A Time Capsule
Average people responded differently to trans people in the very recent past. Not perfectly, but differently, and with much, much more humanity.
I’m grateful to Lizzie Hyman at PEOPLE for listening deeply as I excavated a memory from a time before Americans were radicalized against my community (without even realizing they were being radicalized at all).
It was not always this way.
There was a moment, not that long ago, when my story moved through the world with a kind of lightness. I don’t mean ease or perfection, but I do mean possibility. I could tell the truth about my life, and audiences — both in theaters and in everyday life — met me with curiosity instead of anger.
Of course that wasn’t neutral: it was buoyed by the white, masculine-presenting privilege I embody, which is something I have witnessed clearly all along. Of course my experience has never represented all trans experience. Of course many in my community were navigating far harsher terrain even then.
And still.
Average people responded differently to trans people in the very recent past. Not perfectly, but differently, and with much, much more humanity.
I have watched in horror as talking points that originated in the darkest corners of the far right were carefully laundered into mainstream media, repeated with just enough polish to seem reasonable. What once sounded fringe now sounds familiar. What once sounded extreme now passes for “debate” and “just asking questions.” Follow TransLash Media to go deeper into this downward spiral.
Because it didn’t happen by accident.
It happened through repetition. Through algorithms. Through clickbait headlines that reward outrage over understanding. Through panels that platform “concern” while rarely platforming lived experience. Through the steady drip of “news” designed to manufacture crisis. Once something feels like a crisis, people stop asking who created it. In fact, they usually point at the people most victimized by it, as if we caused the problem by existing.
It never had to be this way. But here’s what I know: the future is not set in stone.
Radicalization works because most people are busy: they trust what appears in front of them, the “news” as fact. They assume that if everyone is talking about something, it must be real. The manipulation is subtle: it rarely feels like propaganda, and eventually it begins to feel like common sense. Remember, I have watched this happen in real time. Actually, in the slow motion that trauma puts on time.
What if you interrupted that cycle?
Instead of accepting headlines as truth, what if you listened to stories? Not viral clips. Not edited confrontations. Stories. Long-form. Nuanced. Human.
When people sit in a room and hear a life unfold in detail, something shifts. The nervous system softens, the imagination opens, and complexity returns.
The stories in Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps are just a few within an entire universe that has been obscured from you by book bans, Hollywood bias, and algorithmic gatekeeping. But they are a bridge.
You can step away from the manufactured crisis, step into the depths of our shared humanity, and decide for yourself which reality feels like one you want to live in.