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THIS ARIZONA PROFESSOR LETS STRANGERS ASK HIM ABOUT BEING TRANS  
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Joseph Darius Jaafari
October 2, 2025
The 19th
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_ Even offensive questions are welcome and are answered. The goal, to
create empathy for a stranger, is one of the most effective ways to
ease cultural tension, experts say. _

Since the start of the year, Eric has traveled across Southern
Arizona hosting “ask me anything” sessions about transgender
people, cheekily titled “Trans 101.”, illustration Emily Scherer
for The 19th

 

_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
[[link removed]]._

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
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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
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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 [[link removed]], 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
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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
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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
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On the right, former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, now head of
the Free Press, has argued liberals are intolerant
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of opposing viewpoints. Some lawmakers have declared that “unity is
no longer an option.
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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_
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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
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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.’”

_More by Joseph Darius Jaafari
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_The 19th [[link removed]] is an independent, nonprofit
newsroom reporting on gender, politics, policy and power. Our goal is
to empower all women and LGBTQ+ people — particularly those excluded
from the promise of the 19th Amendment by their gender, race,
ethnicity, class or disability — with the information they need to
be equal participants in our democracy. _

* transgender
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* empathy
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* Civility
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