On the Value of Community, an Interview with Casey Plett
Veronica Esposito interviews Casey Plett on the meaning of community and its value in hard times.
by Veronica Esposito
In the days leading up to the inauguration of Donald Trump, trans activist Chase Strangio shared the following words on his Instagram page:
“We have a profound and powerful ability to care for each other. . . . The media keeps suggesting the resistance is dead, but that is because they don’t realize we are everywhere.”
It was a clarion call for trans people to care for each other in an age when the law and our institutions are actively failing us.
As much as Strangio’s call to community resonates, the fact is that the idea of community has been, and continues to be, a thorny subject for most trans people. Unprecedented levels of visibility and recognition for us have surfaced questions about who we are and what our priorities should be. Such questions have become points of division and have done much to turn us against one another at a time when we most need to come together.
Originally released in 2023, trans author Casey Plett’s book-length essay On Community is taking on new salience amid the threats posed to the trans community by the Trump Administration. The lauded book is a thorough and illuminating examination of the slippery notion of community, and it offers a detailed analysis of some of the problematic and challenging aspects of fostering community among trans people in particular. I spoke with Plett recently for an in-depth conversation on these questions, as well as how to care for ourselves and each other in what will be a difficult period for trans people.
Assigned Media: Something that I've been hearing a lot, and saying a lot since the inauguration, is that when our government fails us, when the institutions that are very powerful in our society turn out to be morally bankrupt, what we have as trans people is our community. Back before there were laws or organizations that cared about us, we took care of each other. I feel like that's gonna be something that is more and more important going forward.
A fair response to that I've been hearing is that for a lot of folks the idea of a trans community is a fraught concept, which of course you explore a lot in the book. So this is where I’d like to start the conversation, with this question of what community means right now.
Casey Plett: One thing that's really important to understand is you don't have to like everybody in your community to also be in community with them. You don't have to be friends, you don't have to be hangout buddies. You don't have to like other community members in order to be good to each other in community. I think it's a really important thing to understand. You don't have to like each other to take care of each other, right?
AM: Having room for disagreement, I think, is a big thing. This exists in a lot of different communities, but I do think it hits in a certain way for us. In particular, there’s this stratification based on where you are in your journey—something I hear a lot from people is like, you kind of graduate out from the trans community. Like when you begin a medical transition, you’re generally in a lot of support spaces and queer spaces, and there's this idea that people tend to move on and stop accessing things like support groups. Like, “oh, those are for newbies.” I tend to encounter this sense of “this disagreement is too big, like these just don't speak my language anymore. What kind of support or what kind of meaningful engagement can I have with folks?”
CP: When you talk about that, I sort of can't help but think about stealth discourse. It used to be that if you're getting access to services or even just like a big part of the trans culture. There was this idea that you had to pass as stealth, that's the goal, right? The idea that if you’re explicitly trans and are around other people, that’s like a way station that you go through as you blend into normal life, and we are actively discouraged from doing anything else. I think a lot of trans culture with a capital T, Capital C has been pushing against that, like “no, we should be proud of ourselves. We shouldn't have to hide ourselves, and we should be talking with each other.”
And I do think we should have a lot of sympathy for, like, the idea that, yeah, I don't really want this to be a big part of my life anymore. I can understand having sympathy for that. But there are also a couple other things. And, one is that I think even before the backlash I would have said, don't forget where you came from. You were also a young person once.
Especially in the current time, I feel like it'll be fairly necessary for all trans people to be connected with each other to some degree. And again, I don't mean to harp on this but we don't have to all like each other. Being in community with each other doesn't necessarily mean holding potlucks, but I think it does mean having bonds with each other. Like, shit's going down and I need something, or I can give something that somebody else needs—that we can have this kind of exchange. You can have those things without necessarily that being where you get your relaxing, good times.
AM: These are really interesting tensions that are occurring within the trans community that are a measure of our success as a group. That we get to have these conversations now about, like, assimilating versus being very clear about who you are. You could imagine like 20 years ago, that just wasn't really a conversation. You were more or less forced to look as much like your cis counterparts as possible.
CP: And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be stealth and to be mostly surrounded by cis people, all of our lives are different. It's weird. You know, that's not my life, but I can see a world in which maybe if things had been different, that might have been.
But again, I don't think even that kind of life needs to preclude you from being there for the rest of your community and also letting yourself be open to when they can help you. If I can make an analogy, I can think of a couple of jobs I've had where I was tight with lots of my co-workers. We didn't necessarily hang out with each other and we didn't even necessarily like each other. But when something related to work happened, where we had to help each other out, we actually would. And I think that's the kind of communal bond that I want to articulate more.
AM: One really important factor here is that your ability to make choices with regard to any given position on the spectrum of assimilation to standing out, any given trans person's ability to do that, it's not evenly distributed. There's just a lot that we have more or less control over that really impacts us. Like, the age that you get to transition, what your genetic makeup is, how your body takes the transition, access to things like surgeries. It’s really uneven, the amount to which people can even make a choice to go stealth. And that obviously plays a lot into these divides. I think that it goes really deeply into the core of people. People really hurt if they couldn't transition at a younger age or if they went through the process and still don't feel good about the way their body looks. It’s really personal, and there’s this really deep pain and grief that people have to reconcile with. But then that doesn't get projected out, what gets projected out are these kinds of toxic debates about like, you're a pick me or you're making us look bad.
CP: I do sometimes wish we were able to talk more about our different experiences within our communities in ways that didn't let us blame each other or resent each other too much. I think of resentment as an enormous manifestation of the trans experience, and especially resenting other trans people, and that kind of cuts every single way possible. And it's probably not going away, but I wish there was a way that we could talk about it amongst ourselves without resorting to blame or meanness or cruelty.
AM: That's probably something that needs to happen on some larger scale because clearly like we're all going through something together. And this political moment is pushing this economics of scarcity onto us, you know, like the whole crabs in a bucket metaphor. We're kind of being forced to have this conversation in this incredibly frightening environment. But clearly we need to go through this right now, and this is part of the growing pains of actually getting visibility and getting some measure of legal recognition and rights to exist in a society.
CP: I don't ever feel like I can make predictions of how the future is going to end up. If you'd answer that when I first transitioned in 2010, I would have probably given you lots of answers and most of them would have been wrong. But I don't think there's ever any downside to us being honest with each other, and also considerate with each other.
AM: Something that really stuck with me from this book is that you offer this really nice definition of community that you got from this other thinker, Michael Warner. That community is “an ongoing space of encounter.” As a therapist, I really like that, because that's what I offer to people, once a week for an hour at a time. I hold the space where they can have an encounter with another human being. There’s something about being into space with someone else and getting to have that encounter.
CP: Thank you for telling me that. Something I keep thinking about maybe is in terms of the ongoingness of it. I think it's really powerful when these spaces have a lot of longevity, although sometimes it doesn't work out that way. Sometimes people come together for a short period of time, and beautiful things can happen because of that space. But then it sort of runs its course and it has to go away. I try to ask, When is that appropriate? And when is it a shame?
AM: Those are really good points, because I think by its definition therapy is a time-limited space. For the most part people work with me for a certain time and they're like, “Yeah I feel like I'm ready.” But I think there is this sense, that if other spaces come to some natural end, then something has gone wrong.
I think it's really human for trans people to have opinions of how other trans people should live their lives. I think it’s something we have to be aware of: certain people are going to make you feel things, and it’s not wrong to feel those things. You just have to be aware of them and deal with them in healthy ways. Maybe if we just gave ourselves a little more space to just be human in that way that it'd actually be better.
In the book you talk about how you’re not cut out to be an activist, like “I've tried that and that's just not me, and what I do is I create stories that foster trans culture.” I thought that was really valid and needed. As someone who works with folks who are going through a lot of distress, I see how essential that culture is.
CP: I have heard the anxiety and worry about not doing enough for one's community—I have heard that quite frequently from people who are objectively doing pretty amazing things. And they tend to be on the more marginalized spectrum of things. So I think there's something about how we talk about this kind of stuff that isn't working.
In my own circles, I've heard a lot of like, well there's so many things that are activism, like self-care is activism. That framing doesn't work for me. I understand where it's coming from, but it does not work for me. This idea of everything being activism just doesn’t seem helpful.
Maybe a more helpful model is something like citizenry, questions like, How do you do your part of living in the world, but also making sure that you're able to survive and live in that world for your own peace of mind? I think of that with my publishing work, my cultural organizing work, and how I want to conduct myself as an artist.
AM: I feel like a lot of this self-judgment, or this judgment of others, comes from this really deep place of inner turmoil. And I want people to look inward at that stuff. It’s so natural to project that outward and be like, I'm not doing enough or you're not doing enough, and I think it's much more unnatural to just kind of sit there and look inward. And I think that does take us back to that space of encounter, like a therapy space or maybe a support group or a community space. How in particular have you been coping with fears that are coming up right now?
CP: I think it's really good to be very specific. It only helps us to be specific about our needs and our fears, for ourselves and those around us, because it can all kind of feel so overwhelming. I have a list of things for myself that are like, “Here are things that I am worried are going to happen to me.” I'm really specific about them, and I'm like, “Okay, how do I be on guard for what?” For if it might happen, how I'm gonna respond if it does. And a lot of these concrete answers are pretty crappy answers, right? Really, really shitty. But I think it's better to be really specific about what's weighing most heavily. It can unstick you from totalizing despair or anxiety, you know?
AM: I really like that idea of trying to have some specificity. Because I think one of the things that I've observed that is really scaring people right now is that so much just feels unknown, and there's this sense that everything's changing so rapidly and in ways that are so difficult to predict. Whenever you can have more of that concreteness, that just makes people feel better.
One of the ways I've been conceptualizing it for myself is just to be very accepting of the reality we’re in. Yes, I am a trans person who is living through this moment, and this is just the life that I've been given. Those facts may limit the kind of stuff that I'd like to do with my life, and that sucks, but ultimately I try to be accepting that this is the life that I've been given and I have to try to figure out how to exist within that framework.
To take an example, maybe there's gonna be a future where the government is going to force me to have an M on my passport, and I’m like “Okay so let's let's think about that. How bad would that be? How would it affect my life? Can I live with that? I don't want to live with that, I think that's stupid, but if I really had to, what can I see myself figuring out to survive through that?
CP: Yes, exactly. That's the kind of thing that I'm talking about. It sucks, it's so crappy, it's awful. And also, okay, it's here. So what does that mean?
AM: Since we are talking about coping, and since we're obviously both just trying to survive this moment right now, what have been ways that you have been deriving material support from community?
CP: There are some regular dinners and potlucks that I've been going to. They stir my old Mennonite heart, honestly, just to be, “Aha, I am here with a bag of buns.”
AM: I liked what you said about those potlucks, how they trace back into this Mennonite history that you have. I think community can stir up these really entrenched parts of us in helpful ways. One thing that I'm doing is cooking, and cooking for other people, because for me, cooking has always felt like this relaxing, life-giving practice. It probably goes really deep. I have this idea that, growing up in the environment that I did, which was just completely contrary to any kind of self-expression of who I actually was, one thing that I could do was cook, which felt like it was congruent with the gender that was in me even. So I think something of that good feeling is stuck within me now, so cooking just feels really good. And I think that's important, being in community in these ways that can touch on parts of us that feel very old, and that have been feeling right for a really long time.
One last thing to wrap up. In the book you quote Michael Hobbes, which I love because he's been such an amazing ally to the trans community. You quote this thing he wrote about how criticism from within the community can feel a lot worse than criticism from without. He was talking specifically about gay men. What you quote is, “being pushed away from your own people hurts more because you need them more.”
CP: I think I'm really fascinated by how some people can hurt you in ways that are pretty obvious, and can just kind of be water off a duck's back. But some people can hurt you in ways that aren't maybe even as objectively bad as the other people, and they will just live in your mind and kind of torment you. I'm very intrigued by the heterogeneity of those different things. And I think one thing that gets lost along the way there is, the people who you depend on more or you, that you want to have more faith in, or that you thought that you needed. And I think it applies pretty obviously to relationships for queer people.
AM: I think something that you're describing is this process of building trust with someone else. Because I think once you start to build trust with someone, that's where you're running the risk of really being hurt in that particular way. And it's kind of like, you have to do that. If you're going to have intimate encounters that are really life-giving and replenishing, trust is an essential ingredient. But then you are running that risk of really being hurt by someone. And I think I've seen a lot of trans people have a hard time navigating that. They're just very afraid to put that trust in anyone because they've been hurt so many times.
CP: Completely. When I was coming out, I had opportunities to talk to one or two older trans women, and I was so terrified about it that I just was not in a place where I could let myself do that. And there’s this question of, Can you need something without letting it hurt you? I'm kind of skeptical that you can.
AM: Yeah, yeah. And I think what you were speaking to about those encounters with those older trans women, there's something about just showing up. If you just keep participating in a space, bit by bit those barriers come down. You feel like you have more of a right to be there, you start to establish a little bit of a relationship, even though you don’t necessarily feel like you’ve really done anything, just kind of inhabiting a space for a while lets you build up some kind of a rapport. And it seems like, for people who might be in that place of having those fears or not knowing how to talk to someone, that's a way to kind of start to move towards something that does feel more like community for that person. I wonder, how did you eventually start getting more comfortable like having those conversations and like feeling less of that self-judgment around it?
CP: I was in a circle that one of my oldest friends from high school happened to be engaging herself with and then this other person was there, who was a trans woman who had just a couple years on me. But, who I found myself being able to talk to just because I was being in a space with her regularly. I think in retrospect I made a lot of emotional demands on her, there's always pent up stuff that you have to get out.
I go back to that whole idea of coworkers sharing a space. I think I'm really fascinated by so many work environments. You don't necessarily have to like each other to get along—you're in the same physical space for eight hours a day, so of course you'll be able to at least have conversations with each other. And you can be like, “Oh shit, I actually kind of need this. Can you do this?” And you're like, “Yeah I got it,” even if you would never choose to have a meal together. I think there is really something about just being in a room with each other in any regular fashion.
Veronica Esposito (she/her) is a writer and therapist based in the Bay Area. She writes regularly for The Guardian, Xtra Magazine, and KQED, the NPR member station for Northern California, on the arts, mental health, and LGBTQ+ issues.