Ben, and here's what he said, and he was so smart and he was so handsome.

I watched the video version, you know, whatever it is. I like 

to know. 

Angela: Yeah. 

Ben Greene: are using the right language to talk about me. So, obviously it depends, right? If I'm a trans kid and I had just come out to you, well, I don't really know why you'd have, like, a closeted trans child on facing podcast. Um, but if you had somebody who was, like, maybe just coming out, it's worth checking in. Somebody who's really public about sharing what their pronouns are. I think it's always great because it normalizes it, right? I want to break down the idea that based on the sound of my voice and that it's a little bit deeper now than it used to be, that my pronouns should be obvious or based on the way that I'm dressed.

You know, I, I don't feel like my pronouns are any kind of categorization or [00:31:00] box that they put me in or make me any less, you know, of a, of a, uh, just in a connecting on a human level. I think it's just a description. it feels the 

exact same 

Angela: Okay. 

Ben Greene: people know what my name is. I want them to be able to compliment or trash 

talk me 

Angela: Right.

So what I could have done is when we got on here, I could have asked you, is it okay if I 

share your pronouns? 

Am I correct in thinking that?

Ben Greene: you could have asked. I don't think you needed to ask. You could either, I would either say like, Hey, this is Ben. He uses he, him pronouns. or you could say like, would you introduce yourself and share your pronouns? but I think any way that you want to do it, whatever fits your style is great.

I'm always pro normalizing, talking about pronouns and in 

whatever setting. 

Angela: Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. I felt a little weird asking, you know, cause it was just like, I think we're all trying to get it right. Like you talk about intent versus impact and I want to make sure that my intent and my impact are aligned. So a lot of [00:32:00] times will step into questions saying, Hey, I really don't know the answer to this.

And I'd really love to like get some insight because I'd love to do better and you know, be better So thank you. 

Ben Greene: I love that. That's my life. Philosophy is just, you know, how could it be better tomorrow than I am today? There's no such thing 

Angela: right, 

Ben Greene: There's just 

better tomorrow. Yeah, 

Angela: you really stressed that people are always learning and growing and, you know, just continue to have the conversations. I appreciated that a lot. I know we're getting towards the end of our chat and everything, but since joy is such a fundamental thing of your book. To give people something that, they can look forward to too, I know you just got married not that long ago. Would you mind sharing, you know, some of the story of like how you met your wife and what your wedding was like and stuff like that?

Ben Greene: absolutely. That's definitely joyful for me. I am obsessed with my 

wife. We 

met in college doing theater 

Angela: That's so sweet.

Ben Greene: [00:33:00] met my freshman year. I was a new actor and she was a stage manager. She was two years, above me. And so I was terrified of her cause I had not done a show before. So I didn't know what a stage manager's job was. So I was like, Oh, a stage manager's job is to send out the schedule. And is mean and scary. later I have, you know, upon reflection recognized that her job was to keep people on task. My job. that I had decided was to keep people off task. That meant that I got yelled at because I deserved it. So we didn't actually get along very much during our first show. but she went and studied abroad for a semester. I became least marginally less annoying. and had been kind of going through this process of like, I don't really feel like trans people are lovable. You know, I have not heard of trans people getting married.

I haven't seen them. seen trans people in successful relationships. I have only had partners not really treat me that well. So I guess I'm kind of giving up on that. And then we started doing a show at the beginning of my sophomore year. And I [00:34:00] was like, Oh, Samantha's back from London. She seems slightly less scary. I'm less annoying and like we just kind of started to hang out and be goofy together and the next thing I knew I was kind of falling in love with her. And so I asked her out on the last day of the show, which was in 2018 and, you know, in 2020, she graduated, she graduated in 2019.

she said, all right. Ben, I got accepted to medical school at St. Louis University in Missouri. Would you move with me? And so I said, all right, I just graduated college early. I'm getting ready to go into public speaking. Everything's going to be remote anyways. Let's do it. And so I moved to Missouri with her. Uh, so we, you know, dated in Missouri for a couple of years. I supported her through the beginning of medical school. And then in 2022, yeah, 2022, I was like, okay, she's my, uh, she's my one. And so we had started a little bit to look at towards the end of 2021. And in [00:35:00] 2022, I proposed in February. And we are now newlyweds.

We got married about six months ago. and it was just phenomenal. It was so awesome. She's the love of my life. I'm obsessed with her. Yeah. 

Angela: that is amazing, that's wonderful, I love it, I love hearing that. Um, uh, I had a question for you and I totally lost it because I was like so involved in your, story, I was like, oh my gosh, he was like so smitten over her, I love it, um, you said you moved to St.

Louis, that's what it was, you moved to Missouri. I don't know anything about Missouri or St. Louis. What's it like for our community? 

What's the experience politically or culturally? 

Ben Greene: You know, I'd be lying if I said it was easy, but I think it's been honestly really instructional for me. I'm from Connecticut. I went to school in Boston. I had this mindset of like people in red states are getting what they voted for. Why don't they just move? Like I had a very, you could not get me to show up to a rally, to a [00:36:00] signature collecting.

I was not voting in my local elections. Like I was not. involved. I was like, well, we're in New England. We've solved equality. That's just some backwards Southerners and Midwesterners. Like I didn't know anything. And then I moved to St. Louis I saw the incredible community of advocates. Who are fighting with everything that they have, because there's nothing that they have that they did not fight to get and fight to defend every day. The amount that I have learned in living here about how to get organized, how a community takes care of each other has been really, really powerful. Honestly, incredible. You know, I think a quick story that really sums it up is last year in January. We had a ton of anti trans bills last year.

We've got a health care ban and athletics ban. Like Missouri is a rough spot politically and so there was a ban for it was our version of the don't say gay bill that Florida had. And I said, you know what? I think I'm going to go to the capital to testify. We have about 24 hours noticed [00:37:00] anytime they schedule a hearing, because that's a strategy to stop us from coming. The hearings are usually at 8 a. m. and it's about a three hour drive away from any city. so I was carpooling with a rabbi, a Mennonite pastor, uh, someone who, a long time advocate, and an 11 year old, which sounds like a setup to a

Angela: Yeah. 

Ben Greene: joke. and, uh, Honestly, the car ride was really cool. You know, we listened to music.

We shared stories. We learned about activism from, you know, 30 years ago. It was really cool. And we could almost forget where we were going. And then we got off the highway and you could see in the distance, the dome of the Capitol building and the chill that came through the car when the rabbi was like, okay, Who's been to the Capitol before remind me, I need to know about, you know, we need to make sure everybody is prepared for what to expect once we go in there. And, you know, he said, it's, it's going to be hateful. It is dark. You need to kind of brace yourself. And so we parked and we fixed up our ties and we silently walked into the building and it, you know, it felt like walking to a [00:38:00] death sentence. Honestly, I was terrified. I was stealing myself for physical violence, harassment, verbally.

Like I was ready for anything and everything to go wrong. And we come out of the elevator, going up to the second floor. We're coming around the corner and I hear sound of crowd and I am like almost shaking. 

It sounded like a big crowd. I was terrified. I was like, I know this is going to be all these protesters and people who are not in support of the trans community. And instead it is rainbows everywhere and not just rainbows and our community. It's people walking up and down the hall saying, okay, have you eaten today?

Does anyone want me to look at their testimony? Does anybody need water? Does anybody need a bathroom buddy to make sure nobody's going to the bathroom alone? The halls were packed with our people. There were three people there to testify in support of that legislation and hundreds there opposed to it.

Again, this is with 24 hours notice, a three hour drive away. And those people are not [00:39:00] just transgender people. Honestly, it was very few trans people. It was parents, it was pastors, rabbis, community leaders, business owners. It was all these people who showed up because they knew this is what we fight for.

There was a familiarity. A love in this hall. Everybody's hugging. They're checking in. And that was so beautiful. The ways that the community shows up because they know that they have to, they know that we get our rights because we fight for them. And so I have been back many times to the state Capitol. I have gotten very involved with that group of advocates.

I have learned so much from these parents, from these faith leaders about how fight back. Uh, it is so beautiful. So I, I really like we write off red states, but the reality is they're holding the line. If we all just got up and left that mentality, that hate is not going to stop when it reaches the Illinois border, that's going to keep spreading.

So the fact that we get to be here at, square zero fighting stopping that from spreading over to other States [00:40:00] feels really powerful. So I love my community and I don't want to have to move 

For 

Angela: Yeah. 

Ben Greene: I don't want to have to move so that my wife can practice medicine. We deserve to stay 

here with our 

community.

Angela: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. I'm in Texas. So, definitely understand what's going on. What you're saying. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Ben, I could talk to you forever. To be honest, I have like at least three pages of questions and notes from your book but I appreciate your time so much and I've, I've really enjoyed getting to meet you. Thank you for being here. You know, being here and saying yes so I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Your book comes out May 7th. So by the time this publishes, by the time people hear it, Ben's book is out 

it's my child is trans now what, and Ben, where can people find your book? And then where can people find you?

Ben Greene: Yeah, the book is available anywhere you buy your books, and if it's not in your local bookstore, consider requesting it. Most bookstores stock based on what they know people want to buy, [00:41:00] so ask nicely or ask not nicely, but you know, don't say that I told you to do that. Uh, your library, bookstore, Amazon, Kindle, hopefully is everywhere, and find me on social media. I'm pseudo bro because a lot of like, I'm your trans older brother, on Instagram, or you

can look up Ben V. Green, 

should show up as well. 

Angela: Awesome. 

Ben Greene: you can look up my website bgtranstalks2 for any like speaking engagements. You can reach out individually. I do a lot of free coaching for parents and families of trans kids.

So please feel free to reach out, read the book, gift the book to somebody. I am just super, super excited

and thank you for having me. This was 

awesome. 

Angela: Ben. Thank you so much. Uh, I'm going to put, of course, the link to your book and your website. In the episode notes. I can't thank you enough. This is awesome. You're definitely making a huge impact 

Ben Greene: Thank you. I really appreciate that. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for listening, everybody. 

Angela: Awesome.