Books
Former Obama admin. appointee releases ‘SELF-ish’ memoir
Trans activist Chloe Schwenke shares life story of balancing academia and family


Chloe Schwenke says coming out wreaked havoc on her professional career. Despite a stellar resume and Ph.D. she was repeatedly fired. (Photo by Carl Cox Photography; courtesy Schwenke)
About a decade ago when Chloe Schwenke and her then-wife Christine Lucas were ready to share the news with their two children (then 8 and 13) that their dad was going to start living as a woman, Schwenke knew she needed to get out in front with some damage control.
Schwenke and her wife met with 12 different couples whose kids were friends with theirs.
“We knew the first time the kids saw me as Chloe, they would go screaming back home to their parents,” Schwenke says. “The experts told us everything depends on how those parents react. Once the parents were on board with it, the kids came through just fine.”
It’s one of many stories relayed in “SELF-ish: a Transgender Awakening,” Schwenke’s new memoir. It’s out today as a trade paperback from Red Hen Press, a California-based publisher.
Schwenke, who holds a Ph.D in public policy, is a former Obama administration appointee who worked for years in international development. Coming out as trans in 2008 wreaked havoc on her professional career — she recounts being fired four different times and long periods of unemployment. Schwenke, who doesn’t want to get specific but says she’s “in her 60s,” now works in the Association for Writers & Writing Programs, a literary support group at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The book didn’t start out being a book at all. Schwenke enjoys writing and blogging for relaxation and started with journaling, exploring her journey through transitioning and unpacking “why it took me 50-some years to get around to it.”
“It seemed sort of all over the place,” Schwenke, who is no longer married but still lives with Lucas in Olney, Md., says. “It had integrity, but it didn’t seem to me that these stories related to one another until suddenly they did. … I started to see it as something that cohered as a way to be myself in the world in a way I thought might be helpful to other people.”
Exploring all that took work but was an illuminating process, she says. Incidents from childhood came roaring back to her consciousness with “remarkable clarity.” She spent a year writing it, then after securing a deal with Red Hen, one of three publishers she contacted (the other two weren’t interested but Red Hen bit immediately), she spent another two years working with two editors to glean the work into something publishable. The 260-page paperback retails for $17.95 and is available at all the usual online book channels or via chloemaryland.net.
Schwenke on:
• how the book evolved: “They wanted to hear more about my explorations of dating men and a bit less about my being a Quaker. … I’d had some dating experiences end really badly and though I hadn’t initially planned to include much of that, though it was in my journal, they said, ‘Just sit with that awhile,’ because they thought that would be of interest to readers.”
• her concerns with going public with her life: “My real concern is whether people are gonna sue me. I’ve been fired four times just for being trans, arrested, beaten up, called every name you can think of. I did name names but just first names. I thought, ‘To hell with it, these are important interactions and people need to know how people behave toward trans people.’”
• the title: “When I came out to family, some people were really angry with me. Two of my three brothers didn’t speak to me for eight years. A recurring response was, ‘How could you be so selfish?’ There was this wave of anger. … I decided to put the hyphen in and reclaim that word.”
• how she feels anti-trans bias is part of broader toxic patriarchy: “I think there are lots of unreconciled feelings hetero men have about sexuality because they’ve never had to think through it or deal with it because they’ve just always been the boss, they’ve called the shots. When somebody goes in the opposite direction, it raises a lot of profound questions. They think, ‘Why would anybody want to do that,’ and they have a very deep-rooted gut reaction to the operation itself. … Every time we told other couples, the men immediately crossed their legs. They have a very strong, protective reaction.”
• working with the State Department and monthly visits to the Obama White House: “Don Steinberg (former deputy administrator at the United States Agency for International Development) was a huge ally and really pushed me and the LGBT community to be verbal and outspoken though we didn’t get much support from the administration at the time, though they also didn’t stand in our way. … The White House was fantastic. They looked at us and said, “What can we do for you?” That was their mantra every month and that really started with (former deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement) Brian Bond.
• Gens. Y and Z’s comfort with gender fluidity: “They’re asking questions and not just defaulting to the binary, which is great. They’re just really sitting with their gender identity for awhile before they declare anything and that’s such a healthy thing. My daughter is 18 and all her friends just think it’s cool.”
• trans visibility in the age of Caitlyn Jenner: “She’s a really canny person. She knows how to play the media and I really admire that in these exchanges we see, she never seems to be the victim. I couldn’t disagree with her politics more, though. She’s a stalwart Republican and with a president and especially vice president as transphobic as we have now, how she reconciles that, I don’t know.”
• her relationship with her ex-wife: “We are no longer married but we still share the same house and jointly raise our daughter. Christine is my best friend and strongest ally.”
Books
Chronicling disastrous effects of ‘conversion therapy’
New book uncovers horror, unexpected humor of discredited practice

‘Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy’
By Lucas F. W. Wilson
c.2025, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
$21.95/190 pages
You’re a few months in, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.
You made your New Year’s resolutions with forethought, purpose, and determination but after all this time, you still struggle, ugh. You’ve backslid. You’ve cheated because change is hard. It’s sometimes impossible. And in the new book, “Shame-Sex Attraction” by Lucas F. W. Wilson, it can be exceptionally traumatic.

Progress does not come without problems.
While it’s true that the LGBTQ community has been adversely affected by the current administration, there are still things to be happy about when it comes to civil rights and acceptance. Still, says Wilson, one “particularly slow-moving aspect… has been the fight against what is widely known as conversion therapy.”
Such practices, he says, “have numerous damaging, death-dealing, and no doubt disastrous consequences.” The stories he’s collected in this volume reflect that, but they also mirror confidence and strength in the face of detrimental treatment.
Writer Gregory Elsasser-Chavez was told to breathe in something repellent every time he thought about other men. He says, in the end, he decided not to “pray away the gay.” Instead, he quips, he’d “sniff it away.”
D. Apple became her “own conversation therapist” by exhausting herself with service to others as therapy. Peter Nunn’s father took him on a surprise trip, but the surprise was a conversion facility; Nunn’s father said if it didn’t work, he’d “get rid of” his 15-year-old son. Chaim Levin was forced to humiliate himself as part of his therapy.
Lexie Bean struggled to make a therapist understand that they didn’t want to be a man because they were “both.” Jordan Sullivan writes of the years it takes “to re-integrate and become whole” after conversion therapy. Chris Csabs writes that he “tried everything to find the root of my problem” but “nothing so far had worked.”
Says Syre Klenke of a group conversion session, “My heart shattered over and over as people tried to console and encourage each other…. I wonder if each of them is okay and still with us today.”
Here’s a bit of advice for reading “Shame-Sex Attraction”: dip into the first chapter, maybe the second, then go back and read the foreword and introduction, and resume.
The reason: author Lucas F. W. Wilson’s intro is deep and steep, full of footnotes and statistics, and if you’re not prepared or you didn’t come for the education, it might scare you away. No, the subtitle of this book is likely why you’d pick the book up so because that’s what you really wanted, indulge before backtracking.
You won’t be sorry; the first stories are bracing and they’ll steel you for the rest, for the emotion and the tears, the horror and the unexpected humor.
Be aware that there are triggers all over this book, especially if you’ve been subjected to anything like conversion therapy yourself. Remember, though, that the survivors are just that: survivors, and their strength is what makes this book worthwhile. Even so, though “Shame-Sex Attraction” is an essential read, that doesn’t make it any easier.
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Books
How one gay Catholic helped change the world
‘A Prince of a Boy,’ falls short of author’s previous work

Brian McNaught, the pioneering gay activist and author of 1986’s “On Being Gay” and 1993’s “Gay Issues in the Workplace,” has written a personal account about his Catholic faith and homosexuality. It is a memoir without much substance.
“A Prince of a Boy: How One Gay Catholic Helped Change the World” (Cascade Books) is a strong personal statement by McNaught. He helped change family relationships. He helped change attitudes about homosexuality. He helped change workplaces, but the world?

In January 2023, the Catholic News Service reported that Pope Francis announced that, “being homosexual is not a crime.” In December 2023, NPR reported that Pope Francis approved “Catholic blessings for same-sex couples, but not for marriage.” Francis died Monday at age 88. Although Catholics may not see homosexuality as a crime, they see sex outside of marriage as a sin. They see same-sex marriage as a sin.
In 2021, Gallup reported that membership in the Catholic Church had declined 20 percent since 2000. In 2025, the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans identified as Protestant, while the same study found that only 19 percent identified as Catholic.
McNaught devotes much of his book to his life as a gay Catholic. It is challenging to read about his personal struggle. Some readers may find it interesting. Others might find it boring. Catholic readers may find it more compelling than Protestant readers.
As the above statistics prove, McNaught has much more work to do to change the Catholic Church’s views about homosexuality. We should be glad for his contribution to the debate within the Catholic Church. We should pray for full acceptance of gays in the Catholic Church.
“A Prince of a Boy” becomes more interesting when McNaught describes his work as an educator on LGBTQ issues. He has had an impact on workplace policies, academic programs, and public education, and his lectures, books, and other materials are widely used.
Based on my experience in the federal government and volunteering with LGBTQ organizations from the Bay Area to Washington, D.C., I believe McNaught’s work as an educator has improved LGBTQ lives, careers, and families. During the Clinton administration, I gave many copies of “Gay Issues in the Workplace” to personnel directors. I felt their staff could benefit from reading it. I thought it would help the lives and careers of my federal LGBTQ colleagues.
McNaught’s “A Prince of a Boy” was released in December 2024. Anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant died the same month. Bryant campaigned against a gay rights law in Florida. She began a national campaign against gays.
When Bryant successfully reversed a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida, McNaught wrote the important essay “Dear Anita, Late Night Thoughts of an Irish Catholic Homosexual.” The essay is not in “A Prince of a Boy”; however, McNaught mentions Bryant.
In his training programs, McNaught describes homosexuals as journeying from confusion to denial to acceptance to pride. “Anita Bryant and AIDS brought Gay people to identity pride very quickly,” McNaught writes. San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk (1930-1978) and other activists reached similar conclusions about Bryant’s vicious anti-gay campaign.
McNaught helped change the LGBTQ world and brought pride to many people’s lives. McNaught walks in pride, works in pride, and educates others in pride.
“A Prince of a Boy” is a disappointing book. It provides small details about Brian McNaught’s large, proud life. A meaningful biography about this great gay leader is long overdue.
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Books
‘Pronoun Trouble’ reminds us that punctuation matters
‘They’ has been a shape-shifter for more than 700 years

‘Pronoun Trouble’
By John McWhorter
c.2025, Avery
$28/240 pages
Punctuation matters.
It’s tempting to skip a period at the end of a sentence Tempting to overuse exclamation points!!! very tempting to MeSs with capital letters. Dont use apostrophes. Ask a question and ignore the proper punctuation commas or question marks because seriously who cares. So guess what? Someone does, punctuation really matters, and as you’ll see in “Pronoun Trouble” by John McWhorter, so do other parts of our language.

Conversation is an odd thing. It’s spontaneous, it ebbs and flows, and it’s often inferred. Take, for instance, if you talk about him. Chances are, everyone in the conversation knows who him is. Or he. That guy there.
That’s the handy part about pronouns. Says McWhorter, pronouns “function as shorthand” for whomever we’re discussing or referring to. They’re “part of our hardwiring,” they’re found in all languages, and they’ve been around for centuries.
And, yes, pronouns are fluid.
For example, there’s the first-person pronoun, I as in me and there we go again. The singular I solely affects what comes afterward. You say “he-she IS,” and “they-you ARE” but I am. From “Black English,” I has also morphed into the perfectly acceptable Ima, shorthand for “I am going to.” Mind blown.
If you love Shakespeare, you may’ve noticed that he uses both thou and you in his plays. The former was once left to commoners and lower classes, while the latter was for people of high status or less formal situations. From you, we get y’all, yeet, ya, you-uns, and yinz. We also get “you guys,” which may have nothing to do with guys.
We and us are warmer in tone because of the inclusion implied. She is often casually used to imply cars, boats, and – warmly or not – gay men, in certain settings. It “lacks personhood,” and to use it in reference to a human is “barbarity.”
And yes, though it can sometimes be confusing to modern speakers, the singular word “they” has been a “shape-shifter” for more than 700 years.
Your high school English teacher would be proud of you, if you pick up “Pronoun Trouble.” Sadly, though, you might need her again to make sense of big parts of this book: What you’ll find here is a delightful romp through language, but it’s also very erudite.
Author John McWhorter invites readers along to conjugate verbs, and doing so will take you back to ancient literature, on a fascinating journey that’s perfect for word nerds and anyone who loves language. You’ll likely find a bit of controversy here or there on various entries, but you’ll also find humor and pop culture, an explanation for why zie never took off, and assurance that the whole flap over strictly-gendered pronouns is nothing but overblown protestation. Readers who have opinions will like that.
Still, if you just want the pronoun you want, a little between-the-lines looking is necessary here, so beware. “Pronoun Trouble” is perfect for linguists, writers, and those who love to play with words but for most readers, it’s a different kind of book, period.
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