How to Invite Someone to the Allyship Party

My favorite re-frame for thinking about how we get through to resistant or hesitant potential allies.

Hello there, lovely reader! This week, I passed a new milestone: 3,000 subscribers! What a flabbergasting number. Whether you've been here since the beginning or just joined this week, I'm so glad you're here! Thank you!! This week's edition will be action packed, so hold onto your hats.

First and Foremost: For anyone looking for ways to help with folks rebuilding from the LA wildfires (or if you yourself are impacted and looking for resources), here are a few options of places to send monetary or physical donations, and a directory of mutual aid networks & resources.

Ways to donate, volunteer, or give support: LAWorks

Organizations, resources, and funds to receive support: Mutual Aid Network of Los Angeles (MALAN)

P.S. If mutual aid is a new or unfamiliar term for you, I’d highly recommend looking through MALAN’s resources and website to learn a bit more about community care in practice. As our political support systems become less reliable, mutual aid is our strongest option for support and community.

This week's good news highlights!

• Texas’s first Black, Gay state legislator proposed to his partner in the capitol on the first day of their legislative session! No matter how much they try to define our lives with hate, we will continue to love as loudly as we can. Full Story: NBCOut, 1.14.25

• It’s Girl Scout Cookie SZN… Consider buying from a trans girl scout! Bring some joy to these scouts by helping them reach their cookie goals! List of Scouts Compiled by Erin Reed Here!

• A group of 87 clergypeople in Indiana released a FIRM letter stating their support for the transgender community and urging their elected officials to do the same. Passionate allies can be found everywhere. Full story: Indiana Daily Student 1.8.25

• My list is short because I’ve spent the week out of the office doing full days of training for mental health providers in rural Vermont. But the fact that I met and reached so many individuals who were eager to learn how to practice better care, build more welcoming spaces, and better love their children is a major source of good news to me. This is a perpetual reminder coming from me: So much good news happens quietly, locally, individually, but this doesn’t make it any less critical in building the world we want to see.

If you’ve seen some good news you think I should know about, whether nationally or in your own life, I want to know about it!

The Allyship House Party!

People often ask me how I manage to talk to people who are so backwards, frustrating, infuriating, stupid, cruel, etc. How do you get through to these people?

For me, it starts with envisioning allyship as a party I'm hosting at my house. The day I came out, I extended an invitation to my party right away. Some people knew it was coming and were already setting up the decorations inside. Others were surprised, but walked through the doors right on time.

But some were late. It's two hours in, and everyone has noticed that certain individuals are not present. When Joe Schmo calls me up and says "Hey ben, Sorry I'm late. I think I'm lost", I respond angrily "of course you're late. You're a terrible driver, just turn left!" Now, though, why on earth would Joe want to come to my party? No matter what time he arrives, it's too late, everyone's mad at him, and he's *still lost*.

For years, I thought being angry enough at someone would motivate them to come to my party, and I made blanket assumptions about why they were struggling (faith, cruelty, politics, masculinity, etc.) and gave them canned conversations hoping something would stick. Shockingly, I left each one of those conversations feeling more exhausted and much further from the progress I wanted to see.

It wasn't until I started seeing every person I spoke to as an entire human and inviting them to my party that they actually started to show up. So what does that actually look like?

1. Constantly reminding myself that even if the best day to start being an ally was yesterday, the second best day is today. Every human reserves the right to decide to be a kinder, better person, no matter where they're starting from.

2. Recognizing that many people and systems have conspired for decades to build a culture of ignorance, fear, and misinformation, and human beings are products of their environment. Of course I'm the first transgender person so many folks think they've ever met, those stories were hidden from them as kids, ridiculed for them as teens, edited out of their history books as students, preached about as congregants, threatened at them as voters. It's going to take some time, along with a tremendous amount of courage, to truly change their worldview.

3. Ask lots and lots of questions. I can't get you directions to where I want you to go until I know where you're lost. I ask open questions and *genuinely* listen to the answers, not to jump to a response, but to understand. "It sounds like this has been very challenging for you. Tell me more about that". "It sounds like you're having a really hard time with our loved one's pronouns. I had a lot of trouble in the beginning, too. Do you have any questions I can answer?"

4. Validate feelings, not thoughts. We don't have to say "you're right, I wish Ben would just pick a pronoun and stick to it.", but we can say "It seems like it's been pretty confusing and frustrating for you while Ben's been figuring out his pronouns!" When people feel seen, when they feel like you care about how they feel, there is so much more trust and ability to move towards growth.

5. Don't let perfect be the enemy of progress, and celebrate growth as it comes. I can't tell you how many hesitant allies I've spoken to who feel so frustrated by ever-moving goalposts that they have given up on trying at all. Here's the thing: allyship is going to be a perpetual growth journey, but that doesn't mean that you are constantly failing because there's something you could be doing better.

Find something here helpful or surprising? Don't forget to share this with a friend to help them invite others to the party too. Inclusion is a pyramid scheme!!

Some important clarifying reminders on this as well.

"Ben! This is way too hand-holdingy. People should just become allies because it's the right thing to do." Okay, yes. I hear you. I would love that to be the case. AND, the people who were going to become perfect allies right away because it was the right thing to do have already done so. I'm here to talk about how to get through to the folks who are already a little (or a lot) late to the party.

"Ben, it's soooo inappropriate to just say 'don't be an angry trans person and then they'll respect us.' That's respectability politics!" You're right! That is respectability politics, and it's not helpful, which is why that is not what I'm saying. Anger is a natural and important emotion that helps us stick up for ourselves, notice where there's been hurt, and lay down boundaries. I won't tell you not to get angry at someone. BUT you can't expect your anger to be the optimal tool for facilitating the change you want to see.

If I have somewhere I need to be, but I've had a few cups of wine and I'm not wearing my glasses, I shouldn't drive there. Doesn't change that I need to get there. Maybe I *could* get there blind and drunk, but I might also end up in a terrible situation where myself and others end up never making it to our destinations at all. I have to find another time, or another way.

We have to learn to check in with ourselves, notice and respect the cues our emotions give us, and how to emotionally regulate ourselves. If I notice I'm in a conversation and I'm getting angry or triggered, I no longer have access to the tools that will allow me to help this person grow, so this conversation may not be worth having right now. I should not be in this conversation any longer as it's only going to hurt us both. I need to step away and find a space where I can prioritize my own rest, peace, and regulation.

Say it again with me: Anger is self protective and important, but it is not the best facilitator of trust and growth.

I'd love to hear about what strategies or questions you've found helpful in getting through to other folks. Feel free to respond to this email, or leave a comment! (either way, these kinds of engagement are amazing at helping new folks find my newsletter and letting Substack know that people like what I'm putting out, so they decide to recommend this to others, too!)

If you're hungry for more ways to get involved with advocacy through conversations and other skills you already have, I'm hosting a free webinar in a few weeks called "Future Dreaming and your advocacy superpower" which will go in depth into this strategy and many others. As someone in my comments requested, the alternative title is "advocacy for scaredy-cats". Here’s the RSVP.

I'm also doing a live webinar with trans activist, fashion designer, influencer, and beefcake Mars Wright around finding peace, joy, and stability during challenging political times. Here's the link to that one too!

That’s all for now!

With love and joy as always,

Ben