Connecting with: Ben Greene

After being forced to advocate for himself through his own transition, Ben now guides trans kids and their parents navigate this cruel world through an oft overlooked emotion: joy.

Hello friends, and welcome back to Connecting With, my interview series where I sit down with dear folks and connect! This week, I’ve got a very special guest:

Ben Greene

! I’ve been a huge fan of Ben’s and his incredible Substack Good Queer News for a very long time now. Ben manages to bring an undimmable sense of optimism and joy to our current climate. We sit down to discuss just how this dedication to good news came about, how trans lives are so much more than trauma stats, how he recharges, a few great books, and his best tip for finding community even in a new city.

Let me tell you, I left this interview feeling so inspired and uplifted, and I know you will too!

Ben Greene by Brian Muñoz

Aidan: Ben! Welcome to Gay Buffet! I am so glad you’re here. Let’s start at the beginning. Can you tell my readers a little bit about yourself, your path so far, and how you ended up on Substack?

Ben: Yeah! Ben Greene, he/him pronouns. I’m a trans man, public speaker, author, and advocate. I’m a very joyful person. I transitioned when I was a teenager in Connecticut, over 10 years ago, and nobody really knew what to do with me. So I was building my support systems as I realized I needed them, usually once it was already too late. I like to say that I was jumping out of a plane with a tarp and a sewing kit. Now, as a trans adult, I get to be the parachute factory. I work full-time with companies, schools, families, and hospitals to help build supportive policies and cultures so that the trans people and the queer people who come after me get to be supported by default. So they can be whatever it is they want to be. I usually do that through speaking or one-on-one conversations with people who don’t like me, or through writing.

I was really big on TikTok as “Your Trans Older Brother” in pandemic times. I was doing that a lot, and I found that whenever I tried to talk about nuance, it would just go into the void; nobody would see it. So, I was getting increasingly frustrated at how doom and gloom the platform felt. In contrast to the experience I had going to the Missouri State Capitol and seeing the wins we were a part of there, and meeting this amazing community.

So I started posting more good news, but I didn’t have any room to explain why it was actually such a big deal. I was actually in a writing group with my friends, and every week I would start off our class by saying the good queer news. I would read them a list from my notes app, and every week, they said, “Ben, you’ve got to do something with this. You’ve got to share this.” So I started on Instagram, but it wasn’t really hitting, so I tried Substack out and it took off. It’s really resonated with people, and now has become both roundups of good news, but also strategies for hope, ideas for resilience, and ways we can support each other. It’s become my soapbox for talking about joy, and I love that.

Aidan: And it’s such a good soapbox, and congratulations on 15,000 subscribers!

Ben: Thank you, it’s crazy!

Aidan: What I really love about your ethos is joy, and I know joy has been a part of your approach for a very long time. Was that something that was inherent in you, or did it come from the lack of support you felt coming out?

Ben: You know, I’ve always been a very whimsical person. I’ve always loved to play and have fun, but it wasn’t inherent to the work I was doing until I started working with parents of trans kids. In 2022, I decided I wanted to do a free speech for every PFLAG chapter in the country. I’m at about 150 so far. Every week, I would be at a different chapter somewhere in the country, hearing from parents of brand new, out trans kids about what they were feeling and what resources they had turned to so far. I would listen to chapter presidents and people at the Capitol with me, and I started to get really frustrated when I realized that so often our conversation about why it matters to support trans and queer kids begins and ends at suicide statistics.

The whole thing, that 40%, those numbers are the only thing we talk about when we’re talking to parents of brand new out trans kids. It‘s petrifying and motivating in the beginning. It’ll get your butt to your first PFLAG meeting. It’ll get you to that doctor’s appointment. But beyond that, it’s not sustaining, especially when people would say, “Well, what if they regret it? What if they’re wrong? What if they’re not happy?”

That’s really effective fear-mongering, because up until that point, they’ve only been motivated by fear. So I started to lean more into talking about joy through the parenting context. Saying “Hey, your kid can have a whole robust, beautiful life as a trans person. Let’s talk about not just what you’re losing, but what you’re building, what you’re gaining, the depth of this relationship, the profound amount of color they will add to your whole life.”

Like, what are the good things about being trans and having a trans kid? Nobody was talking about that, and once I saw how that was landing, it kind of infected all of my work. I started to realize that this is going to work a lot better if I lead from a place of joy, not from a place of anger or fear. So I keep bringing it into different areas of my life, and everywhere I bring it, I find that it really lands.

Aidan: Oh, I love that so much. It makes me reconsider how I look at it. It’s really nice to hear reminders that advocating for the light part of things and the beautiful parts of all of this are really important right now.

Ben: Yeah, you know, I was listening to “Born This Way” this morning. I love that song, but the concept that we are only worthy of support because we’re born this way, I actually really don’t like. I didn’t choose to be trans, but if I had the opportunity to make the choice, I would. I love the life that I have led. I love the person I’ve become. I like being transgender. I think it’s great. I’m having fun, and I think it’s beautiful. You shouldn’t support me because I had no other choice. Support me because you love me, and it’s cool to support your trans friends.

Aidan: Wow, I’m obsessed with that. Since we are leaning into the love and joy at all, paint the picture, tell me about your beautiful life.

Ben: In so many ways, I’m living a life that I couldn’t have imagined. It didn’t occur to me that I would grow up. I’m married now. I have a wife. I’m obsessed with her. I have a dog. I didn’t know I would get old enough to have enough autonomy to get a dog. I read books that feature trans characters going on adventures and trans stories that aren’t defined by transphobia. I get to write books.

And I’m not just saying this from a seat of privilege in a blue state. I lived in Missouri for the last five years and was a front-line community advocate. I had a beautiful life because I had people who loved me, because I knew I was empowered, I was connected, and I was contributing to building the world that I wanted to see for myself and for the people around me.

I get to have hobbies that have nothing to do with me being trans. The government wants to make me into this one-dimensional villain, a caricature of what it means to be trans, but I’m not just one story. I’m trans and a huge nerd. I’m trans and an okay chef. I’m trans and an amateur party host. I love being so many things that my identity is a part of, but also not. That’s great.

Aidan: Absolutely. I also think so many people on the internet are advised to become one thing so we become myopic. There’s so much infighting, especially among the queer community, because it’s much safer for us to have negative interactions with members of our own community than outside. But to somebody who is feeling the negative effects of this online infighting, what would you say to them?

Ben: I think number one, I’d say read some adrienne maree brown. Sit down and read everything adrienne maree brown has written. She is our generation’s bell hooks. She has a little book called We Will Not Cancel Us, and a longer one called Loving Accountability. Her whole frame of thought is that we need to change the way we talk to each other. We need to recognize that when people are coming at each other, on the internet or in movement spaces, for language testing and purity politics, it’s because we feel powerless. We feel like we cannot touch the people who are actually making our lives worse, so we find a way to feel powerful, and we take that out on each other. That’s not going to get us where we want to go.

If I want to live in a future where I have room to make a mistake, I need to start living like that now. I think about how many people who are really into the infighting, love found-family, science fiction. It’s funny to me because if you think about these found family tropes, there’s the angry old guy, but we all love him. There’s the very confusing person that’s literally an alien, we understand that they don’t understand any concepts the same as us, and we fight, and we love each other, and people love those parts. I love it too, but sometimes it makes me want to pull my hair out and say, “That’s not supposed to be the fiction part! That’s respecting your friends and having a variety of relationships. The fiction part is that they’re on a spaceship! The fiction part is that someone has a lizard tail. The fiction part is not that people with different beliefs can respect each other.”

But people are so desperate for a community that’s messy and wholesome, and we can do that now. We can do that in our own relationships. So I really encourage people to live in the world that you are trying to build. If I want a world where everybody gets to walk in the door and learn how to make mistakes, I have to start living like that now. Nobody else is going to build that. They’re certainly not going to build it with a law. We’ll build it culturally by living it.

Aidan: I love that. What’s a classic found-family science-fiction book I have to read?

Ben: Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. And I’ll tell people who are really struggling with this concept tangibly, conflict is not abuse. Conflict is a gift. Feedback is a sign of trust. When someone trusts you enough to believe that you will care what they have to say and how they feel, that’s a gift. That’s not a personal attack. All you can ever do is be 1% better tomorrow than we are today, and we cannot expect perfection of ourselves or each other. If people are being mean to you on the internet, just consider walking away from them. You have free will. You don’t have to justify yourself to people who want to disagree with you on the internet. It’s not worth it.

Aidan: Totally. I’ve also found that so much of our infighting stems from this huge loneliness epidemic that we are in, especially for queer folk and those in rural areas. Something that I love so much about your existence on Substack is how much community building you do. Do you have ways in which you try to bring that offline, or ways you seek out community if you’re feeling lonely?

Ben: Yeah, so I can really answer that, because I just moved across the country. I’m working on making friends and very much living that.

I certainly tell people, “I’m gonna do an event in this place, come hang out!” Or I’ll post, “I live here now, be my friend.” If somebody messages me asking to get coffee, I will do that. I used to think that writers were like celebrities, that they did not want to be bothered. You know, your favorite actor probably doesn’t want you to DM them.

Your favorite author, though. If you send them an email that’s like, ”Hey, you wrote this book and it made me cry, or you wrote this article and it like meant something to me.” I’m printing that out and hanging it on my wall. I’m just some guy. Be my friend. Don’t be afraid of other people who seem cool.

Our phones have trained us to want to be alone all the time or to come up with reasons to be alone all the time. Trying to unlearn that, to seek out places that are a little uncomfortable, and learning how to be bored, that’s a really big one. You have to be able to be alone with yourself. I used to be an extrovert because I was afraid to be alone, and now I’m an extrovert who loves to hang out with people and loves to recharge on my own. I’m an emotionally secure extrovert.

Learn how to be bored so that you know that in a conversation, there might be a slow point, and that’s okay. We can slow down. We can be present. So, I encourage you to try to find two overlaps with people in person. I love looking for queer board gaming groups, trans business owners, or a D&D book club. I’ve had the most success when there are two or more overlapping things in common. It gives us enough starting things to talk about. I have found the most success making friends at those kinds of things. I have a harder time getting motivation to go to stuff where I don’t know what I’m gonna have in common with people. It’s scary, and that’s valid, but learn how to be bored and go to the places where the people are.

Aidan: In the past month, I’ve gone to a fair amount of events, and no matter what, that moment before you walk into a space, where you don’t know what’s on the other side of the door, is really hard.

Ben: Sometimes you’re unpleasantly surprised. Sometimes you’re pleasantly surprised.

Aidan: And either way, you learn something! In terms of recharging, since you like to recharge alone, something that I’ve talked to a lot of people about, especially on Substack right now, is burnout. Have you felt burnout, either from your activism or from Substack, and if so, what are the ways that you cope with it?

Ben: Well, my public speaking, in particular, used to be rooted in knowing that people were hungry for trans trauma and pain. I had this story I would tell about halfway through every single speech, and once I was on a Zoom call with a group of lawyers, giving a presentation. They all had their cameras off, and I was telling that story, and I thought, “They did not earn this story. This story is too personal for this group of people. I’m going to swap that story out in my little script that I have and put in a story of one of the most beautiful, joyful experiences that I’ve had.” And I have not told that story in a presentation again since that day four years ago.

Through that, I found a couple of things. Number one, I found that I was much less tired after giving a presentation, and I found that people were more motivated to action. They weren’t so sad and depressed; they were energized to be a part of something. So, as I’ve started to choose joy in my work more, I have found that it is sometimes less draining.

And in general, choosing joy is really important, and joy is a distinct thing from happiness. Happiness is a feeling based on circumstances. I’m having an ice cream cone. I’m going for a nice walk. Joy is an attitude that defines circumstances. When I go to the Missouri State Capitol, I’m not happy. It’s a bad day; they don’t like me there, they don’t respect me, they don’t listen to me. But I go and I’m joyful because I choose that. I choose to carpool rather than drive by myself, and I choose to meet up with friends that I only get to see at the Capitol.

First thing I do when I hear about a hearing is text my friends to say, “Who’s going to be at the Capitol this week?” I’m joyful because I give my testimony, and I go into the overflow room, and I do tarot readings for the kids that are there, or we order 25 pizzas to our favorite legislator’s office. We choose joy. I could sit in the corner with my arms crossed and say, I’m so angry. I’m so opressed. I hate that I’m here, and I am angry. And I do hate that I’m there, but I am choosing to be joyful, right?

I’m always looking at my week and noticing where I think the peaks and valleys of my energies are going to be, and trying to distribute the week so it’s as even as possible. You know, if I know that I want to make plans with a friend that’s going to really recharge me, I’ll plan that either right before or right after a day that I know is going to be really draining. So we can choose joy, even when things feel shitty and on fire.

Aidan: Absolutely. Choose joy actually used to be my password because that way, every time I typed it in, I’d remember to do it. But on the days when joy is harder to find, what do you do?

Ben: I resist the urge to isolate. For sure. My social media use was an addiction. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I think it’s important for me to admit that, because it mirrors the ways that other addictions might show up. At your lowest points, it will call to you to say, “This is what you need right now, this will make you feel better.” So I’ve gotten a lot better at not craving Instagram every day, but when the joy feels far, I start to hear that voice in my head saying, “Ooh, maybe I should just download it, just for today. I just need to check out a little bit. I need to feel a little more numb. Wouldn’t that be so nice?”

Having language around addiction helps me understand that that’s what that is. A piece of me is craving numbness and isolation, not in a way that will make me feel better, but in a way that I am vulnerable to when joy is further away. I have to be extra firm about asking for help with that.

Sometimes it means when I’m in a really bad time, I’ll write out a couple of little paragraphs in my notes app and then just copy and paste them to friends. I’ll write this little thing to let the people in my life know, “Hey, I’m really struggling right now.” Then I will be really gentle with myself. As the poem goes, by Mary Oliver, you have to give the soft animal of your body what it needs. I treat myself like a friend who has the flu. I make myself some really tasty food. I listen to some gentle music. I sit with myself in that uncomfortable feeling, and I ask myself, “Okay, why am I feeling further away from joy right now?”

Usually I do, hand on the heart, hand on the stomach, so I can feel my heartbeat and my breathing. And I just sit, and I really try to ask myself, “What do I need right now? Who do I need it from? What’s in the way? What am I afraid of?”

And I just treat myself with the utmost compassion and tenderness, because it’s allowed to be scary, it’s allowed to be exhausting, it’s allowed to be infuriating, and I give myself the space for all those messy, hard emotions to tell me what I need. Anger lets us know when a boundary has been crossed and something cannot be accepted. Grief lets us know when something has changed, or something is lost, or something hurts. And I ask what those emotions are teaching me, and I know that I will come home to joy, because you cannot build a home in anger. So reasonable to be angry right now, but you cannot build a home in anger.

Aidan: Dude, you are so inspiring.

Ben: Thank you!

Aidan: I really thought you’d give a nice little answer about habits or something, but that…That answer really fucked me up in a great way.

Ben: I credit a lot of that to the book, On Thriving by Brandi Sellerz-Jackson. One thing about me is that I am an absolute sucker for a self-help book written by a black woman. 99 out of 100 self-help books are garbage about the grind-set mindset, but the number of books that I’ve read by black women about self-care or business or ambition, completely reframe everything I need to do. That book talks about thriving while marginalized and healing. That book really did a number on me.

Aidan: Okay, so if we have On Thriving and Loving Accountability. What’s the third book to complete that trifecta?

Ben: Okay, well, I have a book recommendation for you specifically, the book Swole: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle.

Aidan: Oooh, I feel attacked, but maybe in a good way?

Ben: Yes, I think you would love it very much. Bad Gays is also a fun one about evil gay people in history. I know you’ve been doing a lot more history lately, so that’s a great one. But in terms of the trifecta of books that make me the advocate and the person that I am… I think the third one has to be See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur. I’m going to read you the little excerpt from the back, because it explains why this book hits so much. “If love is a sweet labor, love can be taught, modeled, and practiced. This labor engages all our emotions. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger protects that which is loved. And when we think we have reached our limit, wonder is the act that returns us to love.” She is a hardcore front-line organizer doing a lot with immigrants’ rights and fighting against Islamophobia. In all these places, she leads with love, like finding a way to love the police officer who broke her arm when she was detained at a protest, and how she healed from that. Really tremendously beautiful writing. So those three books are the foundation I stand on, the way that I’m able to feel at all okay right now.

Aidan: Wow. I cannot wait to read them. I also think we’re existing in a world where love, empathy, and kindness are all seen as weaknesses in a way that is so unsettling. It’s so much harder to find love for somebody who has wronged you than the other way around, and it’s so much harder to talk to people who, you know, don’t like you.

Ben: Yeah, it’s really easy to write people off and to just say it’s not worth talking to you; civic disdain is the term for that. It is in Mark Zuckerberg’s best interest for us not to bother talking to each other, because it means that he can help keep building his empire and getting his tax breaks. And because we’re fighting each other, we’re too busy to fight him. It is such a source of power.

There’s a line from an author of a book I really like that says, “We cannot deny others the dignity of complexity.” I’m thinking about all the people whom I used to just say, “Well, that’s the opposition, that’s the other side, that’s the bad guys, those are the people who hate me.” I really don’t think that there are people who hate me anymore. I think there are people who fear me. I think there are people who have been taught something about me that is not true.

I think there are very few cartoon villains out there who are rubbing their hands together, trying to make your life worse. Your neighbor got fear mongered because the education system is broken, and he can’t afford groceries. He’s freaked out. He’s traumatized. He has his own baggage. That doesn’t mean I think he’s the best person ever, but we can’t deny others the dignity of complexity. People are scared, and misinformation is a multi-billion-dollar machine. I can’t be mad at someone because they’ve heard conflicting things about trans kids in sports. That messaging is everywhere. I’d rather sit down and get through to them than be mad that they’ve read 100 articles about it.

Aidan: That brings us back to what you said at the beginning about nuance and how it really is a muscle that needs to be worked out. We’re losing this ability to sit with people because it is scary, but I think the more that we acknowledge that connection may take intentional discomfort, the better. It can be hard even to talk to someone you have a lot in common with. Even prepping for interviews, I get nervous. What are we gonna talk about? Are we gonna have enough to say? Will they like me?

Ben: Yes, I know. Are they gonna like me exactly?

Aidan: But this is so much more enriching and rewarding than sitting alone and writing another article, you know? So I’m really grateful for this. Okay, last thing, or rather two things. What are your hopes, dreams, and goals for the future?

Ben: I spend a lot of time thinking about this. My dream is that my wife and I are getting ready to have kids. We’re starting IVF, and I want to be a dad. That’s what I’m freaking dreaming of, a little baby that I get to wear around on a Baby Bjorn and spread the gay agenda through. I’m so excited to be a dad and to get to experience that.

I love writing books. I have so many stories that I want to tell. I have a lot of dreams, and in many ways, I dream of the life I’m already in. I have people who love me. I have work that feels meaningful. I certainly dream of a different political ecosystem, but I love where I am. I love my family. I love my life. I love my community. So, as a human, I’m dreaming of being able to continue living the way that I am.

My hope with Good Queer News was two parts. One part was to spread all the good queer news, to bring the joy and hope, which I’ve been very public about. The other goal, which I’ve only just started to talk about, is to become a transgender Mr. Rogers in a way where I have this total trust around me. I want people to say, “Okay, I trust Ben Greene. He’s wholesome, he’s nuanced, he brings all these things together.” Then I could gather together so much of our community and say, “I’m so glad we’re here, now sit down so we can talk about your behavior.” So we can really push our community to grow and talk about trans misogyny, bio essentialism, and how white queer people need to stop using AAVE. It’s not queer talk. It’s just racist.

I love building a platform where I have the ability to push our community. You’re going to see more of that from Good Queer News, loving corrections and dreams of what the movement could be, dreams of where we go from here and how we build a future for all of us on this planet, yes, even those people.

I’m still figuring out what that looks like exactly, but I’m really loving where it is, and I’m so grateful for the people who are putting their trust in me. Somebody messaged me a while ago and they said, “I decided to start a GSA at my school because of this. I decided to start a club. Somebody decided to run for office because they saw it in Good Queer News. So that’s what I want to keep doing.

Aidan: Okay, lastly, what do you hope people feel when they read your writing?

Ben: I hope they feel that it’s not time to give up yet. I want to be the antidote to people who say that we’re cooked or the world’s on fire. That implies that it’s being destroyed in a way that can’t ever be recovered. There will always be further to go, but my God, look at how far we’ve come. Look at how strong we are. Look at how many allies we have. We have more cultural support than we have ever had, since before colonization. It’s amazing what we’ve built. So I hope people read my work and say, “All right, I could do one more day. I could do one more thing. I could go to one more rally. I could take one more action.” That’s the hope, that people get what they need to keep going.

Aidan: Wow, that’s perfect!

Ben: You’re gassing me up. This is dangerous for my ego!

Aidan: No, I love it. I feel so inspired. Before this, I was having a rough day, but now I feel invigorated and ready to go, which I think is such a testament to not only what you think and how you say it, but the energy with which you say it. And I think that everything that you are striving to present, you do.

Ben: Thank you, I really appreciate that. Thank you for interviewing me.

Aidan: Thank you! Much more to come in the future, and have a lovely afternoon.

Ben: Thanks. You too!