At one summer camp, canoeing and camaraderie take on new meaning as a gathering place for trans men. Journalist Sandy Ernest Allen joins host Krys Boyd to discuss what it was like to take on traditional activities with the comfort of knowing he was surrounded by his trans community, how the experience challenged his notions of manhood, and the surprising things he learned about himself during the process. His article for Esquire is “Into the Woods with 150 Trans Men.”
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Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] The classic summer camp experience is all about a few carefree days or weeks away from home, a place to try new things and form fast but intense bonds with other campers. Maybe for your average nine year old, but break from the ordinary is a nice treat. But a summer camp created for adults, for trans men, specifically a place where everybody accept you for who you are. No judgments, no sidelong glances, no questions asked. A place like that surely feels like a dream come true. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Krys Boyd. Sandy Ernest Allen is a journalist. When he was assigned to cover a three day annual event called Camp Lost Boys, he decided to have the full experience attending not as an impartial observer, but as an enrolled camper himself. Sandy is trans. He’s 37, has been on testosterone for not quite four years, but as far as he could tell, he’d never spent time in the company of more than two other trans men at once. AT Camp Lost Boys, he not only met dozens of others to whom he could relate, but he had the exhilarating experience of being treated and accepted automatically as a man, which is not something you can take for granted in the so-called real world where he lives the other 362 days of the year. He wrote about his time at camp in an essay for Esquire Magazine titled “Into the Woods with 150 Trans Men.” Sandy, welcome to Think.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:01:26] Thank you so much for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:01:28] So when you say this piece was an assignment, it suggests it wasn’t something you pitched to your editors initially. They learned about the camp and thought you might be the right guy to cover it.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:01:38] I did pitch it. It was an idea that I had brought to my editor initially, but it was one of those pitches, if I’m being honest, where it’s like, maybe this won’t work. You know, you’re like, this seems good enough that I have to try. But there was a little bit of, well, perhaps something will fall through and I won’t actually have to go through with this. I mean, and to explain my anxiety a little, I was contemplating attending a summer camp for three days with a bunch of other adults in the woods, 150 strangers. So even just being trans or gender stuff aside, I’m a pretty socially anxious person. I’m not used to being around so many strangers. I was just like, I don’t know if I can handle this, let alone sleeping in a bunk with ten people and, you know, eating in a mess hall. And so I was like, I want to do this idea because I think it’s really important to try to capture the fact that trans men are part of the human family, too. We might not be as recognized across the rest of us, but there’s trans people everywhere and there’s trans men everywhere. And so for someone like me who hadn’t had the opportunity to actually meet many people like me, it was a really enticing idea. Hence I pitched my editor and she was into it. And the camp also let me attend on assignment for the magazine. So that was all really lucky that everyone was okay with that idea and that I got to attend on assignment and actually get to talk to the wider world a bit about this experience.
Krys Boyd [00:03:16] How does Camp Lost Boys market itself?
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:03:20] Camp Lost Boys has been around for a few years at this point. This was the eighth camp was my sense. And they do a few a year. They’ve done most of them out west. I happened to know about it because I was subscribed to a newsletter. I’m a trans individual who lives in the woods of upstate New York, relatively alone. So I have to turn to the Internet to what channels I see to try to find community. So the individual who organized the camp was someone I was aware of, and so I had followed his career. And then the hearing about the camp over the years, I think I’d always had that internal reaction of going, wow. Imagine, like, imagine being around 150 men like me. But that idea was also so freaky, you know, like, I can’t even contemplate it. So I just would put it out of mind, you know, especially before I had ever started testosterone myself, for example. It felt way too intimidating. But even now, attending as a camper, where in trans time, as you mentioned, you know, I’m like in that sense, three plus years old. It is a really eye opening experience to be around that many people. But my sense is the camp markets itself on Instagram and other social media sites. And when you’re in this kind of community, I think you’re really attracted to any information or anything that really says to you, Hey, you know, there’s others out here who are who are on this path or who are living lives like yours.
Krys Boyd [00:04:52] Well, I mean, it is an interesting time in history, Sandy, for trans men in Western cultures, because I imagine you can find community online fairly easily, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to a lot of in-person interactions with other trans guys.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:05:07] Right. Depending on where you live. You know, again, I live rurally. I’m in a really I’m out here in the the mountains, the Catskills mountains. And so I’m not surrounded by many people, period. You know, I have a lot more turkeys around and trees, you know. So, yes, it definitely is important to have the Internet. And then there is that question of how do you actually connect with people in real life who are like you, and so I try my best. I actually remarkably have a couple of trans friends in town here in this little tiny town. You know, I’ll have a brunch, I’ll have, you know, trans and queer people here. And yet that’s not the same. If I lived in a city where there was a bigger population of people like me, I would probably see more people like me and have more opportunities for this. There’s that other question, though. I mean, just pulling back a little bit like imagine, for example, if we were talking about like women, you know, like, you want to go meet friends with a woman, you know, you’re going to meet one. You know, it’s like so weird to imagine that the only selection criteria for a friendship is gender, right? Like, you’re like, well, who is she? What’s your deal? Right? You’d want to know a lot and get to know. So it’s like in my case, like when I got to meet the 150 trans men, that was really spectacular because it’s like it with a group of that many people. There’s such diversity of all kinds. And so you get that chance to be like, I’m connecting with this person or that person or whatever, and you’re feeling it out. And like, gender is just one piece of our story and we all have that in common, and that might be something that we’re able to commiserate about and kind of feel each other out about and, you know, understand more of the world based on conversations with each other. But that aside, you know, the real joy is in getting to find people who you have more in common with, you know, then just the fact that you’re trans men, you know, people who had to kind of go along a journey like this. So yeah, it’s just an amazing and very rare experience as you root in our culture to have that many of us. There’s just, you know, we have a numbers problem, right? There’s not a lot of us. We’re pretty small minority. You know, there’s a lot of noise about us that’s much louder than we are. But, you know, for the most part, we’re pretty we’re few and far between here. So it takes a lot to actually get that level of density. And I mean, the piece mentions this, but I think it also takes a lot of individuals over time making these choices, being brave enough, coming out and then finding each other and coming together, you know, a lot of us have to do a lot in order to to meet up at this one summer camp for three days.
Krys Boyd [00:07:44] So the only people who get to attend as campers are trans men. But maybe unlike the broader world, the camp does not get hung up on whatever guys use to define themselves this way, right? Like with or without hormones or surgery or even being fully out to friends. The only requirement is that all campers identify as men.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:08:02] Yeah. Yeah. As trans men. So. Exactly. And in in the essay I wrote about this, but one of the things that was just very special about the camp, so to set it up, you know, it’s just a regular summer camp. You’re there for three days, you’re kayaking, canoeing, doing arts and crafts, archery, all the things. And there’s of course, this added element of a lot of us are in this community. This is rare for us. Even if you in your daily life live in Brooklyn or Philly or whatever, in or around transpeople, this is really special to be around such a density of trans men. And so for a lot of men, this is just this very enjoyable experience. They’re just walking around, seeing their friends, you know, swimming in the lake like shirts off and open. It’s such a gorgeous vibe. So that that’s kind of what we’re all swimming in for those days. So like, I was new to camp stuff, I had no idea like, what that would actually be like at all. And this camp where this session was held, you know, it’s a regular summer camp for the rest of the summer, so it just looked exactly like you’d want to camp to look. And the staff are the regular staff. And they had all been very clearly trained. And also it was just clear they were people who were respectful. And so there was no issue. As you’re walking around, as you’re going down to get a meal or you’re going back to your bunk, you’re not going to run into some stranger who’s going to misgender you and make your day really unpleasant, which frankly, for a lot of trans men, myself included, is a risk we run if we want to go in public. Some men and I write about this in the piece, pass, so to speak. You know, they really don’t look quote unquote, trans. And so maybe so much so that in their regular life, they’re they’re stealth. They’re not even out. And so there’s a whole range all the way to folks who yeah. As you alluded like aren’t even on hormones. Maybe they are going to start later or maybe they did once and they have to be off of them, for example. So everybody there knew, the staff knew to respect us all as men. And that was something that, as far as I could tell, at least, was totally observed. And I think the effect of that was like we as the individuals didn’t have to worry like, am I safe? Or am I passing? Or am I being clocked? Or you know, am I not man enough? Or you know, like, is this is this stranger I’m about to interact with going to misgender me or use the wrong pronouns or whatever. We didn’t have to do any of that extra kind of like mental work that I think really is, if anything, so assumed that I am certainly amongst the people who at camp just felt like, wow, this like weird silence, like this sense inside of so much mental energy that was afforded that you didn’t have to spend worrying about how other people might take your gender and what effect that might have on your life, including am I safe, Right? Like someone like me, I’m 5’4. I look masculine. I you know, most everywhere I go, I get called sir, I get called he, etc.. And I’m pretty scared, you know, like I’m pretty scared most places I go. And so camp was a really unusual space for me because I felt myself totally relaxed.
Krys Boyd [00:11:18] Yeah, your piece made me think about, you know, all these people who are now on like, Ozempic and those drugs, and they talk about how their food noise has quieted. I wondered if your like, gender noise quiets down in this kind of environment.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:11:31] That’s interesting. I don’t know about the comparison per se, but I will say like it makes me immediately think of, for example, when I started testosterone, because I think that for someone like me, I didn’t know what it would be like to start testosterone. And I was 34 when I did 33, 34 like and I’d spent, I don’t know, a lot of years going, Well, I don’t need that, you know, like I, I shouldn’t, you know, even though I’ve known I was trans since I was an infant, basically, Like it’s, you know, one of those things I tried really hard to keep that closet door shut for as long as possible. I started testosterone and it was like, undeniable. I was like, whoa, is this what the rest of you have been doing like this? That that sense of nonsense quieting down, you know? And so it’s like every time in my experience at least, that I’ve sort of figured out how do I actually mitigate this, you know, whether that was getting a more affirming haircut or starting hormones or whatever else that’s helped me sort of feel like, I don’t feel terrible all the time. You know, having surgery like this so significantly changes the amount of just mental energy that I’m wasting, you know? So that’s definitely one part of it. And then, yeah, being in that for me as kind of kind of a new guy, you know, a literal new guy, like being around this many other men like me, it was just astonishing, you know, I could just feel it all day long. Every part of me could feel it. And I wrote about this, but especially meeting men who were 50, 60 or older, like the folks who are really truly to me, like modeling what a future could look like. It was so life giving. And I think that for me, as someone who’s I was aware of being trans since preschool. I didn’t talk about it till I was like 30, really, and then I started really making some moves some years later. And so that’s a long time to have felt very alone and very dislocated from what I was supposed to be, and to now instead be finding something that is really genuinely like, wow, this is where I’ve been. This is where I was meant to be all along. It’s a very strange but absolutely beautiful feeling.
Krys Boyd [00:13:48] Sandy, you could do a conference or a symposium or some other kind of event, but there’s something really poignant about creating a summer camp experience for trans men in that presumably most of the people in attendance didn’t get to have a traditional boyhood. Do trans guys have to sort of mourn that thing? They never had that. Surely cis men have just taken for granted their whole lives.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:14:14] Yeah, I really appreciate you asking this and it’s such a good point. Like, why go do summer camp stuff and especially have it feel so evocative of childhood and you’ve nailed it, right? Like especially those of us who are, let’s say, my age and older. We did not get chances to be young and trans for the most part. Like nowadays more young people get to come out as trans and get to do stuff about it. There were, to be clear, some campers who are more of the kind of college age who got to be teenage boys, for example. And so I you know, I met folks like that at camp. And then on the whole other end of the spectrum, right figure there are people who didn’t come out until they were retirement age. And so you do have men who have not had a chance to really live this life until very late in life. And I’m somewhere in between coming out in my 30s. And so the experience of getting to kind of it’s like a bit of time travel, being in bunks and doing all these camp things that a lot of us did or didn’t do, but especially didn’t get to do in this kind of setting. A boys camp like very much there’s like basketball hoops and archery and soccer and it’s very boys. And I think for a lot of us, it was this kind of like, wow, yeah, I didn’t get to do this feeling that you then get to do it. You get to have your, your experience. And there was a different piece that I wrote for Esquire previously that was about mourning the trans boy I didn’t have. And in a way, this camp experience is such a great kind of answer or antidote to that. You know, that sense of your inner child, you know, and this might sound very woo woo or whatever, but I mean, and my my beat tends to be mental health. And so, I mean, it’s not I think absolutely it’s not unreasonable to talk about our inner child and to think about the parts of ourselves that are younger or that maybe didn’t get a chance to really be who they wanted to be. So if you want to think of it from the sense of like the inner children in us, the inner boys in us got to experience for three days joy and to have fun with each other and to meet each other and to make friends or whatever else happened. And that was an experience that can now help us as we go forward into our lives. And it helps kind of correct for some of the injury that I think a lot of us do feel because, you know, we didn’t get a say so. We, a lot of us, didn’t have a chance to say, well, wait a minute, that’s not what I am. And a lot of us figured out how to maybe say that much later when we were very much adults or whatever. But yeah, that doesn’t mean we don’t feel the pain of not having experienced a childhood that might be more congruous and that might actually have made more sense for us. And I’m speaking in generalities. I think there are people who, you know, I was somebody who was very far in the closet. I really. I dressed pretty feminine and I really opted to hide in plain sight. In a sense. I really played the role of girl and woman pretty much as hard as I could until I ran out of energy on it around age 30. And so I now look back at a lot of my choices from when I was younger and go, I really don’t. Who was that? What was I doing? Like, you know? And the answer was I was surviving. I was I was staying hidden. I was not aware that there were other trans people in the world for a lot of my childhood. But even if I’d been aware of it, I don’t think I would have been brave enough to come out in the situation that I was in. And obviously it was a different time in the 80s and 90s. But even then I did meet men at camp who are my age biologically, but who’ve been on testosterone for like 15 years. And I admit that’s hard for me to meet somebody like that and not just feel so jealous like, wow. Like, how did you figure that out? You know, like, how did you walk that path? But here we all were kind of having this experience and getting to kind of all bring ourselves into the present and to kind of in community all validate each other and how far we’ve had to come.
Krys Boyd [00:18:34] You write in the essay about connecting with other trans men who have chosen this life and whatever social and medical hazards that accompany it. I’m curious about that idea of choice, because it seems on the one hand like a huge step to acknowledge and embody your trans identity, which implies an enormous and complicated decision you have to make. But it also seems like not a choice in that your identity is also just a fact of who you are.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:19:00] Yeah, Yeah. It’s it’s tricky, right? Because it can immediately feel so scary if we allude to choice. But I think when I’m talking about the choices that we make, I’m referring to, do we let this come to light? You know, a lot of us walk around aware of our being different in this way. And we and like I was somebody once who worked very hard to not acknowledge my own difference, you know, like I really ignored it inside as all the time, as much as I could. And if I saw something that looked to trans out there in the world, I would be like ah get away. You know, I was really like I had to stay really hidden and really asleep to myself. And so nowadays that I’m not like that and I am someone who’s instead sort of listens to myself and has followed that path forward, I can look back and go, Right. There was a lot of work that I had to do to sort of keep myself really confined in that. And it’s a mental confinement, I think, when you’re in the closet like that. And so at a certain point, I started telling people, my therapist and my friend and my partner and people who are very close and I felt like I could trust them with at first just discussing, maybe I’m not cis, you know, like however many years ago, you know, really trying to just like, really like, no big deal. But let me just mention that I’m not a woman, right? But that’s, of course, a huge deal. And then the more you start to let on, I think at least in my case, the more you then start to go, Well, wait a minute. If what’s true is I’m a man, I need to start changing my life in order to match that reality. And so depending on who you are and what your life is like, that can be an absolute you know, you can change everything in your life when you tell somebody you’re trans, that can change partnerships that can change so much about us. And a lot of us, I think, feel we have no choice but to be honest with the world, with those we love, with ourselves about what we are. And we do that not because it’s easy. We do that. In fact, often, despite a lot of reasons to not do that right? There are so many reasons to not come out as trans. And I think somebody like me, I used to spend a lot of energy making sure that those reasons were very loud. Like I used to tell myself, you’re a singer. You can’t come out as trans because you’ll ruin your singing voice. So I let that be something that that kept me back for a long time. Or maybe people think about their family or who might be disappointed or how it might affect their friendships or the relationships or whatever, how it might affect how they’re perceived in the world. And I mean, let’s be honest. We live in a really hateful world right now as regards trans people. I mean, it’s really popular, right, to bully us and to make us into some boogeyman when that’s clearly just a we’re a minority group that doesn’t have a lot of voice. Right. And so we’re a really easy target, especially I mean, think about a trans child that’s almost the easiest target of a bully I could ever imagine, right? So it’s this moment where you got to like cowards who are coming after people like trans children who are very brave, who are saying, hey, society, I noticed you’ve only really given us these two boxes. Usually that doesn’t actually work for me. And I mean. If I could have said that to an adult when I was three or eight or 18 or all the other times, I felt it throughout my life. I mean, who knows if I would have been heard. But it’s at least the kind of thing where our society has changed and we are listening to more young people. And so that gives me tons of hope.
Krys Boyd [00:22:35] You talk about the ways that you are perceived in the world, and I’m curious as to how that has changed for you. Like, have you typically felt at home and accepted in the company of cisgender men? And were there ways in which that was easier when you were trying really hard to live as the woman people thought you were?
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:22:55] That’s a funny question. I have thought a lot about this. I was always much easier friends with like boys and men and stuff like my whole life. And it was an example of something that felt like, you know, as a young, quote unquote girl. Right. I was not supposed to be friends with big groups of boys. Like that was not actually like, okay, but I would get invited to their sleepover, birthday parties or whatever, and then everyone would have to discuss is this okay? You know. And so I was this little kid who it was like, we all knew it, right? We all knew what I was on some level. And the moms would be like, Yeah, yeah, you know, you can let this kid go. The birthday party is fine. But like, for me, I knew that on some level we all had an awareness that I was different and I had never easily kept the company of other girls. In part, I think because it would be harder for me once I was when there was numbers, I would feel my own difference, or maybe somebody else would start to notice it. And so I had always had a lot of friendships with people of all sorts, honestly, but especially with boys and men and a lot of my friends to this day. A lot of my closest friends are men I’ve known since high school and college and grad school. A lot of them are queer gay men. And and so it’s funny. And it’s one of those things where I used to have these close friendships. Like one of my best friends for a long time is a guy, and we’ve been home since high school or whatever. And I think back then it was maybe a little stranger. And then nowadays it’s like, Yeah, it’s my friend, you know, we’ve known each other forever. So it’s like there’s just a zillion things about this life that feel that way where it’s like you look back and go, Yeah, that makes more sense now, of course. And so are all cismen accepting of somebody like me? I could certainly not say that, but I would say for the most part these days I live relatively easily. I’m not getting like looked at in the street. I’m not getting yelled at. I’m frankly experiencing so much less gendered harassment than I experienced as a nonbinary person than I experienced as a quote unquote ciswoman. Right. Like I used to walk through the world in one gender presentation that got me catcalled and yelled at. I certainly don’t experience that anymore. So it’s like as a trans man, I have different risks and different questions. But also these days I think I am just getting a little better at trusting. Most people don’t think about this stuff, you know, once you’ve got a beard and I do and you know, shake their hand and act like you’re the thing, you know what? It’s not as hard. I think there’s a little bit of a fake it till you make it that I didn’t necessarily trust how real it was until I was really living the life. But also just to say this, I mean, hormones are amazing. You know, it’s really magic that my body knows how to turn me into a man. My face shape changed. I grew a beard, my shoulders broadened out. I mean, a million other changes. My body, the whole thing scans as man now. And so on some level, it’s a lot less work than you think it might be because nature really does show up here and go, well, do this and this and this and this and this. Here, here. You wanted a man. Fine. And so, you know, I’m still getting used to if anything, the fact that strangers will call me sir and gentleman and buddy and dude and brother and all this stuff that I’m completely not used to, to people addressing me as.
Krys Boyd [00:26:26] Something you do have to think about is what kind of man you want to be. I was poking around a little on the camps web site and one of the FAQs and this is a direct quote is: “Is an event that is exclusively for men, a toxic masculinity, hyper masculine bro fest.” Do you did you relate at all to that anxiety?
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:26:46] I mean, it’s a funny thing, right? In I have a zillion thoughts. I mean, back in the day, I was at at Brown and taking gender studies and was a big feminist and all this. And so I’m still a big feminist, right? But I’m very much somebody who it is funny when you realize like, I’m a man now and I’m taking on all of that. And especially like if it’s a concentration of men, you know, what is that? And so it’s like I will say, this camp, and I’m guessing that FAQ does say something along the lines of No.
Krys Boyd [00:27:22] It does say that, yes.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:27:23] You know, this won’t be a toxic, you know, like bro fest, because I think just to speak in generalities now, trans men, a lot of us have had to be very intentional and thoughtful about a lot in this life, including ourselves and including stuff like, yes, feminism, gender dynamics, so on. So I do think that like on the whole, are we probably a more tolerant and less toxic group of men? I would sort of hope so. And in this camp at least, you know, it was not at all some kind of like stereotype of like, machismo in the worst way or something. It was like no beautiful gathering of masculine people. And there was lots of very I mean, there were folks who were doing weightlifting and all this very whatever manly stuff. You can tell I’m not into all that, but, you know, there were dudes fishing, I promise. And for the most part, I think there was a real lack of yeah, whatever we might want to think of a more kind of like competitive, aggressive, perhaps dominant kind of vibe that I don’t really think comes naturally to a lot of us and I also think isn’t attractive to a lot of us. I think a lot of us move through the world differently, and maybe part of that is that we did not come of age, a lot of us as teenage boys and men, and get kind of indoctrinated into a lot of what we might think of as the more like negative connotations of like a masculinity. But a lot of us, I think, are having to figure out, as you said, what kind of man am I? And so I think this was a test for us all in a way of like, what does a community of us feel like? And is what what does it result in? And I mean, as I describe I I’m sort of cheeky about this in the piece, but like it was a really lovely gathering, you know, it was really, at least in my observation, conflict free and very like people being kind to each other and being very, I think, deliberate about the fact that like, yes, this is a group of strangers for the most part, and there’s all kinds of people here coming from all walks of life. And you just sense that a lot of us were really trying to treat one another with a ton of respect. And you saw people going out of their way to be kind like all the time. So, I mean, for the most part, I do think that we were all practicing what I would hope to a lot of cismen do all the time, which is a masculinity which isn’t negative, which is about respecting each other and about yeah, sure, there’s elements of us that we enjoy and we want to bring out here and in this space. But and we’re we’re talking, of course, just in terms of these big, basic, silly stereotypes. Right? And it all comes down to we’re individuals and the kind of collective and body ethos of this experience, at least was one of a lot of respect.
Krys Boyd [00:30:25] Sandy, how comfortable did you literally feel in your own skin, in your body, in this place, and how did that compare with how you might feel in other spaces where trans men are not the majority of people you run into?
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:30:39] You mean everywhere else? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was a very there was a very physical in my body sense of feeling okay in this community, that I think surprised me. To feel that amidst a lot of strangers. Like there’s no one there who I knew prior to the weekend. But you start chatting with someone and you get to know them a little and you start to feel the ways in which you do have perhaps so much in common. And there was this quick sense of especially feeling myself be seen by other trans men and being validated by them and the conversations that we have with each other, which frankly, on some level, sure, we talk about gender stuff, but we don’t, you know, like it’s like we can almost set that down, right? Like you just talk about your garden and, you know, like, I think that that’s part of it too. Sometimes being trans, especially someone in my position where I’m kind of publicly so and writing about and talking about it like it can feel like a lot of work. It can feel like you never stop talking about this stuff and you’re doing it because it’s important to try to talk about it because you feel the sense that, hey, right now there might be somebody listening who needs to hear the fact that, Hi, I’m a trans adult, I’m fine. Like, my life is great. Like that might be an important thing for someone to hear, right? So I feel that sense of wanting to spread that message. But yeah, when you’re in that really like insular place where everyone’s just respecting you and there’s no real risk that someone’s going to come and make your day really bad because they want to tell you all the hateful stuff they think they feel about you. Like that’s such a relief. And for me, the rest of the world, like my own inbox, whatever. Yeah, it can be a really unpleasant place. There can be that sense of strangers do just enjoy making you feel bad. And like, that’s hard. But you have chosen to put yourself out there and to live this life, obviously. So it’s like, that’s. That’s the price, I guess. But yeah, the experience of being somewhere where you’re free of that and you’re not having to constantly think in terms of risk and think in terms of, alright, like I’ll give an example. I mean my little grocery store here in town, like after my piece published, the folks who work there, I know them all. How are you? I said, I’m good. I had a new piece come out for Esquire. They said, great. What’s it about? And I. I went, well, I don’t want to get into it. I just had this feeling of like, I don’t know if I want to stand here and tell my grocer, etc., all about how I’m trans, you know? And so this whole part of me that just does get really tired of having to kind of like talk to people about it or to then hazard, well, what’s the response going to be? And if it doesn’t go well or whatever. And that’s that’s on me, right? Like, I’m sure it’s probably fine, but like there’s just that amount of like, you know, how much energy do I actually have to afford to this at any given moment? So in a space where you can just put that all aside and you can instead just be yourself, I think that’s in a way what I was writing about is like, Yeah, who am I? Like if I didn’t have to like, put this whole if this piece really got to be sat down for a second, you know, like trans men who are older than me had talk to me about this, but like, you forget you forget that you’re trans, you just live it for so long and you’re no longer updating your birth certificate and dealing with surgeries or whatever, and you’re no longer having to come out to relatives or whatever it is when you’re done, when you’re through it and you’ve lived that many years on you walk through society being called sir all the time and you’re not thinking about it anymore, how there are trans people who just forget they’re trans. And I remember coming home from camp and kind of feeling, I did feel bad about myself just a bit this weekend, you know, like I forgot like I just felt like a normal guy and I felt all these guys were normal guys. Like my nervous system or something had completely re processed us. And it was scary to come back to regular society and sort of feel like now I’ve got to deal with everybody else again. But it helps. It helps it shores one up, it makes me feel stronger. You know, I write about him in the piece, but Aidan Key, for example, is somebody I met at camp who isn’t an elder to me in terms of the trans sense, but also is older than me and is somebody who spent a lot of time creating conferences for trans people and stuff. So it’s done a lot of activism and I got to know him at camp and it’s just amazing to me to think, okay, in 2005, he went on Oprah, right? He went on Oprah in 2005 and said, I’m a trans man and let Oprah ask him questions. And so, like today, frankly, like doing this conversation with you, I was a little nervous. But then I think about somebody like Aidan doing that in 2005 and how brave that is. You know, when there was that much less cultural context for trans man to be on somebody’s screen. And there was a moment that I observed where another camper we were all talking to Aidan and after dinner and another camper said to Aidan, “you werethe first trans man I ever saw on TV.” And you know, that’s it. That’s like, this is how it happens is we get the chance to hear or to see one another and to go there I am. Finally, finally, a lot of us have spent a long time waiting for that moment when they go, that’s what I’ve been missing.
Krys Boyd [00:36:17] Does camp also give you a break from and I don’t know that this is something you experience, but whatever pressure you might feel in your regular life to perform, the idea that having made this transition, everything in your life is now ideal. You know, you talk about like talking about your garden with other guys, like sometimes your tomatoes are going to be eaten by worms. Like, not everything is necessarily perfect because of this important thing you’ve done.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:36:43] I want to be clear that my tomatoes are perfect. I’m not joking. Yeah, I mean, it’s. It’s. It’s. It’s one of those things where there is a lot less work that goes into thinking about all of this stuff that we usually do. And in terms of like, is my life perfect now because I’m trans? It’s like, absolutely not right? Like nothing works like that. That would be an absurd standard to hold anything to. If we want to play the game. I will say you look at rates of regret, for example, amongst trans folks and the interventions that we do get from the medical system, it’s so much lower than what you see with like what we might think of everyday surgery and other medical decisions, right? Like a lot of trans people really go out of our way to seek these interventions because they are what we need and because it helps. Like for me, frankly, to imagine not being on testosterone. I can’t I just my life, it doesn’t there’s no there’s no that anymore. Like, this is who I am. So there’s no going back. There’s no. Could I have made the wrong choice here? I am one of those people who I’m like, no, this is so clearly the right choice. It would be absolute absurdity to entertain anything else. Of course, there are people who have different experiences and it’s ultimately what I always come back to. And this is something that I’ve been writing about for 15 years because I write about mental health generally. This is an individual decision know this is about an individual’s sanctity. This is about our ability to look inside and say, here’s my truth, and then to actually allow that to project back out to the rest of the world and to hopefully have a world that meets us with compassion when we say, here’s what’s true about me. So, I mean, that’s I think, why someone like me is living a little loudly here, because I hope to spread the message that like, hey, that second piece where the rest of the world is kinder to us. That’s important. You know, like there’s a lot of work that a lot of people still have to do in terms of opening up their hearts to the reality that trans people, we are just part of the human family. We’ve just been here for quite a while. And so having the ability to now, yeah, you know, a medical intervention like testosterone or like getting to have surgeries or whatever, hormones that trans women might avail themselves of, like, these are amazing technologies. They’re relatively recent. They’re not ones that only trans people use either. They do help our lives a lot. And I don’t think it should be that complicated. Right? Like there’s really no other you know, there’s few, I guess, medical technologies that are so politicized when what we’re talking about is this is relatively safe, easy stuff that gives people access to a much more cohesive and dignified life and can anyway. And so affording us the opportunity to feel like, I can show up in the world, I don’t feel so terrible inside all the time. And it’s something that, again, when I was a younger person, I could never have imagined the life that I get to live now and well. And so the fact that I get to live this life, is this just every single day. It feels like a miracle. And I’m so excited about it, you know, And the sense in the broader world that trans people are synonymous with a sort of like bad news, you know, like it’s very off and it’s one that I think will be corrected. The more trans people are just allowed an opportunity like I am getting to do here. And I thank you to just represent the fact that we’re people, like all people are complicated and messy and we are imperfect. And in my case, I grow perfect tomatoes.
Krys Boyd [00:40:31] Sandy The Hearst magazine website describes Esquire as a magazine that covers the interests, curiosity and passions of men. Presumably that includes gay and straight cisgender men. I don’t know if they break down how large their audience of trans men is. I want to know, though, like writing this piece, did you think about who would read it and how open they might be to reading about your experience and whether you might be able to sort of relax some cisgender man who would otherwise be threatened or bothered by your identity?
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:41:07] Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it’s such an honor to get to write about being a trans man for Esquire, specifically as a very long established men’s magazine and a very respected magazine in general. It’s a huge opportunity, I think, because there have not been a lot of trans men represented in the mainstream media and the national media, which of course is a shame. But I’m happy to try to do my little piece to help it. And for me, yes, as an artist, as a journalist, like why is it exciting to get to speak into this particular megaphone? You nailed it. I love that. I’m getting to talk to an audience who might not be interested. Like, for me, I’m very interested to talk to those people because if anything, the more we can just disrupt that really easy flow of bigotry right into people’s heads, the more that we can maybe tell a story, for example, about a summer camp and have it change someone’s image of what a trans person is. And I received so many messages from people who are sure I received messages from trans people and from people who have trans children and so on. But I received messages from people who are like, I’m a random cis man in my 60s, and your article changed my mind. You know, like I do get I get that email all the time. And that, in a way is my target demo because there are a lot of other people who are already providing great media coverage by and for trans people. And I’m interested in how do I, as a trans journalist talk to everybody? How do we get everybody? And yeah, trans men talking to cismen that for me feels special. Like there is a conversation that we can have rather brother to brother, frankly, about the toxicity of imposed gender hierarchy, for example, and what we could be doing in order to kind of liberate us each from. Yeah. What were you assigned at birth and what did it assume of you and how does that maybe, I don’t know, not suit you anymore?
Krys Boyd [00:43:14] You got a lot out of being in this place where you just got to feel like a regular man. What does it mean to be a man?
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:43:22] Yeah, Such a good question, right? I don’t have an answer. Isn’t that funny? And part of why I find it funny is that it’s like being a man to me is more practice. You know? It’s like something I work on every day. And to me, it involves all this, you know, this stuff. I do a weekly tee shot, you know, I have to shave my face sometimes now and, you know, figure out how do you open a door for somebody when you’re walking into the restaurant as opposed to wait for someone to hold it open for you? Like all this very specific stuff that I have had to completely change. But really, it’s so much about what other people take you as, right? Like so much of this is fundamentally social. Men, women, these categories we make, non-binary trans people, etc. This is all mental. It’s one of those. It’s one of those. That’s one of those. Ultimately, we are individuals. You know, I’m standing in this out. I happen to be trans man, right? Like that’s an aspect of my identity. And I think that because I’m trans, I understand that’s only a piece of who I am. And I know that I have a much easier time living life, having that experience than I did in the prior one. And there’s no comparison, you know? So it’s like it is and it isn’t such a real thing, right? It’s real. And as much as it’s so socially real.
Krys Boyd [00:44:43] Sandy Ernest Allen is a journalist. His essay “Into the Woods with 150 Trans Men” was published by Esquire magazine. Sandy, thanks so much for this conversation.
Sandy Ernest Allen [00:44:53] Krys Thank you so much. I’m really grateful to you for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:44:56] Think is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and listen to our podcast. Wherever you get podcasts, Just search for KERA Think. Our website is think.kera.org and that’s where you can sign up for our free weekly enewsletter. Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
