Episode 3: Transcript

"I have to find compassion in order to do this job."

Doug French (00:00):

I'm in a mood about this, I have to say, because here we are, Episode Three, and already we are bumping one guest because she's speaking truth to power. And power is buying up all the truth. And in her place, we're putting another woman who can't even give us her full name because she's also trying to speak truth to power, but needs to do it on the QT.

Magda Pecsenye (00:22):

Well, I mean, I think it makes us feel a little bit more like freedom fighters than we think of ourselves. 

Doug (00:27):

Well, exactly. What is this podcast? Are we Woodward and Bernstein now?

Magda (00:32):

<Laugh>. Well, if we are, then--

Doug (00:32):

Which is which? I guess you’d have to be Woodward, right? You'd never be Bernstein. 

Magda (00:36):

Oh my God! My love for Nora Ephron is so strong. I would never be Bernstein.

Doug (00:41):

I'd be stuck with the Bernstein role. 

Magda (00:43):

I would smash that key lime pie right in Bernstein's face every single time. By the way, that key lime pie recipe from the book Heartburn by Nora Ephron comes out perfectly every time. 

Doug (00:55):

Would you ever want to publish a recipe in a book called Heartburn?

Magda (00:59):

That was the whole point!

Doug (01:01):

Right, but I mean, it's like, you know that bar that was near our apartment called Barfly <bar fly>?

Magda (01:05):

Yes. That looked like barfly <barf-ly>. 

Doug (01:07):

It's like, do you want a restaurant with the word barf in it? That doesn't make any sense.

So we're talking about Jessica now.

Magda (01:31):

Can we talk first about the episode that we were supposed to be posting this week, week three. So, we recorded an episode with somebody who, let's just call her C, ‘cause that's her first initial, by the way, this--

Doug (01:40):

That's too much information already. I think we should just call her, you know, Barbara. 

Magda (01:50):

Barbara? Okay. Let's pretend her name is Barbara. We'll call her Barbara. Okay. So by the way, if you are a subscriber on Substack, you got an email last Friday, promoing this episode with Barbara. And so you, in fact, know what her actual name is and a link to the story. And we've had to remove that information from the actual site. So this should be an inducement to you to subscribe.

Doug (02:14):

You get the hot and heavy goss before we have to redact it. 

Magda (02:17):

Right, exactly! <laugh>. Okay, so we talked to this woman whose name is Barbara. She's a teacher. She's been a teacher forever in a public school. She is a really, really strong advocate for her kids. She's been teaching her kids their subject area, which is, it's one of the specials, right? 

Doug (02:36):

I, there's going to be so much tap dancing in this whole discussion. Like, “she does a thing, that is good” <laugh>, “she spoke out about a thing, and the people who supervised that thing didn't like it.” 

Magda (02:47):

I don't want to get her in any more trouble than she's already in. So the basic--

Doug (02:51):

Right. So we’ve got to use completely vague nouns.

Magda (02:54):

Well, she did a thing that was advocacy for her students and helping her students--not even really teaching them--but kind of apprenticing them into advocating for themselves. And as a result of that, her district really got their knickers in a twist. And what it--What was the language they put her on? “Administrative leave pending investigation” of this thing that the entire rest of the community, everyone else who had encountered this was like, “Wow, this is great teaching the kids to advocate for themselves. You're teaching them so many skills and they're good at this thing that you're teaching them.” Like, she's kind of a superstar and she's been doing this for so long. People adore her, she's so beloved. But the real upshot of that is that her kids in her classes have no teacher, are unable to finish their end of year projects, and they are unable to do the things that they were scheduled to do in this class with her.

Doug (04:00):

She did a thing and talked about it and the people who employ her said, “No, you can't talk about this sort of thing.” And so we're bumping her for another person who can't even give us her last name because she said, and I quote, “if my bosses learned about this, their heads would explode.”

Magda (04:17):

Right. I think the problem is that the bureaucracy is just horrible. I mean, you know, there's that whole truism about “individual people are great, but institutions suck.” And I think it's really true. And instead, we're putting in somebody this--this interview I think is great, too--with somebody who's on a school board who cannot give us her last name or tell us where she is because of the institution that she works for, too.

Doug (04:47):

And that's the kind of thing, the theme that's emerging in terms of “Why is there no there, here?”. I think one of the things we didn't count on is that it is so much more difficult to speak freely about things that need to be discussed. Just the whole idea of how social media was supposed to open up the discourse. But in theory, I mean, 20 years later, it's doing a lot to limit it. And it's sending us into an appreciation for autocracy. It's aggressive rulemaking. It's aggressive book banning. It's stunting free speech to the point where, I mean, did you know the story about Bo Schembechler's son? 

Magda (05:27):

Isn't his name like “Shemby” or something? 

Doug (05:29):

Yeah. Shemy Schembechler. Which, okay, strike one. But he was hired by the U here, and someone delved into his tweets, and he liked a couple of really terrible tweets and he is gone. Three days.

Magda (05:43):

Well, you know what, I have to say, this is a known thing, right? Like before he applied for the job, he should have gone through and combed through his own social media to make sure he wasn't saying anything that was exposing him as the kind of person he doesn't want to be. 

Doug (06:00):

Right. But his resume was like: “Father: Bo Schembechler. The End.”

Magda (06:05):

<Laugh> Talk about nepo baby, right?

Doug (06:08):

Oh my God, yeah. Bo Schembechler and Nepo Schembechler <laugh>. The forgotten Marx Brother. Groucho, Zeppo. and Nepo <laugh>.

Magda (06:19):

Oh my God. Get Jamie Lee Curtis on the horn. Let's talk to her about Nepo Schembechler.

Doug (06:25):

Well, we can say Jessica's first name, and I really enjoyed this conversation with her, because she talks about advocating for trans kids in a system, I think, that doesn't necessarily share her views, or in general has that same bureaucratic skittishness about gender affirming care.

Magda (06:44):

I think this interview was interesting because it kind of almost ended up being two interviews because there was one about her work on the school board and how challenging that is and the nature of that. And then the other part of it really is being a parent of a trans kid, and some of the challenges in and out of the school board of that. And I mean, I think the same thing. You should be an advocate for trans kids and trans adults, too. 

Okay, so here's a tweet that I saw that I just want to acknowledge. It's by @KarlReMarks: “Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted.” I saw that and teared up. Oh my God. What have we done as a species?

Doug (07:29):

This is what I'm wondering in terms of what the identity of this podcast is going to be. If we're just rooting out nonsense and trying to speak truth to power and hoping that our guests can be on the record to speak about it.

Magda (07:40):

Well, we've got one in the can that's a little bit more optimistic, maybe.

Doug (07:46):

She was great, too. Cause she did talk, she did say, “The boards, they're not terrible people. They just think differently.”

Magda (07:52):

Right.

Doug (07:52):

And that's the reason this podcast episode is going forward and our previous one is not, pending resolution, which won't happen until the end of the month.

Magda (08:00):

Oh. Man. Yeah.

Doug (08:01):

Which means the kids are officially out of all of their activities that they had planned.

Magda (08:06):

Yeah. And the seniors are screwed, but yeah. Okay. 

So without further ado, here's Jessica. And I hope you are as intrigued by this episode as we were.

Doug (08:18):

I feel it's important to mention, also, that you're about to hear some early discussion about bidets. And I need to provide the context for that: The quietest place for her to record the episode was in her bathroom. And so the discussion swiftly went on to toilets, and then we got onto the real nitty gritty.

The theme music (sort of a weird floopy early 2000s synth ambient thing) crossfades in, plays for 20 seconds, then crossfades into talk.

Magda (08:55):

I think we have some questions for you before we start talking about, like what we're allowed to talk about. So, our idea was that we were going to talk to you about what it's like to be on a school board in the middle of intense conflict and attacks on kids. 

Jessica (09:13):

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>.

Magda (09:14):

So, do you need to say the district? Do you want to say the district?

Jessica (09:19):

I would say “a small Midwestern city.” I mean, for myself, I wouldn't mind using it, but my superintendent's head is going to explode over this anyway. So if I use the name of the district I think she might actually die.

Magda (09:31):

Okay.

Doug (09:31):

I'd rather have too much information than too little. So if either one of us asks something that you're not prepared to answer, just say so and out it goes.

Magda (09:40):

Put up your hand or something like that.

Doug (09:42):

Yeah. I want you to feel comfortable from your toilet to say whatever you like <laugh>. 

Jessica (09:47):

There's nowhere I feel more comfortable, Doug,

Doug (09:49):

Especially if you have one of those great, you know, hemorrhoid seats.

Jessica (09:52):

Oh, yeah. And, you know, a bidet setup, that's…

Doug (09:56):

<Laugh>

Jessica (09:56):

You know, a Japanese washlet.  

Doug (09:57):

I really hope that goes off by accident at some point during one of your responses.

Jessica (10:00):

<Laugh>. Yeah. The Japanese washlet is one of my life goals.

Doug (10:05):

Yeah. I love the fact that this is our starting point. 

Jessica (10:07):

Yeah. That's a good place to start.

Doug (10:08):

And I'm getting one.

Jessica (10:10):

Yeah, we're all getting one after this. We're going to. That's the next thing we're going to do when we're done here, <laugh>,

Magda (10:15):

We can find the portable bidet company to sponsor the podcast. <Laugh>.

Jessica (10:23):

One thing I need to be explicit about is that I cannot speak for the board and the only student I can talk about is my own. I mean, that's federal law.

Doug (10:33):

And that's another thing we wanted to talk about, too, was that you're coming at this from someone who's researched this because your own child is trans.

Jessica (10:41):

Yeah.

Doug (10:42):

Right? We don't want this to be about “This woman is advocating just because she has a trans child.”

Magda (10:48):

Well, yeah.

Doug (10:48):

That's an important distinction I think just because, I mean, I'm very familiar with the idea. I used to interview a lot of dads who would say, you know, they were feminists--

Jessica (10:56):

“--as soon as they had a daughter!”

Doug (10:58):

Yeah, “because I have a daughter,” it's like, “No, you're a feminist because you're a person.” 

But at the same time, I do think that much of your discussion about how you deal with the board and how you try to anticipate what, how the board's going to push back--and you're playing this game of chess--part of this has to be the research you've done in terms of like how the DSM 5 talks about gender dysphoria, the statistics about how much more common it is for kids to come out as trans or to know somebody who's trans, to distinguish between like trans and non-binary, how sex and gender are different things. And it's just a complicated bit of information that not everyone has either the patience or willingness to delve into. They just want to say it's bad and litigate against it.

Jessica (11:41):

Right. And one thing I feel like we should clear up is my board is actually pretty liberal. The board itself ranges from very progressive to liberal to like, you know, center right conservative, I would say. And I feel like everybody on the board is committed to our district mission and vision, which includes inclusion, it includes diversity. You know, I've only been here 20 years, so I'm still figuring out how this place works. But I mean, if you're here and you're part of a particular family, like that's a family everybody knows.

Magda (12:14):

Yeah, exactly. So I don't think that the marginal utility of using your last name or your district is there at all. I mean, I think just hearing, like, you're a real person, because to me, I think the essence of this is that a lot of parents see people who are on the school board, even people who are having to fight with a lot of external and sometimes internal forces to keep kids safe and accepted in classrooms. I think a lot of just sort of regular parents see that as something that school board members are taking on because they like it, almost, that there's a fight because you like it. And I feel like it's important for typical? normal? parents to know what it's like on the inside of a school board.

Doug (13:05):

Because we need more fights in our lives for sure. 

Jessica (13:08):

Sure. <Laugh>.

Magda (13:08):

Well, we need more people who are caring and thoughtful to be on school boards.

Jessica (13:13):

No, for sure. It's, it's super important. And until the 2024 election is over, and that's the earliest at which it's going to calm down.

Magda (13:21):

I think this extinction burst is going to last longer than 2024. I think we still, I think we’ve got another five years at least. 

Speaker 4 (13:28):

Yeah, I think so, too. Like that, to me, is at the very least. 

Doug (13:33):

Well, I guess the bottom line is the purpose of this podcast is to provide information, and that's more important than your name. And so if you feel more inclined to share information, if your name is withheld, then that's the more important thing to keep the eyes on the goal. 

Jessica, it's so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for talking about this very sensitive subject, especially given your own body of knowledge about what trans kids go through and what it is like to butt up against people who disagree with you. Thanks and welcome.

Jessica (14:03):

Thanks. Thanks for inviting me. I'm glad to be here.

Magda (14:06):

All right. So let's--

Doug (14:07):

Alright, <crosstalk between Doug and Magda> go ahead. Yeah, we're, we're working on our interviewers. You know, we're trying to work on the alternate asking schedule, but who knows.

Magda (14:14):

We need like, some sort of talking stick <laugh>

Doug (14:17):

If Zoom offered that, we'd be in great shape.

Magda (14:21):

So I guess tell us who you are and what you do and what's the big conflict point in your situation.

Jessica (14:29):

Sure. my name's Jessica. I live in a small Midwestern city. I am a writer by trade and I am currently a trustee on our district school board.

Magda (14:43):

That's a little bit of intensity.

Jessica (14:47):

<Laugh>. Yeah. I mean, when I ran for school board it was in the 2020 election and covid was the big sticking point at the time. People were upset about school closures, there were arguments over masks. And I knew that I was getting into that. And that's in fact part of the reason I got more invested and more interested in what was going on. But I was there for not very long when CRT came along. So then we had that, that whole fight <laugh>. And that is still ongoing.

Doug (15:22):

You mean, the thing that's not being taught in schools that everyone thinks is being taught in schools? 

Jessica (15:25):

Yeah. The thing that's not being taught in schools in any sort of comprehensive fashion or ever called CRT, Critical Race Theory, in schools. As Christopher Rufo has masterfully managed: “Critical Race Theory means anything about race that makes anybody mad.” It's just a miasma of discomfort and anger and fear.

Doug (15:49):

That's a good name for the podcast. <Laugh>

Magda (15:51):

Miasma of Discomfort and Fear <laugh>.

Doug (15:56):

I think that's becoming a theme already in our interviews because a phrase like that comes up and it's like, wow, that would've been the shortlist. <Laugh>.

Jessica (16:02):

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Magda (16:04):

So I think to clarify, do you feel like you're struggling with the other people inside the school board? Is it the kind of thing where the, what do we call them? The people who are against children, right? <Laugh> Antis. Right.

Jessica (16:16):

It's weird.

Magda (16:17):

Have they infiltrated the school board? Right? Like are you having these duals with those people or are they just out in the community trying to attack the work of the school board?

Jessica (16:27):

When I joined the school board, there was one member of the board who was an anti-vaxxer and I don't know what else to say about that. But she also was the person who brought up CRT for the first time. And I’ve got to tell you, I was wearing a Fitbit during that particular board meeting, and you could, you could see where she mentioned CRT because my heart rate went sky high. <Laugh>

Doug (16:57):

That's what Fitbits measure, they measure when you're having a fit.

Jessica (17:01):

<Laugh> That's right. So shame on me for not seeing that coming. So, that's one board member out of seven of us. In this last election, we traded that board member for another conservative board member. This person has so far been a lot easier to work with. But the board itself, I would say everybody on the board, even the people that I don't always agree with are very committed to the district's mission and vision. That includes inclusivity, it includes diversity. We're working towards equity. I really believe that everyone is operating in good faith. So that makes it a lot easier to do.

Magda (17:41):

We were just, almost as a culture, sort of lulled into believing that people were acting in good faith. Because until about, I don't know, 10 years ago, maybe the majority of us were, I think, or we didn't know about the ones who weren't; they weren't so obvious about it. And I think the fact that you now can say “everybody's acting in good faith” is kind of like the lowest bar, but at this point it's not the lowest bar anymore.

Jessica (18:09):

Yeah.

Doug (18:09):

Is there such a thing as good faith at the political level? I mean, I think there's so much pandering going on now. Has there been a tipping point in terms of “Is there any good faith anymore?” And this is a broader theme that we're probably going to talk about a lot over the next few months. But in general, is there a, have you perceived a level where there is no good faith anymore? It's more along the lines of serving whoever your master is?

Jessica (18:35):

I have a two-part answer to that question. In terms of my individual board, school board members are barely politicians. I mean, I don't know anybody on the board who is looking at higher office. I don't know anybody on the board who is in it for prestige, such as it is, you know, in my district we don't get paid. I really do believe that everybody on the board has a heart for kids and is super-invested in the common good that is public education. We don't always agree what that means. You know, we don't have masters. I mean, I ran my campaign, I think I raised like $3,000. I was not getting George Soros money, you know. 

Doug (19:18):

<Laugh> Well, that's an important point to say that any kind of negotiation has to have some level of common ground, at least in terms of an appreciation for what schools should achieve. Those thoughts are diverging a bit, wouldn't you say?

Speaker 4 (19:31):

Yes. And my, the second part of my answer is that what I think I see happening with, say, a group like Moms for Liberty, we know that that's not true grassroots, that's totally AstroTurf. And I believe that there are people at the top of the organization who are more cynical than anything else. I think that they are using the people on the ground as a means to an end. But at the ground level, I really do think that people are committed and invested even though what they want for students, for kids, for our, you know, community is diametrically opposed to what I want. I think that they really believe that they're doing the right thing.

Doug (20:17):

And that's also an important distinction to acknowledge and offer as a way of saying there is some middle ground to be found. At least you have to believe that.

Jessica (20:27):

I have to believe that on some level, and I have to find compassion in order to be able to do this job. Like, I went through a really dark period. Our board meetings are on Monday nights, I would wake up Sunday and be immobilized. All day Monday, I'd be useless. I mean, I was just, knowing that I had to go to that meeting just messed me up. And I took things really personally, and it was hard. And I finally just had to get to a place where I could find compassion instead of enervating anger. But I can't quite credit the other side for having compassion for me, I guess.

Doug (21:05):

Well, and I think that's most of this discussion is going to come from just your viewpoint of what your experience has been and what your feelings are. And if we take it back to what you're actually, where your compassion lies, it's for trans kids and how they are educated and how they are cared for. So let's take it back a bit. I think a lot of people who have had the similar experience of talking to a child for the first time in this way would like to know how they reacted and what resources they consulted and how you educated yourself in order to best care for your child after this came out.

Jessica (21:40):

I am delighted to talk about trans kids, but I just want to be clear that I am serving every student in the district and I'm fighting for every student in the district. Not just the trans kids, not just the gender nonconforming kids, not just the queer kids. I mean, we have a really diverse district. We were when I ran and might still be the poorest county. We also have, I think, the highest percentage of indigenous learners in any single district. So there's a lot going on here. We do a lot of--

Doug (22:13):

And people say that people on the board are not politicians!

Speaker 4 (22:16):

<Laugh>. Right. But I just, feel like that's really important because we--

Doug (22:20):

I agree. No, I really appreciate you saying that, but the way you said it portrays a level of professionalism and communications that could take you farther than where you are right now. Just for what it's worth, you’re an obvious leader. 

Speaker 4 (22:32):

Thank you. Thank you. I mean, we do a lot of trauma-informed work in our district and we started doing that before covid, which there's no silver lining to covid, but I'm so grateful that we were doing that work before that, you know, mass trauma event hit. So anyway, we've, we've got a lot going on in the district, but I will say that because everybody in this small city knows that I have a trans kid, I am “the trans lady on the school board,” 

Doug (23:02):

Nice <laugh>. Speaking of reductive reasoning, you know. “Oh yeah, you're the trans lady.”

Speaker 4 (23:06):

Yeah, “she's the lady who cares about trans kids,” or--

Doug (23:08):

That's all she stands for. 

Speaker 4 (23:11):

Or, you know, depending on where you stand, “She's the lady who wants all our kids to be trans,” you know, so, I'm promoting transness by supporting trans kids.

Doug (23:22):

Are you a groomer? <Laugh>. Congratulations. 

Jessica (23:27):

Oh, God, please don't even say that! 

Doug

Wow. That's a hell of a status.

Jessica

I have not yet had---

Doug (23:29):

You get better parking in town because of that, or?

Jessica (23:31):

I have not yet had the word “groomer” applied to me, solely, direct, but that word has come up more than once. That's giving me a little PTSD here. Anyway,

Doug (23:44):

I'm sorry about that. I can cut all that out if you'd like. 

Jessica (23:46):

No, it's okay. <Laugh>. Okay. When my kid was 12, he came out as non-binary. My husband and I were both, our response was, “Okay, we'll figure out what this means for you.” And he chose a new name for himself at that point, and he was in a Catholic school, and we were getting ready to transition to junior high. We went to the principal and said, you know, “They're non-binary. They want to use they/them pronouns.” And at first the principal was like, “Okay, that's good to know.” And then we learned right before the school year ended that the archbishop decided that teachers were not allowed to use his pronouns or his new name. Yeah. And you know, we were all prepared to be pretty flexible. If there were teachers who felt like they couldn't do it, you know, we were going to give it a shot anyway. But the archbishop said, even teachers and staff who wanted to honor his new pronouns and new name, they weren't allowed to. So at the very end of the year, we had to get him into the public middle school.

Doug (24:57):

Yeah. Pull him out of the Catholic school.

Speaker 4 (24:59):

Real fast, <laugh> real fast. So they were awesome. We had a couple of meetings before he went to school, one with him, one without him, just to talk about what he would need, where he was, and they were ready to be super-accommodating. So from the start, you know, my husband and I have just followed his lead essentially. When he came out as trans-masculine, we started looking for a gender-affirming care team, which we found in Akron, Ohio. I guess that started when he was about 13. There were puberty blockers. He started taking birth control so that he would not menstruate anymore. He was almost 16 when he started taking testosterone. And he has been on testosterone for more than a year. We are looking for surgeons for top surgery, which probably nobody will do until he's 18. But we're trying to figure out where to go, who to see who's going to take our insurance, who won't take our insurance. And we're, we're working on that sort of thing.

Doug (26:06):

So, and how do you feel about the debate over puberty blockers when a kid is 13, 14 years old? I mean, it's, again, it's just a personal opinion. It's raging as you know, and people are litigating as fast as they can to prevent them. But clearly this is a part of your life. So how's it worked out so far, and what have you learned from the experience of your trans-masculine child taking them?

Jessica (26:27):

Well the thing about puberty blockers is everything they do is almost totally reversible. Like, you stop taking 'em and you go through the puberty of the sex you were assigned at birth. There are some health risks involved, but there are health risks involved in everything. <Laugh>, you know, like there--

Magda (26:45):

There are health risks involved in going through puberty.

Jessica (26:48):

Exactly. It's like, it's the same thing in the abortion debate. Like, medical abortion is safer than Tylenol and it's orders of magnitude safer than childbirth, you know, <laugh>, so, I feel like denying children this sort of care is inhumane. I feel like treating parents who provide their children this care as criminals is psychotic. And I don't even believe that psychotic is a category that actually exists, but that's the word I'm going to use here. <Laugh>. 

What I think is that, well, what I know essentially is that conservatives have landed upon trans kids as something that even liberal people worry about because they're kids. You know, “what about the children” is always low hanging fruit. And I don't say that like I don't care about kids, but, you know, it's easy to get people questioning, even if they are rational bighearted liberal people. I know that the debate about trans women in sports, like, I have had to walk many friends through that, you know, by the hand, people who are otherwise just totally liberal, totally progressive, totally on board. Like, that's something that gives them pause. And that's all conservatives need is that moment of pause. And that is where they create a little bit of doubt, gives them just a wedge.

Doug (28:20):

It's a distraction, it's a political distraction. Culture war, distraction. And especially since they tend to inflate the percent of kids who are even part of this community, it's about 5% or so. Is that an accurate stat?

Jessica (28:33):

I mean, I think so. It's a vanishingly small number and like, what we have seen also is there are a handful of folks who have detransitioned who have become activists or who have become, I don't want to take away their agency, but they've kind of become props for people like Ron DeSantis and it's this tiny little group of people who get trotted out over and over again that makes it seem as if it's an explosion of detransitioning, but it's actually just the same five people over and over and over again. <Laugh>. So. 

Doug (29:09):

How soon after your child came out, did the puberty blockers enter their life? Or was there any discussion about, “Let's just maybe live as a man for a while first and have a real look at your overall commitment if it's, if this is something that's truly you or just something that might come and go”?

Jessica (29:28):

The gender-affirming care team, you know, they really took things kind of slowly. Like they wanted to make sure he was pretty committed to this. And the fact that he had come out as non-binary and lived that way for a while, I think helped them see that, you know, this is something that he definitely wanted to do. And I realized pretty early on that even if he decided, “you know what, I am non-binary, I was right the first time” or whatever--it's hard to get the language right. It did not sound offensive, but--

Doug (30:02):

We're all struggling with that, I think a lot of people in our generation are just trying to get pronouns right. And trying to subvert decades of muscle memory in terms of referring to someone as some gender and then realizing that this has changed. So full slack shall be cut for you because that happens all the time.

Jessica (30:21):

So I realized that even if he decided that, even if he landed at non-binary, eventually, his body dysmorphia was not going to change. Like, top surgery was always going to be in his future, I felt like. So getting him testosterone, as soon as everybody felt comfortable to get him testosterone made a lot of sense. So I don't remember exactly how long it was, but you know, it was a matter of months and it's something we did with a whole care team. And when we had to get letters from his therapist confirming that he needed this kind of care.

Doug (30:56):

And the timeline was first non-binary, and then trans. And that was a whole new set of discovery for you, because it's an entirely different level of knowledge to achieve. Yes?

Jessica (31:08):

Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean, to me it was, you know, it's all part of a spectrum, but also one of my best friends is trans. And I knew him before he transitioned, but I always knew that transitioning was in his future. He transitioned in 1994 or ‘5, like basically as soon as he had health insurance that would cover it. And, you know, I went along for the ride in terms of learning about what it means to be trans, with him. So I entered this experience with a quite a bit of knowledge already. I mean, obviously it's different when I'm making decisions for my child, you know, I was more concerned about things like bone density than I was when my friend transitioned, but yeah. Right. But I was probably more knowledgeable than the average person when my kid came out as trans. 

Magda (32:09):

One of the things that I want to say about conservatives using trans kids as this big punching bag now is I think that it's interesting to watch who's been the worst case scenario all along, right? Because for such a long time it was like, “Oh, you don't want your kid to be gay.” Right? But then everybody knew people who were gay, who were just regular people and they couldn't use that anymore except for a really, really narrow segment of the population who thought that there was something wrong with that. And I think that as time passes, they're going to lose naturally because more people will know trans people. I mean, they won't be trans kids anymore. The kids that are trans kids now in 10 years are going to be trans adults. And when everybody knows somebody who's trans and just knows that they're a regular person and that they're not something that you would be afraid of. As somebody who has kids who are not trans, they're not what I expected them to be either! 

Jessica (33:10):

<Laugh> Whose kids are what they expect??

Magda (33:12)

Right. And I think some of us have the experience of having that expectation be busted very, very early on. And some people get a longer time before that expectation is busted. And some people don't parent so that their kids can ever tell them who they really are, so they don't ever even know who their kids are. 

I remember when my older one was five, he went through this big phase of being obsessed with baseball statistics and I remember thinking, “Oh, this is someplace that I know nothing about and that I have no desire to go with him.” This is like, “I have no interest in this and will never have any interest in this. And if this is his jam, then I will have to support him, but I'm not going to be there with him.”

Jessica (33:59):

You've just spoken for a whole generation of parents who have gone through the Pokemon years <laugh>, right? 

Magda (34:06):

Yes, yes, yes! Because when my kid, my other kid, my second kid got to the Pokemon years, I was not as bewildered by that <laugh>. I was just like, “Oh, okay.” Right.

Jessica (34:17):

Yeah. Right. So you've just made me think of so many things. I mean, one thing is that my kid is also autistic. Not what I expected. And he did not get that diagnosis until quite recently. And you know, I'm pretty sure that had he been assigned male at birth, he would've been diagnosed much sooner, because it manifests differently in girls and because girls are just underdiagnosed at a catastrophic rate. So, parenting has been not what I expected at all on a variety of fronts, but you roll with it or you don't, I don't know what to say about that.

Doug (34:54):

What have you read about the overlap between children who are diagnosed autistic and also have gender dysphoria?

Jessica (35:02):

You know, it's interesting because my friend who I spoke about earlier, he is a psychoanalyst and we have talked a lot about neuro-divergence and trans manifesting in the same populations. Like there's a huge overlap and early on it just seemed anecdotal. Now it's well-documented and I don't think anybody has a great answer about why yet. I mean, my personal take is if you are a person for whom social categories and “normal” in quotation mark socialization already don't make sense, gender is going to mean something very different to you than it means to neurotypical people.

Magda (35:42):

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to assume you've read the book about supporting trans autistic teens. <Supporting Transgender Autistic Youth and Adults by Finn V. Gratton> Do you know that one? It’s the only one that exists, I think.

Jessica (35:49):

I sure haven't. My husband probably has.

Magda (35:51):

Yeah. The author of it is a therapist who themself is a trans autistic adult. And they talk about how when they first started talking about the huge, huge, huge overlap of trans and autism, they got a lot of disbelief. And I was reading it thinking, “just observationally...” But I guess my whole jam is like observing patterns and I kind of observe them without even attempting to. And so when I saw the statistics about the overlap, I was like, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” 

Jessica (36:26):

I can understand people being a little skittish about talking about that because trans people are already being pathologized, so you don't want it to look like it's some sort of horrible comorbidity. Right? And you don't want it to look like, “well, these kids already don't know what's best for them,” which is not something I believe about autistic people at all. But you don't want it to look like these are special needs children who are not capable of making decisions for themselves. So, I mean, I get it, but yeah, there's tremendous overlap and that's just a fact.

Doug (36:58):

And when you think about the overlap between autism and gender dysphoria and neuro-divergence, and when people talk about how autistic kids are cared for and how gender-affirming care is evolving, do you think those two elements are converging in much the same way that the particular conditions are? 

Jessica (37:18):

You know, that's a good question. I feel like the doctors who care for my kid are better able to answer that than I am. Yeah. I don't know.

Doug (37:27):

Okay. I'm just curious if you read anything. 

Jessica (37:29):

No, it's a good question. It's just not one that I have researched.

Magda (37:32):

Can we get back to talking about the experience of being on the school board?

Jessica (37:36):

Absolutely! Yeah.

Doug (37:37):

I think we've had a great groundwork for that. Yeah. The whole idea of, ‘cause you know, your job now is to communicate what you know and try to grease the wheels a little bit. Do you feel as though that the people that you're butting heads with don't have access to this information? Or just don't want to know it?

Jessica (37:52):

Oh, they don't want to know it. Some of the people that I have engaged with the most are pretty explicit about the fact that queerness in any shape is something they just would prefer not to know about. You know, one person has said, “I have friends who are gay. It's not that I hate gay people, I love gay people, but I don't let my friends who are gay let my kids know that they're gay.”

Magda (38:16):

I would argue that those people are not their actual friends.

Jessica (38:18):

Yes. That is what I said--

Doug (38:20):

“With friends like that” <laugh>

Jessica (38:21):

That is what I said in my head, <laugh> 

Jessica (38:23):

Oh, those people are not your friends. Or at the very least, you are not a friend to them. That's not how friending works. But yeah, it's very much “We don't want to know about it. That's private business that I don't want to know about. I don't want my kids knowing about it and I don't want anybody talking about it in school.”

Doug (38:42):

This was the same retort they had against Pride parades 20 years ago.

Jessica (38:46):

Yeah, I mean, if you look at the moral panic around homosexuality, it tracks beat by beat with this particular moral panic. Magda was talking about patterns. I mean, there's no Anita Bryant here, but it's the same thing.

Doug (39:01):

Well, if we've diagnosed patterns, and again, me as a recovering math teacher, <laugh>, my first thought is “if we have a pattern to fall back on, do you think that the path of trans kids can follow that same path and maybe play upon the people like Caitlin Jenner or high profile people who discuss this in a way that that could eventually lead to greater acceptance of trans kids as well? Or trans, anybody for that matter?”

Jessica (39:31):

Well, I think Magda is right when she points out that the kids who are trans kids now are going to be trans adults in the not-too-distant future.

Doug (39:39):

Magda is right about a lot of stuff. So I'm not surprised to hear you say that.

Jessica (39:41):

That's a fact. People in the seventies or eighties thought they didn't know gay people. Right? “Gay people are this weird outgroup.” And then they begin to learn that, “Oh yeah, I actually do know a lot of gay people.” And you know, my grandmother learned that when my cousin came out as gay, she finally learned that no, not all gay men are pedophiles. 

Magda (40:07):

Oh. Wow.

Jessica (40:08):

Right?

Magda (40:08):

Hurtful. It had to be hurtful for her to go through that.

Jessica (40:12):

Right. But I mean, that was not an exceptional view in her age cohort.

Doug (40:19):

And that's why the Boy Scouts are no longer relevant because that's a narrative they were selling. And I will be bitter about that to my dying day ‘cause I loved being a Boy Scout, and my kids couldn't take part in it because of all the unnecessary bigotry that the BSA showed before it finally came around, and in my view, way too late. ‘Cause now, you know, people don't even think about them much anymore.

Jessica (40:41):

Yeah. And I mean, this is getting maybe a little far afield, but I have to say it, I mean this is how moral panics work, right? Like, when we are saying that the most dangerous person to your child is a stranger or is a stranger who is gay or is  a trans person, we are deflecting. We are allowing ourselves not to know that the most dangerous person to your child is you. You know, it's somebody who is close to them, somebody who is trusted. And we do not want to look at that. So we end up with things like Qanon.

Magda (41:17):

Do you remember, because you're almost the same age I am, and I don't know if you grew up in the church. I grew up in the church, I grew up in what now is ELCA Lutheran church. And so we were pretty level-headed, like women could be pastors before I was born and all this kind of stuff. So there wasn't a whole lot of—you know, we never talked about hell, I never got any kind of punishment thought. It was just like, “Jesus is your friend, he's always with you.” Right. That was the message that we got. And then I went into whatever it was, seventh grade, eighth grade, and whoever was the volunteer teacher had been taken with the satanic panic fever. And so we were listening to records backwards in Sunday school class on Sunday mornings.

Jessica (42:03):

Wow!

Magda:

Like, in hindsight, I am a hundred percent convinced that my mother did not know this was happening. ‘Cause if my mother had known, my mother would've been like, “What are you talking about??” Right. But I remember being in this class with these other kids, some of whom I'm still friends with now, and she's being like--Why are we doing this? Because I think like the fact that KISS, who is supposed to be  the ultimate in, I mean Paul Stanley! How is Paul Stanley Satanic? And yet it was this big satanic panic. How did it happen? I don't know.

Doug (42:35):

We just fall for stuff. I think people in our age cohort are kind of looking back on that in terms of how we were allowed to get whipped up and into something that meant nothing. Just because of the skill of the people manipulating the media and creating problems, whether or not to distract from the fact that all the wealth in the world is gravitating toward 10 people.

Magda (42:58):

Yeah.

Doug (42:59):

Have you been following the story of Zooey Zephyr in Montana? ‘Cause you talk about how trans kids become trans adults, and now there's a transgender representative in Wisconsin, and Zoe in Montana and she's been censured.

Jessica (43:13):

Well, this is my big caveat to the idea that, you know, we're just going to outgrow this the way we outgrew homophobia,

Doug (43:22):

Which we still kind of haven't, like we haven’t outgrown racism. 

Jessica (43:24):

No, no, for sure.

Doug (43:25):

Nor have we outgrown a lot of stuff that I would like to die sooner than it will.

Jessica (43:31):

Right. We have at least gotten to the place where, you know, there are gay people in Campbell’s soup commercials. Right. So we're that's about where we are. We're still freaking out about Bud Light. But my concern is about the anti-democratic trends that we see. So here we have somebody who has been elected, like, she was elected by people. She represents people <laugh> who voted for her and she is being rendered ineffective by a Republican majority.

Magda (44:02):

I don't know how that's allowed. How is that even logistically possible? Right. I think--

Doug (44:08):

Well it's a majority that decides what comes up for a vote and decides who gets censured.

Magda (44:13):

Well, to me, the big lesson of the Trump administration is that our entire country has been operating on a gentleman's agreement the entire time. 

Jessica:

For sure!

Magda:

We had no safeguards, like, nothing in place to stop this from happening.

Jessica (44:30):

To your point, Magda, absolutely, the Trump years were a stress test and we learned just how much norms matter. And the answer is “they don't.” If somebody like Trump is in power, they don't.

Doug (44:43):

And I think I'm going to spend a lot of time in this podcast accounting for the white cishet patriarchy and apologizing for it.

Magda (44:50):

<Laugh>. It's not your fault. I mean, you're a Gen X just like we are.

Doug (44:54):

It's not, but I appreciate that role because I want to be here to say “I acknowledge this and patriarchy doesn't serve anybody.” Recognizing that a lot of people who look like me are inflicting a lot of damage on the world. And because they're scared, because they're willfully ignorant and or they're also just conniving to make sure that the people who will always vote for them will respond to dumbshit stuff like this.

Magda (45:18):

Well, okay, I would like to say that I think that people who look like you but are 15 or 20 years older than you are, are doing this willfully. I think there's something about being Gen X that we were very powerless and we were taught to be powerless. And I think another legacy of the Trump administration is that we figured out that we have to deliberately step out in front if we're going to, because otherwise it's just going to skip down to the Millennials who are going to sort of pick up the slack where they pick it up. Right. And I think there's a big deal that you are realizing this and you're sort of taking the lead and talking about it because that's not something people older than you did, even if they had these same realizations.

Doug (46:10):

Now with all of these political templates that are out there in terms of trans advocates who are being censored and expelled or who are not enjoying the best welcome they might in the legislative body. What's your strategy going forward in dealing with people who seem to have just a diametrically opposite idea of what schooling should be and what gender affirming care should be?

Jessica (46:29):

Mostly I have decided to, and I think the whole board has decided to, just keep doing what we're doing and to not be reactive. If there's one thing that I truly regret that has happened on the board, the chair of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty put together a resolution that she presented to the board that talked about gender identity. It talked it about sexual identity and how we should not talk about these things in the classroom, not expose kids to concepts like, well, not expose kids to the fact that people exist, basically. And the board decided that we would take a look at this and we would talk about it and we would--and I want to point out that we cannot talk about anything policy related if there's a quorum. If there are more than four of us together, that has to be a public meeting.

Jessica (47:26):

So anything we want to talk about as a group in terms of policy has to be in public. So, we decided to take this up, look at it at a board meeting, and a student spoke up at that meeting. She is a real student leader and one of the things she said is that, “It makes me afraid that you are even talking about this. It makes me afraid that you are taking this seriously at all. “

And I, my heart dropped, you know. That was a really rough moment. So I think we realized at that point that we had made a big mistake. It's a hard balance to find because we are, you know, representatives, right? And we need to respond to people in our community. But going beyond “listening to people at public comment” to take this up and vote on it, I think was the wrong move.

Jessica (48:17):

And we thought that maybe it would be, you know, “we'll get this out of the way” and that of course we were never going to get it out of the way even though we voted it down. The issue is still there, the argument is still there and we just, we let down a lot of kids. So I think that I just have to keep doing what I'm doing and we all just need to keep focusing on what our mission is, what our vision is, and, you know, do the work that we feel called to do. And one of the ways that I am able to do this, when we talked about compassion a little bit earlier is I finally realized that so much of what I'm seeing is trauma response. I feel like there are a lot of people who are really hurt and really damaged, have a lot of fear, have a lot of anger, and that they do not want to look at. And a lot of us don't want to look at our deepest wounds. So we project and thinking about it that way has just made it a lot easier for me to do the job from a good place.

Doug (49:23):

I mean, in the ideal world, I'd love people to listen to you and be inspired to run for office themselves, to run for a school board to affect change on an official level as opposed to just sitting behind, you know, since social media has been so compromised lately and tweeting never solved anything, anyway. The next step is to be involved and give of yourself and serve the public in public service. So if there's someone out there who's on the fence about joining that fight in a much more specific way, what advice would you have for them?

Jessica (49:53):

I mean, the first thing that I'm going to say, and I'm going to talk about banned books for just a sec ‘cause it's a little easier to talk about here. Like, whenever there's a new crazy story--out of Florida, perhaps--about book banning, a common response is “I'm going to go out and buy banned books.” 

You should do that. But that does not help students <laugh> even. That does not help the students who don't have access to books anywhere besides school. And you can read banned books and that's great, but what you really need to do is make sure books don't get banned. And how you do that is:  The first thing you do, start going to school board meetings, find out what's happening in your community. And I can tell you that the people who are angry about what's going on in our schools, or what they think is going on in our schools, are most likely to show up. Right. And so they sound like a huge majority when in fact, I know that in my community they are not.

Doug (50:51):

They’re just yelling the loudest. Yeah.

Jessica (50:52):

Exactly. They're the loudest people in the room. And we don't have to be loud, but we have to be present and, we have to share our piece. Public comment or public opinion does not always determine what my school board is going to do. But we care, you know, we listen, we're interested, and you know, we understand that we are representatives. We are representing the people in front of us. So the first step is to just show up, be there, and to support the school board members who are doing the work that you want to see done. In terms of running for office, I mean 2020 in terms of school board race in my community was so different from any other school board race that we'd ever seen. There was real competition, there was real contention. People were engaged, people were interested. You know, in the past people could run unopposed because nobody cared.

Jessica (51:47):

Nobody was paying attention to this. And now people are paying attention. So I think it's going to get just a little bit harder and harder. But still in local elections, unless you live in Chicago or unless you live in New York, they're easy. You know, they're easy to run. You can almost certainly get help from, you know, in my case, the Democratic Party. And in terms of making a difference, it is easier to do that at the local level than anywhere else. The people we vote for, for county commission and for mayor or for whatever, those people make a material difference in our lives in a way that the president doesn’t. So just pay attention to what's going on in your schools, pay attention to what's going on the school board and if you want to run, know that one person can make a really tremendous impact.

Doug (52:34):

These are the conversations I'm hoping Magda and I can have with people who are just fighting a good fight in the trenches and recognize that this is a sort of thing that doesn't get as much attention as it definitely should. So I'm really grateful for you coming on today to talk about this in a very frank way, in an emotional way. And the fact that you've chosen this route to advocate in such an official way, I hope more people can be inspired to do that. Because what I'm getting throughout your entire talks, you've been very frank about the roadblocks. You've been very frank about the frustrations, but you're still doing it. And I think that's a really important message to get out there. To say like, “Success is not linear. You're going to take a few in the teeth, but if you're fighting the good fight and doing what you think is right, that's ultimately the best reward.” So I really appreciate you coming on and expressing that in the first person.

Jessica (53:23):

Thanks, man. Thank you for having me.

Doug (53:28):

Jessica, thanks so much for being on the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye and Doug French. Thank you all for listening. We are off next week for Memorial Day, but we will see you again with Episode Four on June 7th. Have a great Memorial Day weekend. We'll see you in a couple weeks. Bye-Bye.