When cultural shifts occur, it’s easy to feel lost and confused. It’s easy to have a gut reaction that says, why can’t we do things as we’ve been doing them for decades? Why are people insisting on change, when I was perfectly happy with the old way, and I thought everyone else was, too?
The best thing a person in this situation can do is read a book on the topic. Better yet, read multiple books on the topic, for a broader perspective. Y’all know I love books, and this is why. Through books, you can peer into people’s brains. Through books, you can gain detailed information about the world. You can dive beneath the rhetoric and politics and decipher what’s real and what’s hype.
I Want to Be Me (If I Can’t Understand What It’s Like to Be Transgender, I Can Understand That Much)
I cannot personally understand what it’s like to be transgender. However, I can understand wanting to decide how I dress. When I was growing up, my mom adored the tomboy style. I did not. As a preteen I “rebelled” by dressing like a girl. I insisted on flouncy skirts, pierced ears, and makeup. Fortunately for me, the culture I grew up in was fine with that choice. While my mom was reluctant to encourage my girly attire, she certainly didn’t put up a fight.
I try to imagine what it would have been like if not just my mom, but all of society, insisted that I dress and behave as a gender I did not believe myself to be. That’s impossible for me to imagine, so in 2023 I read Pageboy, a memoir by the actor Elliot Page (here’s my blog post about that book). Pageboy was instrumental in helping me begin to understand what it’s like to be trans in our LGBTQ-intolerant (though thankfully more tolerant than in generations past) society, and why it’s so important to be a trans ally as a cis person.
A Memoir + All the Facts About Being a Parent of a Transgender Child
This year, I read another book that was instrumental in my thinking about trans rights. Just Love Me for Who I Am, by James Styers, is an open letter to parents of transgender children. Unlike Pageboy, this book is not written by a trans person, but by the parent of a trans person who died of suicide. Just Love Me for Who I Am is part memoir, part treatise. It is extremely valuable in that it incorporates not only personal stories, but also results of scientific studies, facts about law and politics, and other information that tends to get lost in what has sadly become a heated cultural debate.
I met James quite randomly. A book club had invited me to speak, and I took the Metro into DC for the occasion. However, no one from the book club showed up. (Whaaat?!!) The only person other than me who attended the event was a woman who was thinking about joining the group. (She decided not to join the apparently nonexistent group.) She and I had an awkward but nice chat over drinks. She mentioned that she had a friend who was an author who sells books at street markets. I’m always looking for authors to share a booth with, so I asked her to connect us.
James and I have done several markets and book fairs together, and I’m proud to feature him in an author interview, below. He has a kind and down-to-earth personality. When he speaks and when he writes, he does so from the heart. He marshals facts and statistics like the engineer and federal employee he is in his day job. His book affected me deeply and is a must-read for everyone—especially for parents of trans children, but definitely also for the rest of us.
What’s Great About This Book (and Why It’s Crucial to Support Your Trans Child)
James does not sugarcoat or try to pretend he’s someone he’s not for sake of argument. His honesty in presenting his story and the facts makes his book great. Here’s one of my favorite passages in the book, which demonstrates his fidelity to the truth. At the age of 17, his transgender son came out and asked to be called Asher. And then:
“At that point, I faced an agonizing choice: support a transition I didn’t fully understand (and honestly didn’t agree with) or come out forcefully against the transition even though I could not affect the outcome. I viewed the former to be dangerous, analogous to buying a house without understanding the note that finances it. The latter I viewed as even more reckless; based on Asher’s familial situation, statistically the odds of him committing suicide greatly increased. That was an absolute non-starter for me. I felt like I was in a box with no escape.”
Folks, that’s what honestly looks like. And that’s what vulnerability looks like. I have boundless respect for the decision James made to support Asher, even though he didn’t fully understand. You don’t have to understand someone to accept and love them as human. You don’t have to understand someone to allow them to make their own independent decisions. (Obviously, the situation would be different if a person decided to harm someone else, but that is not at all relevant here.) In the book, Styers verifies that he knows he made the right decision:
“If you choose to support your trans child, I can almost promise that friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances will, intentionally or not, try to make you second-guess your support. I’ve felt this pressure myself. However, if you fully support your trans child, you’ll never have to second-guess yourself, no matter the outcome.”
The outcome was tragic in Asher’s case. Hopefully, James’s activism will help improve the outcome for others. I urge you to read his book and share it with everyone you know.
The Author Interview
Without further ado, here’s my interview with James Styers.
LA: It must have taken a lot of bravery and emotional strength to go public with this book on a topic that is, unfortunately, highly controversial in our society. What kinds of responses have you gotten from readers and other community members?
JS: The responses from readers have been mostly positive; they seem to appreciate the book’s honesty, impartiality, and research and writing quality. Community members have been nearly universally supportive, with a common theme being something along the lines of “thank you for what you are doing.”
LA: I understand that you are an engineer and federal employee. Did this professional background help you in researching and writing your book, or did you have to learn a completely new skill set?
JS: A little bit of both, actually. Certainly researching issues and then summarizing the results of the research are skills that I have employed throughout my career. However, writing about deeply personal issues for a memoir was a new experience for me.
LA: Your book is addressed primarily to parents of transgender children. Do you have any advice for transgender children or new adults who may be unsure about how to talk to their parents about gender identity and related issues?
JS: I would encourage transgender youth to consider performing research into the effects of parental support and acceptance (or lack thereof) and weave this information into conversations with their parents. At one point, Asher gave me a statistic about the effect of parental support on suicide rates, and it had a profound impact on me. Be honest when describing your experience, including both the good and the bad. However, if you have not come out and have doubts about whether your parents will be supportive, perhaps try indirect methods to gauge potential support (e.g., conversations about the LGBTQ community more broadly) before coming out.
LA: What advice would you give someone who’s considering writing about a deeply personal and/or highly controversial topic?
JS: For controversial topics, try to the extent practical to maintain neutrality, as you are attempting to bring as many people “into the tent” as possible (or at least not exclude them). Use corresponding facts or data to support your conclusions to give yourself the best chance of persuasion, but also understand that some will never be swayed. For personal topics, don’t be afraid to write down anything in draft. Personal anecdotes may be beneficial to you but may not be desirable or appropriate for a wider audience—you can always delete what you write later.
LA: I hear you are working on a second book. Would you like to share any tidbits about it?
JS: The book will be about current attempts to “erase” the transgender community (e.g., an executive order declaring that all U.S. citizens are “men” or “women,” thereby essentially denying the existence of nonbinary people). The book will cite evidence of gender diverse people throughout history, and will frame the current erasure efforts through the lens of similar efforts from the past. The book will contain recommendations for the path forward for the trans community and its allies in light of recent and future expected Supreme Court cases involving the rights of transgender people.
Featured in this post: Just Love Me for Who I Am by James Styers, available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon
Learn more about the book on its Facebook page
