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Interview with Adrien Lawyer, Director of Education of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico and Author, Gender Transition for Dummies.
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Interview with Adrien Lawyer, Director of Education of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico and Author, Gender Transition for Dummies.
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Interview with Adrien Lawyer, Director of Education of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico and Author, Gender Transition for Dummies.
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The Equity Hour, a monthly show on Gila Mindre's Community Radio, featured an interview with Adrienne Warrior from the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico. Adrienne shared his personal journey as a transgender man and discussed the center's services, including trainings, support groups, advocacy work, and assistance with legal processes like name changes. He highlighted the importance of New Mexico's progressive policies for transgender individuals, such as self-attesting gender on state IDs. Adrienne also mentioned their book, "Gender Transition for Dummies," as a resource for understanding gender transition and supporting trans individuals. The discussion touched on challenges faced by transgender people under different administrations, including recent issues with passport regulations. Despite potential federal conflicts, New Mexico remains a supportive environment for transgender rights and services. The following program is pre-recorded. The views expressed on this program do not reflect the views of Gila Mindre's Community Radio and belong solely to the program hosts and guests. You are listening to Gila Mindre's Community Radio, KURU 89.1 FM in Silver City, New Mexico, and online at GNCR.org. You are listening to The Equity Hour, where the political is personal, a monthly show. The Equity Hour is part of the Kindred Continuum series and airs on the first Monday of the month at 10 a.m. and is replayed on the air the following Sunday at 4 p.m. I'm your co-host, Cindy Renee Provencio. And I'm your co-host, Kit West. This show is the second part of our series on transgender issues. We are interviewing Adrienne Warrior, Director of Education and of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, and author of Gender Transition for Dummies. Go ahead and take it away, Adrienne. So, Adrienne, we were just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and the Resource Center to start. Sure. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm really excited to be here. My name is Adrienne Warrior, and I'm a founder at TGRC, meaning I helped to start the organization way back in 2007. And I, myself, am a transgender man. I'm 54 years old right now, so I was born in 1970. That was a little bit of a rough time to be born for trans people because there just wasn't a lot of knowledge about it. Even though I clearly had something going on with me gender-wise as a kid, my parents didn't have any context for understanding that or really getting what that was except to think that probably I was gay, even when I was little, you know. And for me, I thought that, too. I came out as what we used to call a butch lesbian when I was about 14 years old in 1984-1985 and lived like that for about 20 years until I was finally able to begin my own medical journey in 2004 and started my medical transition right around then. And then a couple of years into that, I ended up starting the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico with one of my best friends, Zane Stevens. And in the beginning, we definitely were very aspirational. We had support groups that we were holding mainly in people's homes and borrowed spaces. We put up a website. We did a lot of talking to folks one-on-one, just, you know, in coffee shops and stuff like that. And way back in the very beginning, I started doing the trainings that we still do today, mainly trainings for non-trans people. We call that cisgender, trainings for cisgender folks about trans folks. And since 2008, now I've done about 4,000 of those trainings for doctors, nurses, teachers, law enforcement, correctional staff. I mean, you name it, any group you can think of, we've trained. And these days, we're one of the more sizable statewide trans organizations in the country. And we do a huge array of services for folks remotely. We can help people legally change their names, update their identity documents. We send out about $7,500 a month in direct financial assistance to folks throughout the state. We do trans-specific items like binders and breast forms and packers and things like that that people need. We have a provider directory on our website that lists all of the trans-friendly supportive businesses and medical and behavioral health providers we know around the state and a database on our website. We have eight active support groups that meet once a month in person, but once a month on Zoom. And many of the groups now have Discord servers and Google Groups where folks can talk without attending a group meeting. And that's all stuff we can do remotely for people. We have a building in Albuquerque, 14,000 square feet, where we provide all of those same services and more for youth and adults. We do advocacy work where we help people individually if they need an advocate, but also policy-level advocacy. We help to write the transgender student policy for Albuquerque public schools, for example. And we've done legislative advocacy over the years as well. We've helped to change the law that governs how you change the gender on your birth certificate here in New Mexico. And also the name change statute we helped to update in 2023, which actually helped a lot of folks, but definitely made it safer and easier for trans and non-binary people to access those processes. That's great. How does that interface with the Trump administration's need to have your passport say your biological gender and stuff? Is that connected? Do you help with those kinds of things too? Just wondering. I don't think there's been anything folks can do about that right now. So one of the things that folks, if trans folks are listening to this, our advice right now is if you don't have plans to travel outside of the United States, you really don't need a passport. And I think this emphasis and focus on passports has scared a lot of people and made them feel that they urgently need to get a passport. But the truth is, your real ID, New Mexico driver's license, or state ID can do everything that a passport can do itself to help you cross a border. And in New Mexico, accessing those things with an M, F, or X on it is still a totally protected and safe thing to do. So if you're trans or non-binary here in New Mexico and you need a solid ID to travel domestically, to cash checks, to open a bank account, go ahead and get that New Mexico, to vote, exactly. Get the New Mexico state ID or driver's license because here in New Mexico, you are able to self-attest to your gender and get an identity document that matches who you truly are. And right now, passports aren't that way for folks. Right. That's what I was wondering. It came up when you were talking about name changes and stuff like that. You're exactly right. We thought in passports, it's interesting, we had gotten to be probably the gold standard for how you change those things at the end of 24. Yeah. Right, right. I went through a name change thing myself and it took forever to get it on my passport. Yeah, for example. Oh, what I meant was, passports over the last 10 years finally got to be where you just really walked in and said, this is the gender I want on there and they put it on there. Oh, I see. So it was the easiest and most streamlined, really solid ID to get for people who lived in unfriendly states. And now it's not a trend anymore. Right. And now it's not an option for folks. Right. Because here in New Mexico, luckily, we're a very, very progressive and friendly state. So getting the things you need here in New Mexico is going to stay safe definitely for the foreseeable future. Wonderful. That's good news. Sorry to interrupt. That just came up in the chat. Not one bit. Not one bit. Thank you. How does that affect these recent changes? Do you want to continue to talk about the other services or do we want to move into like how other ways that the new administration is affecting transgender folks? I would just want to say, and you already mentioned it, but I want to definitely plug our book, Gender Transition for Dummies, which is on the shelves at some bookstores, but definitely available at all online booksellers. And I'm the lead author in that book, but our team at TGRC contributed and a great friend of ours who's a doctor also contributed to the book. And the postage from the book come back to the center. So when folks buy a copy of that book, they're actually helping TGRC. But the book also, we researched a ton of it, and we've done this work for so long that some of it we just knew inside and out already. And it answers pretty much every question we could think of that folks would have about what gender transition means and how you accomplish the different steps that might be involved with that. I know some folks feel that they can't get up to Albuquerque to come to the center. You don't need to get to Albuquerque to access us. We do a lot of helping people over the internet, over the phone, over email. So if you live out in Silver, if you live up in Farmington, please reach out to us anyway, even if you can't come to Albuquerque. But for folks who don't have a TGRC, that book is a great, great, great resource for all the questions that people have about this challenging process. Right. Right. And it also is a way that cisgender people who are allies and family and friends of trans people can help by buying the book. That's absolutely right. Because it goes right back to the resource center, right? Exactly. Processing via knowledge about what we mean by gender transition is a great thing for cis people to know. And at the back of the book, at the back of Dummy's book, has a section called the parts of 10. And they're just interesting lists of usually right around 10 things that are just different things that kind of supplement the book. Like we have 10 famous trans and non-binary people you need to know, stuff like that. But one of our parts of 10 sections was 10 ways to support trans and non-binary people in your life. So there's even a great section for cis people right at the end. And does it explode some of the most prevalent myths about transgender folks, too, in the book? You know, not as much because it was geared towards the trans audience. Yeah, so we didn't feel like we had to do that for trans folks specifically. But certainly things about transition that I think are common misconceptions that people have, for sure. Right. Right. Okay. So are there any ways that this new administration is making these services more difficult? Specifically? I mean, you've talked about the passport thing and that that's really not an issue. But are there other ways that are an issue? Other services that are being impacted? I mean, New Mexico is a very different kind of place, and we're really lucky. But nevertheless, there seems to be some conflict between the feds and the state. At least here in Silver City, recently there have been some organizations that have told doctors that they are following the federal rule, not the state law, and that they will refuse to work with transgender people and refer doctors. They don't want doctors to refer a patient to someone for, let's say, gender affirming procedures or therapy or anything like that. Do you run into things like that? We do. We're seeing some of that, too. We're definitely seeing providers around the state, even here in Albuquerque, being very scared about that, right? Feeling really, really worried and scared about, are they going to be stopped from doing the work that they've already been doing? And some sort of preemptive preparation even around that, which is scary to see. You know, you don't want to see people shutting down access to healthcare for folks just because they're worried that they might be told to in the future, you know? Right. But we have seen some of that, definitely. There's a lot of fear. And we find that that's true with all of our constituency, but most especially, I would say, the parents of trans kids. Right. They seem to be the most impacted right now to me. Like, they're just deeply, deeply afraid for their children of all ages. Can you help with that at the TRC? You know, we do. One of our groups is a parent support group, a parent and family member support group. So those folks have come together to really support one another, and they're a great, amazing group. They're even going to go out and do, like, a game night. The parent group is going to get together socially to hang out together, and I think that's really important right now. Being able to do social things and be in community with one another is huge. You know, it's so easy to isolate when we feel afraid this way, you know, and we feel that there's so much opposition or so much danger out there. A lot of trans folks already deal with a ton of anxiety and depression, and so it's easy then to start to want to isolate yourself. And so to make sure people are getting to our support groups, you know, that's sort of the origins of the trans movement are basically peer support groups. And so I think offering that space all this time, way back since 2007, has been a really crucial piece of, you know, folks not feeling like they're in this alone. Right. What is the main avenue in which you're dealing with that stressor? Is it support groups? Is there anything else that you're doing to try to alleviate those anxieties and those stressors? Yeah, we did, starting in December, we started to do community conversations once a month with our friends from Equality New Mexico and the ACLU, and just got together to kind of give like the legislative landscape, you know, during the legislative session here in New Mexico. And then also answer questions and things that people have about all of this, about what's going on. And a lot of folks have told us those were really, really helpful in terms of just helping them to feel calmer, you know, being able to get like good, solid, true answers to these exact questions, like I can't get my passport, but can I still get my driver's license, you know? Is it a bad idea for me now to try to get a name change, which it is absolutely not. We think you should definitely get your name changed if you haven't done it, you know? And we think people should have the legal weight behind these things as much as possible. And here in New Mexico, it's really important for folks to understand, because you're right, there's a lot of tension here and friction even, but our state is one of the safest states in the country for LGBTQ people. So we want people to know that, that as of right now, there's a lot of protections that are holding really steady here. That's very, very good news. Do other states know that? I know that Lujan Grisham, our wonderful governor, sent out a message to Texans who are having a hard time saying, come here, we will take care of you, you know, you don't have to deal with all those things, you know, here in New Mexico. I don't know. That's a kind of outreach. Well, and people do know, I mean, we definitely have had folks not just come across the border for medical appointments, but literally move their families here from surrounding states because they do know about PGRC and they do know about our laws here. So we do see that. I think at the center, we have kind of a complicated relationship with that because the problem is there never have been enough resources for the folks who already live here. Oh, I see. You are listening to The Equity Hour, where the political is personal. And I am your co-host, Cindy Renee Provencio. You are listening to Gila Minges Community Radio, KURU 89.1 FM. And we are interviewing Adrian, Director of Education of the Transgender Resource Center on The Equity Hour. I'm sorry, the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico. You may continue, Adrian. So that's a good, bad thing, right? Like you want people to come to get their needs met here in New Mexico, but do we have the resources? Exactly. Do we have the resources, right? Exactly. And for us, it's always about trying to cultivate more resources. You know, we are not saying don't come here. You know, we would never say that to folks in need and in fear, you know, who are coming over here. We try our best to step in and help every single person that we can. But it is complex, you know. We are not putting the call out necessarily for that reason, you know. Does the state help? Do you get state funds? We do. We are contractors. Yeah, the health department is one of our contracts. And we also get funding from the Crime Victims Reparations Commission. Oh, that's wonderful. Wow. That's really great. So you don't foresee any change in that? You don't foresee? Because in the last election, a lot of people that we thought would go blue went red, you know, within New Mexico and the county level, right? So do you see that changing at all or do you think that's a really solid situation? We really don't. We really don't. I mean, I know it's always hard to say things like that. Anything can happen. We've seen that politically over these years, for sure, over these last few years. But I think, in general, we really don't think that way about New Mexico. We actually still actively, every session, I'm working coalition with a bunch of partners to pass better laws. Like, we don't do a lot of defensive legislative work here. Wow. Okay, that's very, very good news. I did not know that. Yeah, it's really amazing. Those bills come up every session because they're almost sort of a, you know, they're just a centralized set of bill language that goes out to all different states. And then, you know, certain legislators file and introduce those bills, like, to ban trans kids from playing sports and that type of thing. But here in New Mexico, luckily, we think of that as being something that's easily taken care of in committee. And so we work to actually do, to advance the rights and access for LGBTQ folks in lots of different ways, actually. Our coalition is really broad. So, like, this year, the one bill that we actually got through was to help get rid of junk rental fees when you apply for an apartment, you know, because things that affect folks in poverty disproportionately affect LGBTQ folks. Right. Right. So we think of it as a bigger thing than just, like, is it something that says more rights for gay people or trans people? That's cool. We've done laws like that. But also, we tend to think of it more like, how do we help the more marginalized members of our community, which is true for straight and cisgender folks as well. And that's an important thing to know, to understand, that this is part of a larger group as well. That's your point. Right. Right. Exactly. Trans people aren't just trans. Right. They're all the other things that they are in addition to that. Right. That's a very important thing, I think, that a lot of people, a lot of cisgender people don't know. And so I read an article about therapies, you know, and how few people, transgender folks, actually get the therapies that they need. And the only way they could track that was through private insurance. And so they had this caveat saying, you know, this doesn't cover really a lot of people because so many are already marginalized economically or racially or whatever. Right. Right. They're part of a larger group. So private insurance, a lot of people don't have private insurance. So that doesn't, it helps us understand, but not as much as you would think. I think that's an area of ignorance. It was mine. You know, I thought, oh, good, they're actually getting some help. And they came in and they said, no, these numbers look okay. Even though it's a very small number. It's actually even smaller. Right. Because most of the people, they just, it's not available for them. Right. Right. That's an important thing. So what you're saying is like, as far as legislation is concerned, like a lot of anti-trans bills never make it to the floor. Is that what you're saying? Because they're dealt with. That's exactly right. Right. That's exactly right. That's, that's really good to know. So we know where we stand. Renee, did you have any burning questions? I don't actually. I'm just really enjoying listening. Okay. So we can shift, you know, shift a little bit, pivot. And this, there have to be things, when we did the immigration show, there were a lot of things that were uncovered about what the allies of undocumented people can do to help. And we uncovered a lot of that. And we've touched on that with you, like the book and things like that. What else can, can the allies of trans folks do to help this situation? Not just here in New Mexico, but, you know, nationwide, that you can suggest? Yeah. Because we want to engage people with something that they can do, you know? No, absolutely. I feel like there are so many things that folks can do, actually. I mean, you know, the things that we've always been advocating for in terms of advocacy and solidarity are still, in many ways, the same. You know, we really do think that people should list their pronouns. That's actually becoming kind of a, like a scary thing to do in some workplaces now, which even shows more how important it really is, right? The fact that it's, the fact that it's becoming a controversial thing to list your pronouns to give us a sense of how profound that actually is then, right? Wherever you live or work or play or worship, there's always a way to make bathrooms safer and more inclusive for gender-variant people. And it's not always about rebuilding the building. It can be about hanging better signs, you know? And we can help you to know, like, I have templates for good bathroom signs that people can use that help people to know from the minute they walk in the bathroom, hey, I'm actually safe in here. I'm not the first trans person to come through these doors. Right. Right. I think for us, I mean, I've been an educator for such a long time. I feel like that getting our training is one of the biggest first steps you can do. Like, getting our training gets people in a workplace or in a social group or a book club or a pickleball team or a synagogue or a church or a mosque, it gets everybody in that place to a baseline of knowledge and information about this topic that actually tends to generate better conversations in that place after we leave. So what we've seen with our training is we come in and do the training and then when we leave, people are like, oh, we should start putting pronouns on our name tags or we should hang better signs in our bathroom, but they start to have that conversation because now their brains are thinking about trans people in a new way. So I do truly believe that still at this juncture, getting even a two-hour class like what we do about trans folks is one of the most important first steps you can take to wrap your mind around this and understand it for what it is and really become more sympathetic and more knowledgeable about how to be supportive. Can you talk a little bit more about those trainings so people have a better idea? Like, let's say they want to contact you and have a training, like you've mentioned the signs with the bathroom and the pronouns. Are there other areas? Do you go into the history of the transgender issue? We do. That's exactly right. We do a bunch of data. We were able to convince what's called the Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey. And this is a nationwide thing, but it's administered at the state level. So every state runs their own youth survey like this. And here in New Mexico, it's often called the YRBS. And here we call ours the YRRS because we wanted ours to say, it says the Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey. So lots of the questions are about risk factors and risk behaviors that young people are engaging in or experiencing, but our survey does also ask about some things that they think build resiliency in young folks. And the survey is administered every other year, an odd number of years, to public high school students throughout the state. Not every public school participates, but a large enough number do that you get kind of really amazing surveillance data on 9th to 12th grade students here in New Mexico, that age group all around the state. And so for many years, we begged the YRRS to add a question about, are you trans or non-binary? And we finally got them to adopt a question like that in 2017. So starting in 2017, we started asking New Mexican students if they were trans or non-binary. So we have four cycles of data about this now. And so we definitely present some of that data in the training so that people understand how at risk these kids are. Even in 2023, the data was really harrowing. So we do data. We do etiquette. We do terminology. And one of the big points to me of the training is to help people understand that being trans or non-binary is really what I call a minority characteristic or a minority trait, very much akin to something like being left-handed or being born with red hair. And those are great examples because guess what? We were mean to both of those groups of people too until we learned to just think of it as a normal human variation. And that's what this is too. We're still in that kind of dark age of history where people are tying up our hands at school, you know, or metaphorically, you know, thinking about this as a negative thing instead of just a normal human variation, which is clearly what it is. So in our training, we typically are able to get through to a lot of folks in the room about kind of thinking of it that way. And it's working. Exactly. My next question is, is it working? I mean, have you been there long? 2007, you said, right? You founded it. Have you seen great positive changes since that time? We're in 2025. I mean, that's a good chunk of time. Absolutely. It's kind of amazing to do work like that with this much continuity. Because definitely I have 100% seen things like the hospital systems here in the state get better and better about asking the right questions and calling people by their correct name and pronouns when they come in for services. Or even, honestly, around the country, I train a lot of people who work in jails and prisons. And we've seen some, you know, some kind of incredible reforms in some of those systems around the country in different states. Like Oregon in particular is incredibly sincere about, and Washington State, both really, trying to treat trans prisoners in a different way. Right. Like they're not going to take trans women and put them in a men's prison. Although that historically is the way it's been done. I know. That's why I'm referring to it. Exactly. People are sore. And actually, you know, still, I mean, here in New Mexico, we haven't gotten them out of that practice yet. No? Okay. But it's, you know, exactly, exactly. There's just always still work to be done. That's exactly right. What else do you see in the future as work to be done, challenges that you're moving forward into facing and changing? Do you have something on your plate that, you know, is a special thing for you or the center that you really want to change like that? That's a really big one, right? It is. It really is. When you say that, you know, the thing that I still think of is housing. It's just been a thing on our mind for such a long time. It's been such a crisis in this country, but with trans and non-binary folks in particular, they're always disproportionately represented in any group that's experiencing extreme hardship like that. So if you look at, like, I believe that trans and non-binary people, and partly I got this estimate from looking at the YRRS data over the years, but I now believe that trans and non-binary folks, when we get a really good, accurate picture of our prevalence, are going to turn out to probably be around 4% of humanity. And compare that with natural red hair is 1.7% and being left-handed is 12%. They're a huge minority group, right? So if you think of our group as maybe not even being 5% of the human population, we're always way more than that percentage of things like living in poverty or experiencing sexual violence or experiencing homelessness. We're way more than 5% of that group. So we see trans people experiencing more homelessness but having less access to shelters and programs a lot of times. So we opened our first transitional living program last year. It's called Casa Lola, and it's a house here in Albuquerque that holds six residents at a time, and we have six folks living in there right now and about 120 on the waiting list. Oh, my God. I know. So for me, when I think of it, it's not as overarching as some of the stuff we were talking about, but just building more beds for trans people and helping the systems we have to be more welcoming and inclusive of trans people around homelessness, that's definitely still a huge goal for us. Okay. We're going to take a station break right now. You are listening to Hilo Munezas Community Radio, KURU 89.1 FM in Silver City, New Mexico, and online at GMCR.org, you are listening to the Echo Day Hour, where the political is personal, and we are interviewing Adrienne, the Director of Education of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico. So we're talking about things in the future that need to get done, like a list, a long list. And one of the things, Adrienne, as we're talking about this is that this would make it easier for cisgender people to understand transgender folks and non-binary folks, is that they have the same needs as other marginalized people. Right? Right. I mean, it's not so difficult to understand that, although they're more impacted because for their percentage, they have too many people who are suffering these things. So that might be a way that something that cisgender people can really get onto, hold on to. It's like, yeah, they have the same needs as, let's say, like my husband's grandfather had a bad, you know, he was bad old age, and they found him homeless wandering the streets. Right? He kind of was demented, and people didn't know it. And so he can relate to that. So a lot of people have those kinds of situations with seniors who, you know, their own family or somebody in their own family who's a known homelessness or drug addiction or whatever. And so it's not that... Is it that big of a leap to go to a transgender or a non-binary person who has the same kinds of issues? They just have this... They just fall into a slightly different category, like you're saying, like red hair or left-handedness. They're another... Not only that, you're right on it. You're so exactly on some of the... Like, one of the sections in our training is about intersectional discrimination and violence. Right? And in the trans community, these hardships we're talking about are not evenly distributed. So I'm a white person. I'm in my 50s. I have a college degree. I was a born U.S. citizen. I'm a monolingual English speaker, and I'm a transgender man. So that means I was designated female at birth, but I've always known I was a boy. And then in my mid-30s, I finally started to take steps to kind of actualize myself in the gender that I really knew I was. Right? So when I walk around in the world, people don't even know that I am trans. I just blend in. And I'm taken to be a middle-aged, white, cis, straight man. Right? And so, actually, when I transitioned, I stepped up in unearned social privilege, right? So trans people... And I still experience... I got fired for being trans 20 years ago when I started my journey. So it doesn't mean we don't have bad things. But folks who carry more marginalized traits typically bear the brunt of the worst outcomes. Right. Exactly. So that's the kind of thing I think a lot of people do not think about when they think of transgender folks. I think they do not think about that. Because it's like, you know, after the Civil War, you know, black folks who weren't that dark would come up north and try and pass. Right? Right. And so it's like that. Like, you can pass. That's what you're... I hope you're not... Mm-hmm. You can pass. Like, my husband's Jewish. He said, I have blue eyes, and I'm really pale, and nobody knows I'm Jewish until I say my name. Right? Right. So all my whole life, I've passed. Right. So all the things that happened to Jews all around me, they haven't happened to me. You know? So okay. But nevertheless, you're still who you are. But you're not being, you know, affected in the same way as somebody who was obviously transgender. Right? It's so interesting. Or a transgender woman. Right? Well, and not even. There are trans folks of all stripes that assimilate. Right? Because it just depends on your... Like, there are trans people now who are able to access puberty-blocking drugs at the right age, and that gives them a lot more choice about how they're perceived. There are just trans people who draw what some folks would call the genetic lucky hand. Right? I've known transgender men who just were very tall. It's atypical, but it happens. Right? I've known transgender women who are very petite. They just were born that way. Just the same way you've known cisgender men who were really small. Right? If there are cisgender men who are 5'3", then there are trans women who are also 5'3", or very slight, or whatever. You know? So, people come in every stripe. More trans people blend in, I think, than folks know. But when you can't blend in, that's another highly marginalized trait. Right? Those are often folks, again, who bear the brunt of violence, discrimination, and stigma, because they can be seen. And it's so interesting that you would bring up the word passing, because that word has actually been used historically within the trans communities. Really? To talk about this. Typically teach it as assimilating, or either visibly trans or not visibly trans. Right? Because, as you felt, even when you were saying it, to say that someone was passing as a white person when they were a person of color meant they knew they were engaging in a sort of deceit. Right? Like, if they were found out, it was that they were being found out to not be the thing they were portraying themselves to be. And for trans folks, we don't feel that way. Right. Like, I'm not passing as a man. Right. You know? And the fact that other people can see it is awesome, but I'm not, like, fooling anybody or getting them to believe something that's not true. That's really true about me. Right. But we even use that word. Right. Like, trans folks use that word because I think of all of that history, and how it can feel dangerous in that same way. Yeah. And it's very dangerous, because then if you get found out... Exactly. ...you lose everything. And all kinds of violence can happen. Right. That's right. Right. It's not pretty. Okay. What else? Is there anything, Adrian, that you're thinking to add that we didn't come up with, or we didn't pass, you know, through some important things that are on your plate right now? We did such a ranging, wonderful ranging talk here. We got to talk about so many things that I care about. Actually, we squeezed a lot of it in for a short conversation. I can't really think of anything else that we urgently need to talk about. No. I guess I would like to talk about more intersectionality, and especially marginalized trans folks that have intersecting identities. Like, we definitely know that black trans women are murdered at exceptionally high rates across the country, and so I wanted to give, like... Can you give more examples of, like, what the intersectionalities and marginalized groups face? Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, there's so many really deeply disturbing statistics about this. And I know statistics are hard, because they can feel really dry for folks, you know, but we have a national trans survey called the U.S. Transgender Survey, and the data from that, each cycle that has been conducted, has been just really illuminating about what we're talking about here. It's just, in black and white, you can see it, right? In 2015, the HIV prevalence for folks in the United States was something like .3%, right? So not even, like, a third of 1% of the population of the United States was HIV positive in 2015 when this survey was conducted. And of the 28,000 people who took the survey, it was something like 1.3%. So, like, four times as high, that's really bad, you know? But when you pulled out just the black respondents to the survey, it was something like 6.8%. So exponentially higher than the population at large, right? And then when you pulled out just black trans women, it was 19%. Like, the difference between .3% and 19% is almost hard to, like, actually get my mind to compute. Me too. Me too. One in five. One in five of the black trans women who took that survey said they were HIV positive. And HIV positivity is interesting because it's really a portal into seeing a lot of the lack of choices in somebody's life, right? A lot of trans women resort to survival sex work. A lot of trans women aren't able to even finish high school. They experience so much housing discrimination and stigma. It can be hard to find a job or keep a job. There's a lot of trauma in that population as well, all in the trans population period. And so there's a lot of stuff that happens there. So, and then the other thing that we see is even, like, folks who manage to have a job in an apartment often have, you know, whatever you might call it, like, poor self-esteem, right? And will engage in risky sexual behaviors because they feel like they have to to have a partner or keep a partner. So what you see is this whole range of places where people's options are just restricted down to nothing. Or they can be oppressed in the workplace for the same reason. Exactly. Yeah. So that word exponential pops up for me. It's like, it's just, it's not, you don't add on another characteristic. It's exponential. Right. It just explodes with each characteristic that's marginalized, right? So you're trans and then you're black and then you're a woman and then, right, then you're, maybe you're addicted. Maybe you struggle with mental health issues. Maybe you're a victim of child abuse. I mean, we can just keep going on and on. You said it. Exactly. Thinking about, yes, age scores, right? All of that kind of stuff. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Yeah. So are services for getting any better for people who are really at risk like this? Well, that's, yeah. I mean, we feel like that's what we're here for, right? That's our, the population we tend to center at our drop-in center are homeless trans folks. So again, disproportionately trans femmes, disproportionately folks of color. So we are, we have showers for people to use. We serve about 30 hot meals every shift that we're open. We provide a mailing address for many of our folks. We have storage for their things, computer access, programming, just all kinds of stuff at our drop-in center for folks. And I think that our trainings over all of these years have also really helped to open up access even for some of our most impacted folks. You know, I was in the hospital at UNM with one of our young native trans women. And this was probably eight years ago now. And she was maybe 26 or 27 years old, and she was just dying from full organ failure from substance misuse. And she was somebody who had lived out on the street and was, you know, observably someone who had had this kind of lived experience. And every person that came in and out of her room when I was there visiting called her she and called her by the correct name and was as polite and respectful as anyone could ever ask someone to be. And I'm not saying that I trained each one of those nurses, but I do think that we've had something to do with health care providers around the state learning this and having their baseline elevated around the expectations for this kind of thing. Well, that's wonderful news to be treated, you know, in a humane way. It's who you are as young, right? If you're in the hospital, you're already going through, you know, terrible things. And then to be treated badly at the same time could make things very, very tricky. So that's good news. Is there any more like a mental, like that kind of therapy for mental illnesses for them as they have access and there are more providers who are willing to deal with these things that are, you know, pro bono or whatever for people who have sort of serious mental illnesses and ACEs and stuff like that? Is that increased? Well, we have a therapist on staff actually at TGRC. After 15 years, we finally hired a therapist. And our therapist works at, I mean, everything that we do, all of the things I've named in terms of services are free. So there's no charge to trans and non-binary folks for anything that we offer at TGRC. So we have a therapist you can see even if you don't have insurance, you know. But we also like to help people get enrolled. If they can get enrolled in Medicaid, we try to help them do that. And we've cultivated a lot of therapists over the years who are good working with trans people. You just got to get yourself insurance, you know. Yeah, some kind of insurance. And we have case navigation. We have non-medical case navigation at the center as well. So we can help people with stuff like enrollment. Oh, that sounds wonderful. So things are improving. I mean, it's a big... I do think so for sure. You're part way up it. And so for folks who aren't in Albuquerque, they can still get this help if they're living elsewhere in New Mexico. Oh, yes. You never ever have to step foot in Albuquerque or our buildings to get a huge amount of the help that we can offer. There's so much stuff we can do for you without you ever coming here. So there's like therapies online and things like that. Yeah, exactly. Our therapist does in-person appointments. We only open our drop-in center here in town on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And that's intentional. If we could open that center 24 hours a day, there would be people there 24 hours a day seeking services. But we close on Tuesdays and Thursdays to really give undivided attention to requests for help that are coming from other parts of the state. And so our therapist does telehealth appointments on those days. Got it. You are listening to Gila Mimbra's Community Radio, KURU 89.1 FM in Silver City, New Mexico and online at GMCR.org. You are listening to the Equity Hour where the political is personal. And we are in the last 15 minutes of interviewing Adrian Moyer, Director of Education of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico and also the author of Gender Transition for Dummies. And Adrian, I was going to ask you, is there a phone number or a website that you would like to give our listeners? How can folks reach out to you for support from your organization? Absolutely. I think the best is our website. It's TGRCNM.org. But our main phone number is 505-200-9086. And if you leave a message on the phone, we'll call you back within a day or two. And if you go to the website, there's actually a section of the website that is a form to request support remotely. That's very comprehensive. Yeah, that's great. So, Adrian, do you have, to wrap up, do you have like a wish list, right, just your own personal wish list, you know, of how you'd like to go forward with the center, with yourself? Do you see the world, the country, the state, things, you know, using your imagination? Where are we going? Are we going in a good place or are we stuck? What's your, what does the future look like according to aging lawyer? Well, that is the thing to me. Once I started to see being trans the way I think about being left-handed, it really just clicked into place for me. You know, I feel like we already know what helps to shift people's attitudes and beliefs about minority traits or minority characteristics. And the two things that really help people to change their attitudes about stuff like people are education and what's called personalization. So, when we know that we know a person who has a minority trait, then we tend to think about that trait in a different way. We don't think of it ever as like those people because it's like my friend Jennifer, right, or my child Jennifer, right? People who have left-handed kids were probably less likely to think of them as evil all along. And people who have trans family members and friends and co-workers are getting to know us more every single day. And that is what tends to move groups like ours forward, you know, in terms of not just policy but just access, safety, acceptance. And that can't really be turned around by political action. The personalization happens more every single day. Folks come out of the closet, people realize they knew a trans person all along, and that is going to shift us slowly but surely. I came out as gay in the 80s, right at the height of the AIDS crisis, and people were so mad at gay people, you know? And Anita Bryant was mad at gay people back then. And now, you can't turn on a TV show about there being a gay person because it has to reflect the real world. And now people know that there are gay people and aren't scared of gay people in the same way, you know? It changed a lot due to that education and personalization. So I really believe that we can't really turn that train around. It's already kind of going in the one direction it goes, which is towards greater acceptance. So Zane and I, from the minute we started the center, began to daydream about the day we would close it, you know? That we want trans people to be able to go to any hospital, to go to any clinic, to go to any service provider. We don't need trans clinics. We don't need trans organizations when trans people are just people living in their communities, right? So that's where I believe we're going to end up after all of this. I think you're right. You know, my husband used to work in a transition home, and a lot of the people coming out of his home were very, very conservative. And they were talking down trans people and everything, and one of the guys stood up and he was crying, and he said, shut up, shut up, shut up. My brother's a trans man. Yep. And they shut up. And he shut up, and the whole house, they never talked about it again like that. It changed the whole living group, living area. Just one guy standing up and crying and saying, you know, and he was not articulate. All he could say was, shut up, shut up, that's my brother you're talking about. And that was enough. Exactly. So just to give a little example of how this is really effective. I believe that. I believe that, because that's what I've seen already. You know, I've seen it in prisons. I trained at a prison in the most rural part of New Mexico. It was the first prison I ever trained in. And I started to talk, and I was getting really scared and nervous. I'd never trained in a prison before, and I thought, oh, these folks are going to be oppositional to what I'm saying, you know. And I got about 10 minutes into it, and someone who appeared to be a woman to me raised their hand, and I was like, oh, Lordy, what is she going to say? You know, she's already going to start disrupting me, why? And I was like, okay, yes, what would you like to say? And she said, I just want to tell everybody in here that I'm a very proud parent of a trans teenager who I love so much. And I just went like, oh, there you go, right? Don't assume about people, and you never, ever know when someone who loves a trans person is in the room, or honestly, you never know when a trans person is in the room, because so much of the time you can't see us, you know? So I just try to remember that. And I just think this is going to keep going forward, because there's no way for it to go backwards. That's a very wonderful, positive, encouraging view. It just makes me feel so much better about the future just to hear you say that. Yeah. So thank you. I really, truly believe that. I do. And you would know. Right? That's right. You're in it in all the ways that a person can be involved. You are involved, so I'm going to take your word for it. That's right. And keep that in my heart for good. We have about nine more minutes. Is there any closing thoughts that you would like to leave with our listeners, Adrienne or Kit? We really appreciate everything that you've shared with us today. But, you know, how about we revisit, what can allies do? Yeah, that's a big one for us, you know, for Renee and I, because what we're trying to do, you know, our show is called Where the Political is Personal. So on a personal level, you know, what can we do? And you've mentioned a few things, but that's one of our favorite things to ask people when we're interviewing them is, what can we do? We feel so helpless on so many fronts. It's very overwhelming and depressing. You know, we want to know something that we can do, like from, say, from a small town like Silver City. We're not in Albuquerque. What can we do? What can people do that, you know, that are working full time, have families and kids that just don't want to help? That is such a great question. And I mean, I know this sounds kind of trite, but people who donate are being on the front lines of our work. The work that we do requires funding, and that is one of the things that is a little bit under threat right now. We haven't been directly impacted yet, but we worry about this all the time because the stuff is in play, just like the stuff about organizations 501c3 status is in play right now. So we're thinking about how to sustain our work, even if something happens like we're not able to hold on to our tax classification. So when people in our New Mexico communities donate to this, they are literally stepping onto the front line with us. In that same way, I always urge folks to join not just our mailing list, but truly our friends at Equality New Mexico, probably our closest organizational partners. And EQNM is a 501c3 and a c4, so they are built to be the lobbying arm of the LGBTQ movement here in New Mexico. And they always, always will send out an alert when it's time to email your legislator or call your city counselor or whatever it is, and they are able even to endorse candidates. So where c3s like us are not, we're very restricted from doing stuff like that. So we believe that folks should, I mean, again, I've heard people say, like, it doesn't matter if I email my legislator. They don't even read that. Nothing could be further from the truth, truly, because they really do read those things. They are looking for those things, and that gives them political cover. It gives them the talking points a lot of times to help defend us. So when EQNM says, hey, everybody, hit this email button, and people do it, it makes a huge difference. It truly does. So that's Equality New Mexico. EQNM. That's right. Okay. EQNM. That's a good thing to know, because I think more and more people are writing their congresspeople. I think under the present administration, there's a lot of, I mean, I get things in my inbox every day, and I try to send out as many as I possibly have time for, or the issues that are important to me, so that this can, and this has not come into my inbox, so I'm going to go to them. So this is something we can do, and I think people are beginning to understand that, that it does make a difference if you put pressure on your elected officials. Absolutely. Absolutely. We need that help. So LGBTQ people are not a large enough minority to do any of this on our own. So we need everybody to be bought into this and to help us communicate that political power in that way. Right. That's good to know. Okay. Anything else we can do up your sleeve? We sometimes even need volunteers in different parts of the state. Some of our support group facilitators don't live in Albuquerque, and they tend to help with the Zoom groups rather than the in-person groups. You know, there's things that folks can do to help us. I need trans and non-binary people and parents and partners of trans people to serve as panelists with me when I do our training. So that doesn't, I do a lot of those trainings on Zoom. You don't have to be in Albuquerque to help with something like that. That's really interesting. So I think there are ways for folks to get connected with the center and get connected with our work and help us out. So you have family and friends of transgender folks on your panel. Exactly. That's right. Okay. Well, good. Listening up. Family and friends of transgender folks. There's something else you can do, right, to help Adrienne out. That's right. Especially folks who feel like they want to tell their story. I mean, the only thing we ask is if you're a parent, we want you to get permission from your trans kid to tell those stories to folks around the state. But if your kid is into it, we definitely can use you. We love folks who are good speakers and are interested in sharing those stories because that personalization is one of the biggest things that actually helps people to move forward, right? So when I have cis parents telling about how much they love their trans children, the other cis parents in the room are thinking, yeah, I love my child too. Like who can't relate to that, you know? So we need not just trans folks, but loved ones for sure. That's like the old story about, you know, when you have an interracial couple and the parents are furious and furious and furious until they have a kid. Yeah. I've seen it. And then everyone falls in love with the kid. And they don't care anymore. I mean, maybe they do somewhere, but it's in the back, you know, in the back of the room. What's in the front of the room is love. And they just love that kid and they forget all their anger and rage and all the stuff they were taught and they just love on that baby that brings them all together. A hundred percent. We've seen it a bunch of times. Have you? I mean, I'm sorry that some people still can reject their trans child, but we've seen a lot of families come together over love and a kid. That's exactly right. Yeah, it's beautiful. It is. Okay. The opposite is unfortunate too. It does happen a lot. Is that declining at all, those numbers of parents? Do you have any idea about that? I feel like it is. I really do. I do. I think the further we go, the better it gets. And just like even now, there are gay and lesbian kids who get kicked out of their homes in high school for coming out. So even that still happens, you know? So we know it may not end for a long, long time, but we definitely do see it decreasing. That's goodness. That's very good. With that continued exposure and education and learning, people are getting better. Right. With more personalization. Right. That's it. That's it. Well, thank you so much, Adrian, for coming on the show and for the work that you do. It's so important. You're making such a huge difference in the state of New Mexico. And thank you again for coming on the show. Yeah, we really, really appreciate it, Adrian. We did cover a lot in a short amount of time. It's wonderful. And so, everybody listening, you have the information of how to get in touch with Adrian at the Transgender Resource Center for whatever reason. Let's give that contact information again, the phone number and the website, since we have about a minute left. Absolutely. The website is TGRCNM.org. It's an abbreviation for the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico. TGRCNM.org. The main phone number is 505-200-9086. Don't be turned off if you have to leave a voicemail. We're closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we will answer our voicemails as quickly as we can. Okay. Thank you so much, Adrian. Thanks a million, Adrian. It was a pleasure. Thank you all. I really appreciate it. Okay. Good luck to you. Yes.
