Newsletter #5: Fostering Queer Youth Changed Me
In real life, all stories have multiple beginnings. This is one of mine.
There are days when I had fosters in the house that still shine in my memory, like stars…
…but I can never tell you about most of it. To protect the kids, we’re really not supposed to say much. No kid names, nothing about kids’ parents, their pasts, their issues, very little even about their day to day feels safe, because it’s important that they’re not identifiable. I can talk about what I did with them and for them, but not much about who they were and why I loved them.
I’ve fostered three so far, all teens, all queer, co-parenting with my then-wife and her then-girlfriend. One kiddo stayed about a month. Another about nine months. Our first was with us over 2 years, overlapping with both the other two.
One thing I can tell you is this: Queer kids in the foster system are so precious, so fragile, and so damn easy to care about. They are also a hoot to be around: Everyone warns you it will be hard, but no one tells you how much you’ll laugh, or how fun it is to enter the life of a bright young person. It was, hands down, the best thing I ever did.
I teased this as a story of a beginning because I don’t think I’d be monitoring about anti-transgender propaganda today if I never had those kids. The opportunity to watch young people thrive once they could be themselves (yes, even the one we had for just one month) made me want that for all LGBTQ+ kids, and for queer people of all ages. It put this nagging feeling near the back of my head, and in my throat, a sense that there was something more I needed to be doing. Sure, I am just one person. Maybe I can’t do much, on my own, to get people in this country to start valuing trans lives… but welllll… I did have a more resources to leverage than average. More than the youth I fostered. At least I ought to try, for their sake.
There’s a talking point that trans people are like anybody else, and that’s true, as far as it goes. We’re human beings, not issues. We’re just trying to live our lives, like anyone. But, I think another truth is that trans people often aren’t like you, at least not if the you is someone affluent and professional and, usually, white. Someone who lives a stable life. Because that’s not the story of the kids I fostered, and it’s not my story either. I’ve had hard times, the kids I fostered had hard times, and most trans people I know have had lives over-full of really, really hard times.
Hard lives are valuable lives too, though. Hard lives have joy and virtue, love and hope.In the trans community, we know this. Our heroes are street people and sex workers. We don’t much like apologizing for it, or making ourselves small. I think what makes trans people hard to relate to, often, isn’t our gender identities or our bodies but the fact that, having been marginalized, so many of us live lives on the margins. Those lives seem weird and scary to people in the mainstream sometimes.
So yeah, I guess. That’s me. That’s where this came from, or one place it came from. I don’t know if I can do much to protect trans lives, because I’m just one guy. But I’m a guy putting my oar in, because I felt I had to.
ICYMI
We caught the Washington Post uncritically adopting a right wing anti-trans framing in its coverage of a protest and counter protest over gender affirming care for youth in Tennessee.
I ranted about a transphobic New York Times opinion column, and if I say it myself it turned into a bit of a banger.
A longer, Slatier version of my interview with Adam Zivo, this time with a comment by Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, whose story Zivo managed to get published in the notoriously transphobic Washington Examiner
Next Week
It’s been another hugely exciting week, so much so that if they keep coming this way I’ll have to invent some new ways of saying how hugely exciting all this is for me. We did a lot, but there’s a lot we want to do over the weekend and heading into next week, in addition to staying on top of all the latest.
I mentioned trying to do some data journalism last week, er. It’s still on the horizon! I know some very smart, talented journo people have signed up for memberships this week, so if you happen to know how one gets started doing that, please don’t hesitate to send me a DM or email.
My big project that I’ll definitely tackle over the weekend is tracing how the US right wing press picks up and amplifies UK transphobia. I noticed on Monday that the National Review was apparently in the habit of referring to England’s National Health Service as the NHS, in the casual way you do when you’re sure your readers are already familiar with the concept. For the notoriously provincial and isolated US audience, especially the US conservative audience, this seemed remarkable. I want to find out more about how the US right covers TERF Island, and plan to do so when I have some time this weekend.
As always, I’ll sign off by thanking you for your support. I love this work. but I couldn’t do it without you.
Evan
