This story was published in partnership with LOOKOUT, a nonprofit news outlet focused on LGBTQ+ accountability journalism in Arizona. Sign up for their newsletter here.
It’s hard to offend Eric.
He’s a father to a sassy child, a professor who guides often-skeptical college students, and a transgender man.
From tasteless jokes to accusations of child grooming — both in person and, more broadly, in the media — Eric has “heard it all,” he says. And that makes him the perfect person for the project he’s been leading for the past eight months: answering uncomfortable questions about his gender identity.
Since the start of the year, Eric has traveled across Southern Arizona hosting “ask me anything” sessions about transgender people, cheekily titled “Trans 101.”
So far, he has held only a handful of the sessions, mostly in houses of worship and progressive-leaning spaces, blending casual conversation with audience Q&As. The goal — create empathy for a stranger — is one of the most effective ways to ease cultural tension, experts say.
He sees it as his way of contributing at a time when anti-trans laws and rhetoric are at historic highs, which has ramped up even more in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. His approach also reflects a long-standing practice in conflict resolution: Sitting face-to-face with people who may not understand you.
It also makes him an easy target for far-right protesters who have targeted transgender people and teachers with online vitriol and violence. For that reason, Eric’s last name has been removed from this story.
“I want to open a space where people can ask really basic questions,” he said. “Because I think basic things are what prevent them from engaging with complicated things.”
‘I am working for my life’
Around 6 p.m. on April 10, the temple pews at the Tucson Jewish Museum and Holocaust Center began to fill with people. The audience ran the gamut: young to old, gothic to preppy, queer to straight. Some came to support transgender family members or friends, expecting someone in the crowd might disparage them.
Lynn Davis, the center’s director who invited Eric to speak, thought the turnout was inspiring.
“It was a lot of the people who I would say were the ‘movable middle,’” she said. “There were people there with not much connection — or not much direct connection — to the transgender community, but they had a commitment to humanity and making the world a better place. They wanted to learn something.”
Davis first heard of Eric through her son, a university student who had him as a professor. Davis’s son, she said, was struck by how clearly Eric explained complex ideas to undergraduates.
When Davis approached Eric to speak at the museum, he mentioned that he had begun holding small Q&As in his personal time. “I jumped at the opportunity to host him,” she said.
On the night of the museum’s Q&A, Eric stepped onto the stage and opened with a plea.
“My hope is that I can convince one, two, three, four people in this audience to care what happens to people like me, because if you don’t, there’s no place for us here,” he said. “If you know a group, an individual, a poker club, a walking party — anybody who could benefit from what I’m saying tonight, please ask me to do it. I am working for my life.”
Eric told the audience of about 50 that no question was off-limits.
After sharing his story and the process of his own transition in his early 20’s, the questions began.
One audience member asked: “In the last election, Trump successfully played on the prejudices of using pronouns as a weapon, but is it possible that the public wasn’t ready?”
Eric replied that it was possible. He explained the types of pronouns, adding that it’s OK to not be fully up to date. “Language changes quickly and it’s hard for people when they’re older to change,” he said. “And I see a lot of people pushing 50 here. So that makes sense.”
The questions kept coming:
“How long have transgender people been here?”
“What do we know about puberty blockers and surgeries?”
“If medical intervention had been available when you were a kid, would you have done it?”
These weren’t groundbreaking, but they reflected the namesake of “Trans 101.”
“He made it so easy and permissible to ask questions,” said A. Michael Hutchins, a Tucson resident who has been working with LGBTQ+ Tucsonans for more than 40 years. “He provided a space to ask things that otherwise wouldn’t have been asked.”
For Davis, any anxiety she might have had melted away after the first questions were answered: “It was a magical night,” she said.
Afterward, one audience member, who Davis said may have needed the most guidance on his views of transgender people, thanked her for bringing Eric. “I felt it really impacted him,” she said.
How simple conversations lead to empathy
In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, lawmakers and commentators have praised the far-right influencer for engaging in “civil discourse.” But Kirk’s campus tours often devolved into heated debates in which each topic had a winner and a loser. Even the banner hanging over him when he was shot read: “Prove Me Wrong.”
That approach — trying to “win” with facts — doesn’t work in fostering real conversation, said Amanda Ripley, co-founder of Good Conflict, an organization that trains people to navigate high-conflict situations.
“If yelling at people, shaming them on social media, or putting lawn signs proclaiming your side as morally superior worked, we wouldn’t be here,” she said, speaking generally about arguments. “The goal is to understand the other person and see if they can understand me. If you can get there, it’s a massive game changer.”
Americans across the political spectrum agree that civil conversation is rare. Pew Research found that the political values have dramatically widened the gap between people, with negative views of people in either opposite party going well past the 50% mark. .
On the left, op-eds have urged cutting ties with people who voted for President Donald Trump. In 2018, Pew found that liberals didn’t feel that talking politics with conservatives was worth it, citing higher rates of stress and less opportunity to find common ground.
On the right, former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, now head of the Free Press, has argued liberals are intolerant of opposing viewpoints. Some lawmakers have declared that “unity is no longer an option.”
The problem, experts say, is that people struggle to see one another’s humanity. Without that, conversation is nearly impossible.
“The word ‘conversation’ sounds really small, but it’s an umbrella that includes some of the most powerful tools we know of in the human condition,” Ripley said. Social media and information silos, she added, make it easy to see people as enemies — and once someone is seen as dangerous, even engaging with them can feel like “disloyalty,” she said.
Nolan Higdon, a media professor and author of Let’s Agree to Disagree, said productive conflict requires recognizing shared values and sitting with discomfort, not just trading facts.
“Even if you can’t fully grasp each other’s experiences, you can at least respect and confirm that they exist,” he said.
Without that, he warned, democratic ideals are at risk. “Civil conversations are needed for democracy,” he said. “When they fail to exist, it’s a sign democracy is falling. But these conversations will take time.”
Research shows even brief conversations can shift perspectives.
In Higdon’s book, he mentions how in South Florida, SAVE Miami adapted a canvassing model from the Los Angeles LGBT Center, sending 56 canvassers to more than 500 homes to talk about transgender rights. Each conversation lasted 10 minutes, and follow-up surveys showed participants had reduced prejudice toward transgender people up to six months later, compared with those who never spoke to canvassers. Those results, according to the study, were greater than the change in Americans’ feelings toward gay people between 1998 and 2012, when same-sex marriage was being hotly contested in multiple states.
‘I want to change what they know’
Eric said conversations like his must happen now, though he doesn’t see his role as changing minds.
“I want to change what they know,” he said. “But I don’t think I’m trying to convince anyone that I’m worth surviving.”
Asked how society reached this moment on transgender rights, Eric was blunt: The left, has shut down curiosity, while the right has weaponized that silence and cast transgender people as villains. That dynamic has left the “movable middle” hesitant to ask questions that might help them understand the cultural shift.
“There’s kind of a political line that says, ‘Here’s how you’re supposed to talk about, feel about, and relate to trans people,’” he said. “That makes it hard for people who may have challenges with some of these issues.”
He pointed to debates about transgender girls in youth sports as an example. “People feel strongly about this, and it touches a lot of nerves,” he said. “It’s like, we’re supposed to care about this, but we’re not sure why. That’s the feeling.”
The purpose of his sessions, Eric said, is to meet people who might otherwise see LGBTQ+ people only through sensational headlines, and give them a place to learn and have even, candid conversations.
That, he said, opens the door to more nuanced discussions and gives people tools to respond when they hear harmful rhetoric.
“So when you hear a transphobic joke, you are able to stop that person,” Eric told the audience. “Say, ‘Hey, I know and love a transgender person. And that’s not funny.’”