Latest / Tony & Sarah Unscripted / Ep 16: A Trans Dad, a Queer Family & the World Around Them

Transcript

Ep 16: A Trans Dad, a Queer Family & the World Around Them · Tony & Sarah Unscripted

• 0:09
  Hi, everyone.
• 0:10
  Welcome to this episode of Tony and Sarah Unscripted.
• 0:13
  I'm so happy to have Casey on the show today.
• 0:16
  Casey is a very good friend of mine.
• 0:17
  I'm just going to mention a few things, okay?
• 0:20
  Casey is a professor. He's a cartoonist.
• 0:23
  He's an author, he's a dad and he's a husband,
• 0:26
  and he's very good at every one of those things.
• 0:30
  I know he puts me to shame. Doesn't.
• 0:32
  So, Casey, did I miss anything?
• 0:34
  I mean, I guess the main the main thing that you're missing, those are all.
• 0:39
  It makes me feel busy.
• 0:40
  Yeah, I am, and it reminds me I haven't slept a whole night since 2022.
• 0:47
  But I'm also trans.
• 0:48
  Yeah, and I do a lot of comics about transness.
• 0:52
  And since becoming a parent, a lot of comics and storytelling
• 0:55
  about what it's like to be a transparent, a queer parent, which gives me
• 1:01
  so much material to talk about, I can't imagine, I mean, parenting alone.
• 1:05
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:05
  Honestly, feel like becoming a parent is a big transition and gender transition.
• 1:10
  I'm not joking.
• 1:12
  Yeah. Okay.
• 1:12
  Yeah.
• 1:13
  Well, first of all, I have to ask before, is it?
• 1:16
  When you say Casey, you're like.
• 1:17
  You emphasize Casey. Casey.
• 1:20
  It's the letter. Casey. Casey.
• 1:23
  Yeah. Okay.
• 1:25
  It reminds me about how people say New Haven.
• 1:27
  New Haven.
• 1:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like pronouncing the letters.
• 1:31
  Casey. Okay, okay.
• 1:32
  Because you're like cases.
• 1:34
  I don't know how I don't know.
• 1:35
  My God, now she's picking on the way I say, Casey.
• 1:39
  Here we go.
• 1:40
  When I met you, I was like, Casey,
• 1:42
  do I do that with my head? Though?
• 1:43
  When I say Casey, do I say Casey?
• 1:45
  Okay, maybe. Sorry, sorry.
• 1:49
  Like in the Sunshine Band.
• 1:51
  Okay. Casey.
• 1:54
  How did the two of you meet?
• 1:56
  Go ahead.
• 1:57
  Okay, well, this is a little embarrassing.
• 2:00
  You initiated it.
• 2:01
  I did, I did, so it just comes from sort of a more whimsical time.
• 2:06
  I can't imagine doing this in 2026, when I.
• 2:09
  Right before we moved to New Haven from Wisconsin.
• 2:13
  So I lived in Madison, Wisconsin. I was finishing my PhD.
• 2:16
  I got a job at Southern Teaching and we were about to move.
• 2:21
  So sometime in the spring, I googled trans artists.
• 2:25
  New Haven and Tony came up because I'm thinking, like, what's going on out here?
• 2:30
  Yeah, you know, I know the scene where I live, but,
• 2:32
  you know, what are the artists like?
• 2:33
  Who are the who, the trans people that I'm going to be friends with?
• 2:37
  And I found Tony and I saw his work with kids, and I was like, this guy's awesome.
• 2:41
  He had a POW box.
• 2:43
  So I took a copy of my book, Trans Comics Memoir,
• 2:48
  and I wrote him a little note and I said, hey, my partner and I
• 2:51
  are moving to town in the summer, would love to meet you sometime.
• 2:55
  And I just pulled I didn't I didn't email him, I didn't message him,
• 2:58
  I did nothing, I just sent him a little valentine in the mail.
• 3:01
  Yeah, it was sweet.
• 3:03
  Watch now would like alarm you.
• 3:05
  Yeah, I would be like, who else was guy?
• 3:07
  So that's kind of.
• 3:09
  That is sweet.
• 3:09
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 3:10
  You react to that I didn't I send you my books or something.
• 3:13
  Yeah. Well you messaged me on Facebook. Yeah.
• 3:15
  Did you just send me this? Yeah.
• 3:17
  Just checking. Yeah.
• 3:19
  And then we met up at a restaurant. I don't remember which one, though.
• 3:22
  Yeah, we met up at a restaurant.
• 3:23
  No, it was.
• 3:24
  I forgot the name of it. But they they have ducks in their drinks.
• 3:27
  They have, like, these little rubber duckies right across from,
• 3:31
  the Shubert Theater. Okay.
• 3:32
  But anyways, I'm going to tell you, and I say this every time we talk about
• 3:35
  the way we met, I was, of course, I got there first.
• 3:39
  You know, me.
• 3:39
  And I'm like, oh my God.
• 3:41
  Like, how is this going to go?
• 3:42
  I don't know them. I don't know them.
• 3:44
  How many years ago was this?
• 3:46
  This would have been 2018. Yeah. Okay.
• 3:49
  As soon as they sat down, I felt like I knew them forever.
• 3:52
  Forever. You were planning an early exit? Just in case.
• 3:54
  We were totally weird.
• 3:55
  I was, yeah, I was, and there was no early exit.
• 3:59
  And something else that Casey and his wife gave me
• 4:04
  was the feeling that I didn't have to take care of them.
• 4:08
  I'm always in the company of people who expect me to hold them up emotionally.
• 4:13
  A lot of the times, and I remember we were driving to Hartford Pride.
• 4:17
  I get emotional when we talk about this and cases wife.
• 4:22
  We were sitting in the front.
• 4:23
  She was sitting at least in the back seat,
• 4:25
  and she leaned over and she says, can I ask you a question?
• 4:28
  I was like, yeah, sure. She goes, who takes care of you?
• 4:30
  Wow. And I was like, what?
• 4:32
  I was like, what?
• 4:33
  She goes, yeah, we want we're going to take care of you today.
• 4:36
  And she's a photographer.
• 4:37
  She's a brilliant photographer. She, she's she
• 4:40
  she has.
• 4:41
  Yeah. Alex. Alex.
• 4:44
  Gala. That was that's his wife.
• 4:47
  I didn't realize that.
• 4:48
  Yeah. She's wonderful.
• 4:50
  And she took pictures of that.
• 4:53
  The pride event.
• 4:54
  Every time somebody hugged me, she took a picture of somebody hugging me.
• 4:57
  It was. It was amazing to to just.
• 5:01
  It was just.
• 5:02
  They're just good freaking people, okay?
• 5:04
  Because I'm not going to start crying.
• 5:05
  But really, I'm blessed to know them and honored honestly.
• 5:10
  So you moved here in 2018 then, and you started at southern
• 5:13
  then and then?
• 5:16
  I mean, there was so much other stuff, like
• 5:19
  you wrote a book, more than one book.
• 5:22
  Yeah.
• 5:23
  I mean, I'm working on the second one, which is these comics about parenting,
• 5:26
  which I've been publishing a little by little online.
• 5:29
  My parents, these precious little time for, you know, making a book.
• 5:34
  But yes, I mean, and, you know,
• 5:35
  we have the pandemic in between, and we spent the pandemic
• 5:38
  going through IVF with our first kid who was born in 2022.
• 5:43
  And then, which is why I haven't done sleep.
• 5:47
  And our second day was born almost exactly a year ago now.
• 5:51
  So I have questions about IVF,
• 5:55
  and I also do like I have a bunch of I did comics
• 5:58
  throughout the whole thing because, you know, I have a
• 6:02
  involved process.
• 6:03
  Yeah, that's a lot.
• 6:06
  So is pregnancy, so is childbirth.
• 6:08
  So is having, you know, young kids.
• 6:12
  And it just I was I do think there's one thing
• 6:16
  that actually surprised me a lot was in this moment of becoming
• 6:20
  a parent, I realized that all of a sudden, I have way more in common
• 6:24
  with many straight people than I do with queer friends.
• 6:29
  You know, because we have this
• 6:30
  major shared experience together and we find ourselves in the same spaces.
• 6:34
  We've gone through some of the same stuff where
• 6:37
  we didn't have a whole lot of overlap necessarily before.
• 6:40
  And then I found not with everybody.
• 6:42
  Of course not with Tony.
• 6:44
  But I found, like with some people, there are some queer folks who really
• 6:47
  they don't love kids and being around kids,
• 6:49
  and they are choosing not to have kids because they don't want to have kids.
• 6:52
  So then all of a sudden, like the stuff we're doing socially is different.
• 6:56
  You know, I'm not going out late to the drag shows, and I'm not doing
• 6:59
  a lot of the same stuff that some of my queer friends,
• 7:02
  you know, we're still doing.
• 7:03
  So it becomes a little harder to to connect.
• 7:05
  And then all of a sudden they have this whole new world
• 7:07
  with people who I don't know if they're like, we're friendly, but here
• 7:10
  we have this huge overlap in interests and experience.
• 7:16
  Do you worry about them not being queer friendly?
• 7:18
  Because I doubt it's something that jumps out at them right
• 7:21
  when they make you and your wife and family that, right?
• 7:24
  Yeah, yeah, you're like a family. And no,
• 7:28
  I mean,
• 7:29
  if anyone I know this or I google people all the time,
• 7:32
  but I do like we're still in the pre-K phase,
• 7:35
  so we're not in kindergarten, first grade, you know, in the PTA world.
• 7:39
  Oh, boy, I know.
• 7:41
  And so I actually don't know how to necessarily deal with that.
• 7:45
  There are a bunch of us friends with kids about the same age whose kids
• 7:49
  are going to be in the same school, so we can be sort of a block of, we're
• 7:53
  parents.
• 7:54
  But I do think about coming out because sometimes, like
• 7:58
  and I'm curious about what your perspective is about this,
• 8:00
  but like, if I'm at the post office
• 8:02
  talking to somebody in line, I'm not going to come out right.
• 8:05
  That'd be weird. Right?
• 8:06
  And the same thing with neighbors.
• 8:08
  I'm not going to meet a neighbor for the first time and come out to them.
• 8:11
  It's no secret, you know, I come out to my students on the first day of class.
• 8:15
  It's all over my
• 8:17
  stuff online.
• 8:18
  Not a secret.
• 8:19
  But then at some point, like, how long are you friends?
• 8:22
  Long enough that you are going to tell them,
• 8:25
  and not have it be weird?
• 8:26
  Like I'm not going to tell them about other medical parts of my life or other,
• 8:30
  you know, like you're not going to be like,
• 8:31
  let me tell you my citizenship status.
• 8:34
  Yeah. No.
• 8:35
  Yeah. Like, you have to know I don't.
• 8:37
  Well, I think there's the two different things are privacy and a secret.
• 8:42
  And I think a lot of times when you don't tell people on
• 8:44
  say they find out,
• 8:45
  they think you are keeping a secret from them, and that's not the case.
• 8:48
  It's not a secret. It's private.
• 8:50
  Yeah, it's just private, but I listen, I'm all over the place, you know?
• 8:55
  I mean, I'm, I typically meet people because of my trans status,
• 8:59
  so it's kind of different.
• 9:00
  But I can see how it really shouldn't matter.
• 9:03
  I mean, does it?
• 9:05
  It would be up to you.
• 9:06
  How would it make you feel more comfortable in this space?
• 9:09
  Is it concerning?
• 9:11
  Does it make you more concerned because your parents.
• 9:14
  Well and
• 9:15
  I just well, I think about, you know, one of our kids to have a good experience.
• 9:18
  But I also, you know, I want their teachers to know
• 9:21
  and I want to like, have queer students and feel represented at the school.
• 9:26
  And I don't want them to be going to school and be learning about, like,
• 9:29
  this is what families look like, and it doesn't look like what ours looks like.
• 9:32
  And I want, you know, our kids to be able to talk about
• 9:35
  their parents openly and not be.
• 9:38
  I don't want them to have a secret.
• 9:40
  So that's another question then are you going to come out to your kids
• 9:43
  and when does that happen?
• 9:45
  You know, I have Robin just heard for
• 9:48
  and that's an age where their imaginations are wild.
• 9:51
  So I mean, certainly she's the long one here as a kid.
• 9:55
  And I'm like, that's daddy.
• 9:56
  And that makes perfect okay. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:00
  But before you're old, like a regular family,
• 10:03
  well, just, you know, like, why?
• 10:05
  Sorry if the kids were in school, right?
• 10:07
  And they're seeing a book about a traditional family or whatever.
• 10:09
  You don't. You look like that, right? Right, right, right.
• 10:12
  So they would say, oh, that's us.
• 10:15
  Well, I guess I'm thinking more broadly about,
• 10:17
  like many families, you know, with two moms too, dad.
• 10:20
  Right, right. Yeah. They're definitely not not.
• 10:22
  It's just so interesting.
• 10:24
  Like, I didn't even think about that.
• 10:25
  I mean, because if you I'm just trying to think of when I, my kids were little
• 10:30
  and I would meet people or even without kids or whatever,
• 10:34
  if I met somebody who was trans and never told me,
• 10:40
  would it matter?
• 10:41
  It shouldn't. Right?
• 10:44
  Well, it shouldn't, but a lot of people think that you like,
• 10:47
  how can I trust them now? They kept that secret from me.
• 10:49
  You know, people go into that direction when it's not a secret.
• 10:52
  This is something private that now you you have the honor of knowing about me.
• 10:57
  You have the honor because it is such a small part of who we are.
• 11:01
  Everybody has a gender identity. At least.
• 11:03
  You know, it might be like our last guest.
• 11:05
  You know, it might be mixed together, but everybody has one.
• 11:09
  So nobody walks. No, no
• 11:12
  parents come
• 11:13
  into their home and say, oh, by the way, I just want to tell you like this.
• 11:16
  Yeah, I'm heterosexual, I'm cisgender and, you know.
• 11:19
  Oh, yeah. And here's my kid.
• 11:20
  It might, it might, it might.
• 11:22
  But that's very interesting.
• 11:23
  Yeah.
• 11:24
  So I mean, this is the kind of stuff that if they're not
• 11:27
  and, you know, it'll change as, as we go.
• 11:30
  But I don't like having secrets.
• 11:32
  I don't want my kids to.
• 11:35
  I want them to feel proud of their family.
• 11:38
  And I have told my daughter before that, you know, that dad used to be a girl.
• 11:42
  And just in the context, you know, that's coming out when she goes to school.
• 11:45
  Well, sure, like that is when you might need to start telling other people.
• 11:50
  And I don't want the teachers to be like, what are you talking about?
• 11:54
  Well, that's what's good.
• 11:55
  That's probably
• 11:56
  that's probably going to be like, wow, what an imagination this kid has. Wow.
• 12:00
  Yeah.
• 12:01
  Something turning into something else.
• 12:02
  Yeah, yeah.
• 12:04
  Or combinations of things we just read a book last night about,
• 12:08
  you know, here's all the unicorns.
• 12:09
  And then there's a pocket corn.
• 12:11
  That's the unicorn, which is different
• 12:14
  than all the others, but turns out cooler than the rest.
• 12:16
  So there's
• 12:18
  cool and loved ones.
• 12:21
  So you sent me something a while ago about a cartoon.
• 12:24
  I don't know if it was one of yours
• 12:26
  about a dad that was trans and it was telling his kid.
• 12:28
  Do you remember sending me that? There was one of the New York Times?
• 12:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was very cool.
• 12:33
  That was very well done.
• 12:35
  I just think there are a lot of, you know, certain
• 12:38
  like my partner Kate just photographed a wedding
• 12:41
  with two moms, a two month family whose kids was getting married.
• 12:46
  But that's kind
• 12:47
  of the earliest, you know, like, we're seeing many more queer parents
• 12:51
  sort of coming up now and with kids in school systems and stuff.
• 12:54
  So I think some of these stories, I mean, it just seems really relevant,
• 12:58
  like we don't have when you read parenting books, it's like very gendered.
• 13:02
  Yeah, yeah.
• 13:03
  It's like dads throw the ball and play rough with it.
• 13:06
  Still, they still still to this day they are like that.
• 13:08
  No and I can't.
• 13:11
  Yeah.
• 13:12
  Or you know, I, I often sort of feel like I'm being a mom.
• 13:17
  You know, I do a lot of mom stuff.
• 13:20
  I was socialized to be a mom.
• 13:22
  I liked moms, like, so.
• 13:24
  And then I get so much credit being in a male body, doing
• 13:29
  a good job.
• 13:31
  Yeah,
• 13:33
  but I just feel like there's a gap for these stories about her.
• 13:36
  You know,
• 13:36
  common experiences of parenting, stuff that all kids and parents go through.
• 13:40
  But from the perspective of,
• 13:43
  trans and queer parents, because we do have a slightly different perspective.
• 13:48
  I think it's so interesting to me.
• 13:51
  Yeah.
• 13:52
  Pronouns, pronouns.
• 13:54
  Yeah. I want to talk about that.
• 13:57
  When you first told me
• 13:59
  that you were going to have your first, I had a question for you when I asked you.
• 14:04
  You know, a lot of people don't use a gendered pronoun.
• 14:07
  A lot of people use gender
• 14:08
  neutral pronouns until their kid gets old enough
• 14:10
  to tell them what pronouns they want to use.
• 14:12
  And your answer stuck in my heart because I thought it was amazing.
• 14:16
  You said something like, well, you know, I mean, how's my kid?
• 14:19
  Get a feel what?
• 14:20
  Every time somebody says, let's just say she did I correct him and say, no, no, no.
• 14:24
  They we know we're not. We're not doing pronouns. We're not doing pronouns.
• 14:27
  How how is that going to affect her emotionally?
• 14:30
  And then you said, you know, of course, if my kid wants to use a different pronoun
• 14:34
  when they get older, we're going to use the pronoun they want to use.
• 14:37
  I just thought that was amazing, because I think a lot of times
• 14:39
  when parents do do that, they'll say, you know, we're not we're not doing a gender.
• 14:43
  They don't think about how that's going to affect their child.
• 14:48
  So talk a little bit more about that.
• 14:50
  I just thought, thought that was fascinating.
• 14:52
  Well, and I think part of that has to do with just my personality.
• 14:55
  I don't like conflict.
• 14:57
  And if I was, you know, like when you're out with a little kid
• 15:00
  in the world, people interact with you a lot.
• 15:02
  You know, that's one thing that's really different is that
• 15:05
  just being walking as an adult by yourself through a store or down the street,
• 15:11
  you know, it's a certain kind of attention or not attention.
• 15:14
  And then when you have kids, like people are talking to you
• 15:16
  all the time and your kid is interacting with other people.
• 15:18
  So I just was, you know, the idea that I would
• 15:23
  every single interaction, I would either choose
• 15:28
  to say something like, oh, actually, we're not doing pronouns or
• 15:32
  just be a little bit mad inside that this person didn't know.
• 15:35
  How would they know? Yeah.
• 15:38
  And I just thought, I don't I don't want to be mad all the time.
• 15:41
  First of all.
• 15:41
  And then second of all, I don't want to feel like
• 15:43
  my kid can't speak for themselves, you know?
• 15:46
  Yeah, so I don't I just think that that experience, over time,
• 15:51
  they would feel like they have this sort of guardian lesson to speak for them.
• 15:55
  And I have very outspoken children.
• 15:58
  I mean, that would work anyways, but I just wasn't imagined myself
• 16:01
  as kind of a shy, introverted person.
• 16:03
  Yeah, that
• 16:04
  that's not how I wanted to to go about it, but to just let a kid sort of unfold.
• 16:08
  And, you know, there are many queer people in our lives
• 16:12
  with different pronouns and gender expressions, and so there's
• 16:16
  no shortage of sort of examples about how right and how to interact
• 16:20
  with people and books that we read about pronouns and things like that.
• 16:24
  So but we have our four year old as the girl asking all you've ever met right now.
• 16:29
  Really? We'll see.
• 16:31
  I think it's interesting because,
• 16:35
  I have to think about the children
• 16:38
  as they grow, right?
• 16:40
  And say she's continuing to be a really girly girl, right?
• 16:44
  Would she, do you think, could she or would
• 16:47
  she maybe get to an age where she thought, wait a second.
• 16:50
  Am I supposed to be something else?
• 16:52
  I supposed to be okay with how I feel?
• 16:55
  Am I does she?
• 16:56
  Would there be confusion at all right?
• 16:58
  Or do you say it in a way when you when you tell her
• 17:02
  it's like something that you that you feel and that you are.
• 17:07
  It's not something that you choose or that you become like.
• 17:11
  It's an internal feeling as much as you can say that to a kid, right?
• 17:14
  Like it's your sense of yourself.
• 17:15
  Nobody, nobody can tell you, right? Like
• 17:20
  gender
• 17:20
  diverse and trans, you know, trans people.
• 17:23
  Which she begins to understand. She gets older. Will she then say, well.
• 17:26
  Am I supposed to be like that?
• 17:27
  Or is it okay that I'm like, being okay with being a girl, right?
• 17:31
  Oh, there's plenty of girly girls in our lives to.
• 17:35
  And she is drawn to fancy women.
• 17:39
  And since, I mean since very early, I would be at goodwill trying
• 17:43
  to find little kids shoes and and she's pulling the high heels off the rack.
• 17:47
  And she was just.
• 17:47
  Does she still play with the mannequin head? Yes.
• 17:50
  Mannequin.
• 17:51
  I mean, he's just a nail polish. Yes.
• 17:56
  Podcast.
• 17:57
  We might have to
• 17:59
  have her on with the with the mannequin.
• 18:01
  And she wants to do something like
• 18:04
  fanciness.
• 18:05
  I mean, she just like, that's really who she is.
• 18:07
  But she did say something.
• 18:09
  This is where I really use comments making.
• 18:12
  It's a way to process this stuff.
• 18:13
  And then I find that a lot of people, regardless of,
• 18:16
  you know, what their particular situation is.
• 18:18
  A lot of people can relate
• 18:19
  to these kinds of things, just, you know, having it be around kids.
• 18:23
  But she said to me the other day,
• 18:26
  people like my name, which is Robin, and they do.
• 18:30
  She often gets compliments on her name.
• 18:32
  But she also
• 18:35
  said, and people like when I wear fancy dresses
• 18:38
  because they're always complimenting oh, dresses.
• 18:41
  So I think not only does she love it, but she knows
• 18:44
  what she's doing is rewarded society.
• 18:47
  And I'm like, oh no, that's interesting.
• 18:50
  But and it happens.
• 18:54
  I don't know where it comes from, but it's really sort of, at least at this moment.
• 18:57
  It's really sort of part of who she is.
• 18:59
  And when she's noticing like, oh, I get I get a lot of compliments on my
• 19:03
  fancy stuff.
• 19:04
  And I just the other day I was out and there was a little girl
• 19:07
  who was all dressed up in sort of a princess thing,
• 19:10
  and it's exactly what I wanted to say to her. Look at you.
• 19:12
  You know, you look beautiful. And of course you.
• 19:14
  I wouldn't have said that if she was just dressed in whatever.
• 19:16
  But it is interesting.
• 19:18
  Yeah, that is interesting,
• 19:20
  especially with girls, because people compliment there and talk about their
• 19:23
  looks versus their, you know, abilities or how hard they work at something.
• 19:29
  And are the two kids really different in personality that you can tell right now?
• 19:34
  Blond and one is brunet.
• 19:36
  One seems sort of baseline content.
• 19:39
  The other one seems really spicy.
• 19:41
  Yeah.
• 19:42
  Second one that's spicy, or the first one is the spice.
• 19:45
  The second one
• 19:47
  that if I had to make a prediction, be careful.
• 19:50
  Doing that.
• 19:53
  Make it, do it, do it.
• 19:55
  I might just well and people in public have mentioned this.
• 19:59
  Like she seems like she could be a drummer,
• 20:02
  a drummer, a drummer, you know, the second.
• 20:05
  But she often she'll take two straws and no one should come out.
• 20:08
  She just has the Bible.
• 20:09
  That's so cool. Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
• 20:11
  Anyway, that's just a much of a prediction is on that.
• 20:14
  But she's got that sort of, you know, she wakes up happy.
• 20:17
  Just a cool, calm person.
• 20:19
  The other one is a real fighter
• 20:22
  right now.
• 20:23
  But anyway, it really is fascinating, I think, to be.
• 20:27
  And then I find myself I'm always talking about parenting.
• 20:29
  And maybe that's why some of my career friends without parents.
• 20:33
  Okay.
• 20:35
  Yeah it is.
• 20:35
  And when when you're in the way you are,
• 20:38
  and especially at those ages, it's hard to not think of anything else.
• 20:42
  And it's nice to talk to other people who,
• 20:46
  can understand what you're saying and what you're talking about.
• 20:50
  Yeah, not just like the Instagram, you know, mommy blogger.
• 20:54
  Yeah, that makes it all like, how do you have six kids?
• 20:57
  And they all celebrate their half birthdays.
• 20:59
  And you know,
• 21:02
  that's not really true.
• 21:03
  Well, what you had four. You have four kids.
• 21:06
  No, I have three.
• 21:07
  You have three. I'm one of four.
• 21:09
  Oh okay. You have three. That's right. Three.
• 21:11
  I know where I got the fourth one from I don't know.
• 21:14
  Well. Cameron
• 21:16
  girl.
• 21:17
  True. Yeah. True true true true true.
• 21:21
  I mean, how was it for you?
• 21:22
  I actually don't know a lot about your story.
• 21:26
  How is it?
• 21:27
  I have a lot more compassion, I think, for my parents
• 21:30
  being a parent because of the how many pressures there are.
• 21:33
  And I'm curious, like, and just the shame
• 21:38
  in society and fear of,
• 21:41
  I don't know, I'm in or being outcast from your social circles.
• 21:45
  Like, that's really deep in our DNA.
• 21:49
  Yeah.
• 21:49
  To not be isolated from the group. Yeah.
• 21:52
  So anyway, I'm curious how was.
• 21:54
  Well, Cameron came out probably at that very difficult age of 14
• 21:58
  or 15 years of age, and he was trying every other thing
• 22:02
  possible, like really trying to be a girly girl and do his nails and work
• 22:06
  like clothes to, to see if he was hoping that he could feel comfortable as a girl
• 22:10
  like that.
• 22:13
  And then he has a lot of he had a lot of mental
• 22:16
  health battles and suicidal ideation and cutting and all these things.
• 22:19
  So it was a very, very difficult time for him.
• 22:22
  And then when he finally came out,
• 22:25
  you could see almost a sense of relief, almost of like, okay, this is what I am.
• 22:31
  And for us, it was a
• 22:35
  I mean, it just turned our world upside down.
• 22:38
  Was it a surprise to you?
• 22:41
  Yes, yes.
• 22:42
  I mean, Cameron was was trying really hard to, to help us with it
• 22:46
  because he would he came out as bisexual
• 22:50
  and then lesbian and then cut his hair.
• 22:54
  Changed the way he was dressing,
• 22:55
  you know, all the stuff that I should
• 22:56
  have put two and two together, but I just really didn't.
• 23:00
  And then he went into a residential and he went in as a girl,
• 23:07
  a different name, and came out non-binary, changed his name
• 23:11
  is when he was in there for a month, he tried out the new name,
• 23:15
  he tried out pronouns and it just all felt so right for him.
• 23:19
  So. And then,
• 23:23
  and then Tony stepped in right around the third
• 23:26
  or fourth or fifth time, the camera was in the hospital
• 23:28
  and was able to say to Cameron because again, Cameron new nobody, nobody.
• 23:33
  That was queer, really.
• 23:36
  I mean, kind of some of the some of the the friends, I suppose.
• 23:40
  But Tony was like, what?
• 23:43
  This is what we could this is what you could do about who is.
• 23:45
  Yeah. What do you need?
• 23:46
  That's all I said to him was like, what do you need?
• 23:48
  Yeah, that's that's a simple question
• 23:51
  like hope, which Cameron didn't have any hope.
• 23:53
  I remember that day like it was yesterday.
• 23:55
  I remember FaceTiming him.
• 23:57
  He was on a gurney and in the air.
• 23:59
  Yeah, and I remember that.
• 24:01
  Yeah? Yeah. Well, we met.
• 24:02
  Didn't we meet, like, maybe a couple of weeks before that on the zoom call?
• 24:06
  Oh yeah.
• 24:06
  Yeah, we talked
• 24:07
  prior to it and I say this all the time because it was really scary.
• 24:11
  She introduces him like Catholic, Republican, conservative.
• 24:15
  And I'm like, oh boy.
• 24:16
  I was like, oh, hi, how are you?
• 24:18
  But but I'm like, great, great.
• 24:21
  This is going to be interesting conversation.
• 24:22
  But I mean, you surprised the hell out of me, really.
• 24:26
  I mean, but as a parent, as parents, I can tell you from the parents
• 24:30
  perspective, it's very, very difficult because 14, 15 years, you're
• 24:35
  I'm imagining one life and one way for my, my child.
• 24:39
  And then that changes drastically.
• 24:42
  And then there's all the worries, sure,
• 24:44
  of what it's going to be like for him and knowing it's not going to be easy.
• 24:47
  And then of course, the politics of it.
• 24:49
  And then that's just things have just got far worse.
• 24:53
  Luckily enough, Cameron was able to access medical, whereas he wouldn't now.
• 24:58
  Well, I think that's important to because when, when we had we had her husband on.
• 25:02
  You should watch that episode. It's pretty powerful.
• 25:06
  The medical part of it.
• 25:07
  You know, I never thought about it.
• 25:09
  I mean, I've thought about it, but I never felt it.
• 25:10
  Like, I can think about stuff and not feel it.
• 25:12
  But you're making a decision.
• 25:15
  If your kid is not now 19 years old, you're making a decision
• 25:19
  that's going to alter their life forever.
• 25:22
  Relying on the fact that they.
• 25:24
  Yeah, that's that's tough.
• 25:27
  Not 1 in 4 and you're talking to social transition whatever.
• 25:29
  But when they get to that age of now you are saying okay
• 25:33
  all right let's do
• 25:36
  let's do.
• 25:36
  I never forget the first day Cameron was we were at the doctors
• 25:40
  and the doctor was like, okay, you know, I can give you your first shot right now.
• 25:44
  You'd thought that they were going to give Cameron $1 million.
• 25:47
  And both of them looked to me, Casey, both of them.
• 25:50
  And they went, well, what do you think?
• 25:53
  I was like, oh, my God.
• 25:56
  Like, I have to begin the journey of saying goodbye to my daughter.
• 26:00
  And so those are all things that we as parents deal with.
• 26:03
  And then on top of that, you deal with all the things
• 26:05
  that they're saying out there about us, right?
• 26:07
  You know, we're mutilating our children.
• 26:10
  We shouldn't be aware of that.
• 26:11
  We should be in jail, that all the abuse.
• 26:13
  It's just it's an awful thing all around.
• 26:15
  I think at that moment the parent chooses
• 26:18
  life over death because that's that's the truth.
• 26:22
  I mean, if Cameron wasn't allowed to live authentically,
• 26:25
  the likelihood of him being here, oh, he would tell you he wouldn't be.
• 26:28
  Yeah.
• 26:29
  So so at that moment, you know, doesn't matter what happens
• 26:33
  ten years from now, at that moment, you're saving your kid's life.
• 26:36
  Period. And I remember saying, that's a Cameron.
• 26:38
  And I'm sure he hates me for saying it.
• 26:40
  But I remember saying to him, understand, please,
• 26:43
  because I'm seeing all the transition stories and stuff.
• 26:45
  And I said that people that are angry, children
• 26:48
  that are angry, angry at their parents and the doctors and blah, blah, blah.
• 26:51
  And I said, please remember that you gave us no choice.
• 26:54
  No choice.
• 26:54
  We had to do this.
• 26:56
  Yeah, because otherwise you weren't going to be here.
• 26:59
  Yeah. Clear case.
• 27:00
  And maybe that was a difference because I know some
• 27:02
  I've seen a lot of stories that are not clear cases
• 27:04
  where ours was a very clear case. Right.
• 27:07
  And, you know, people's journeys are different.
• 27:09
  I mean, like, it was interesting thinking about Cameron
• 27:13
  sort of going in with a different name and then coming out, but having a space to
• 27:17
  kind of try that on.
• 27:18
  Yeah.
• 27:18
  I mean, I think everybody needs to like finds that in some type of way.
• 27:22
  I mean, mine was like that time period seems condensed.
• 27:26
  I was like 16 years and it wasn't I didn't know how much.
• 27:30
  So I was 35.
• 27:32
  So 16 years that you knew that you were trans.
• 27:34
  Well, that I
• 27:36
  well, probably ten
• 27:37
  that I knew that I was trans, but I'm kind of a slow.
• 27:42
  Yeah. We already talked about that.
• 27:43
  How you're slow.
• 27:44
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:47
  But also it was like, for me,
• 27:49
  there's a moment where it becomes clear.
• 27:52
  And for me, it was becoming like learning my sister was pregnant
• 27:56
  and then thinking, oh, yeah, I'm not an aunt for sure about an aunt.
• 28:00
  Yeah. And yeah.
• 28:03
  And I think I love that, you know,
• 28:05
  Cameron had that space too, because pronouns and like fitting I had
• 28:09
  I was working with a client years ago that this poor thing,
• 28:12
  14 years old, could not figure out what pronoun really fit right for him.
• 28:15
  And one day during a session, he said to me, I finally figured out
• 28:19
  my pronoun and my heart was like, Thank God, thank God.
• 28:22
  He says galaxy and galaxies.
• 28:24
  And I said, okay, okay, okay, that's cool.
• 28:28
  And it's different.
• 28:31
  Give people an opportunity to get used to it.
• 28:33
  Now listen, I knew the little guy had no way that that was going to
• 28:37
  work out, but I didn't say to him, Galaxy and galaxies, you got to be kidding me.
• 28:41
  That's not going to work.
• 28:42
  Two weeks later, in his next session, he comes in and I said,
• 28:46
  how's it going, Galaxy and galaxy?
• 28:48
  He him he him he him he him and he but I you know,
• 28:52
  I mean you got to give them space
• 28:54
  and like parents are like oh they changed their name again.
• 28:57
  Yeah. Because good for them
• 28:59
  if you're trying something on and it doesn't fit take it off.
• 29:03
  And I know it's hard. I know it's hard.
• 29:05
  But I always say to parents this way,
• 29:07
  make sure before you spend the money to get their name
• 29:10
  legally changed, let them go through all the names they want, okay?
• 29:12
  It's going to save your money at the end,
• 29:14
  but you got to give people space that it wasn't about me.
• 29:18
  That's what I needed to do. This was not my life.
• 29:21
  That all the dreams and thoughts that I thought were for a camera
• 29:24
  were based on what I thought and what my husband thought, right?
• 29:27
  We thought we were going to walk him down the aisle and get married
• 29:29
  and give away some as a as a bride, I thought I would go dress shopping
• 29:33
  with him and be in the in the labor and delivery room when he had the baby.
• 29:36
  And he said to me, I remember him saying, I don't think I want children.
• 29:40
  What?
• 29:41
  Well, you got a lot planned for me.
• 29:43
  What? It's.
• 29:45
  You didn't read the script?
• 29:46
  Ridiculous.
• 29:47
  You have certain things, but those are all mine.
• 29:50
  You know, that's part of our programing, you know?
• 29:52
  And kids change so frequently.
• 29:55
  I have come to understand.
• 29:58
  And we need to do that more as adults.
• 30:00
  Yeah, I think we flexible and open and,
• 30:04
  Casey, I feel like we have only.
• 30:08
  Yeah, there's so much more.
• 30:10
  Would you come back on for a part two?
• 30:12
  Like, I want to talk to you about
• 30:14
  your, your books and your and your comics, because I think the comments
• 30:17
  comics is such a wonderful way to maybe explain even more.
• 30:21
  No, it's he's super freaking talented. Yeah.
• 30:25
  I was going to say, where do we find it? You can find.
• 30:27
  So I have a website, Casey counselor,
• 30:29
  which I will be going to update as soon as I leave here tonight.
• 30:34
  Okay.
• 30:34
  So we should wait a little bit more on. Okay.
• 30:37
  And then recently I've been publishing comics in mother magazine and
• 30:41
  mother okay,
• 30:42
  which is a great space for essays and and comics
• 30:46
  about the experience of parenting, but they're very open to
• 30:51
  publishing comments from a trans dad.
• 30:54
  It's such a wonderful idea.
• 30:56
  Yeah, but I do think so many of these things with either
• 30:59
  parenting or coming out or being trans, or these little tiny moments
• 31:04
  that are hugely impactful, but they're very hard to describe in words.
• 31:09
  I feel like in comics are a really good way to to show
• 31:13
  those little micro moments that end up being ways huge, huge things.
• 31:18
  So I like to often like make comments about just kind of hand
• 31:21
  goes on to explain better than I can't even in words.
• 31:24
  That's great. I think it's a great idea. Yeah.
• 31:27
  No, it's really I'm telling you, I got the book.
• 31:29
  And when you had your top surgery,
• 31:31
  you made those little booklets for certain people, and it was.
• 31:34
  And you as a cartoon of Doctor Johnson, which was spot on.
• 31:40
  Yeah.
• 31:41
  I mean, it's just great.
• 31:42
  So, listen, thank you so much for being here.
• 31:44
  And we're definitely going to have you back.
• 31:46
  Talk more about it.
• 31:47
  Thank you everyone for tuning in today. We'll see you next time.