When bestselling author Jennifer Finney Boylan came to D.C. earlier this month to promote her new memoir, “Cleavage,” she chose an on-stage partner with whom she has some history, to pose questions before a gaggle of book lovers, members of the LGBTQ community and fans. Transgender Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride provided a bookend of sorts, given that Boylan fulfilled that same role when McBride published her first memoir, “Tomorrow Will Be Different.”

“Jenny moderated the first discussion when my book came out in 2018 at the Strand in New York City,” McBride said. “And I was star-struck. I was intimidated, because you were, really, for me, the first contemporary example of a trans person that wasn’t, as you write about in this book, on ‘Jerry Springer.’ Being exploited.” 

“And that’s the hardest thing, I think, that some of us experience when we were growing up,” said Boylan. “At least for me, it was, I almost never saw anybody like me on TV or in the movies. And if there was anyone even vaguely like me, they were usually either a villain or someone who was a figure of ridicule. Thank goodness all that has changed!” The crowd laughed along, knowingly. 

But it was not just McBride who joined Boylan in the Politics and Prose bookstore at the Wharf. They were joined by other trans trailblazers: Activist Mara Keisling, Adm. (ret.) Rachel Levine, former Department of Defense official Amanda Simpson and journalist and activist Charlotte Clymer. 

This event was just one stop on a whirlwind national tour to promote Boylan’s book, featuring Roxane Gay in New York, WBUR senior arts and culture reporter Cristela Guerra in Cambridge, and other stops with celebrity guests from Maine to Santa Cruz, Calif. 

Boylan has explained at each stop what compelled her to write a sequel to her bestselling first memoir, “She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders,” from 2003. 

“If you’re a writer, stories are my bread and butter,” she said. “And there are a lot of stories I haven’t told. There are also some stories I wanted to revisit.”

“Cleavage,” she revealed, was to acknowledge that things have changed since she told the world she was trans. 

“One of the stories I wanted to look at was the difference between coming out now and coming out 25 years ago,” said Boylan. “I have a transgender daughter. She came out six or seven years ago. And how did I react? I freaked out. Did I put my arms around my child and say, ‘Love will prevail?’ No. I remember literally jolting in my chair. Literally. It was as if I had been struck by lightning. And my first thought was, ‘Damn.’ Because, as most of us know, it’s a hard life. And even when things go about as well as they can, which I think—and there are a lot of success stories in this room—it’s still a hard life.”

After conversations with the author at these events, the hosts have opened the floor to questions from the audience, often not just about Boylan’s memoir but about the state of affairs in Washington and across the nation. 

At the event at the New York Public Library earlier this month, Gay fielded this question from someone who moderates a trans nonbinary peer support group: “What can you tell our members to give them hope?” Boylan took a moment to consider the question. 

“Here’s what we know. Right now, things are really bad. And they’re not just bad for queer and nonbinary and trans people. They’re bad for a lot of people. They’re bad for anybody who doesn’t kind of fit into this 1950s all-male review of singing and dancing that these people have prepared for us. It is hard,” she said. 

“We have been through hard times before in this country. We have been through a civil war. We’ve been through depression. We’ve been through, well, you know, the shit keeps hitting the fan. But this moment, as aggressive as it feels, will not last forever. And this will not define us. And I think that, what’s that Paul Simon song? ‘I believe in the future we will suffer no more. Maybe not in my lifetime, but in yours, I feel sure.’” Boylan was referencing the 1990 song, ‘The Cool, Cool River’ by Paul Simon. “Oh, gee, do I have to be dead for things to get better? I hope not,” added Boylan, before continuing her message.

“This moment, which feels so oppressive, is not the last word,” she said. “This is just beginning. And we have not, unfortunately, we have not yet started to fight back. But we are going to fight back. And, you know, I hope I can say they don’t know what’s coming for them! So, let’s make that clear. Is this really what the majority of Americans wanted? This? I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. And so, we just have to work for it and not lose our hope. And, yeah, keep telling your stories.” 

Simpson told her story at the event in D.C., comparing how the movement for marriage equality differs from the movement for trans rights. 

“It was about the neighbors you know, and that there were LGBT people in your neighborhood,” she said. “I was an aerospace engineer. We had firemen and policemen. We had military people, all doing these ads saying, ‘Look, we’re just your neighbors. Get to know the individual, not this larger concept of an LGBT person,’ and that worked. And I think we have to do that again. It’s about that personal introduction to them. We do these things to show that we’re just like everyone else. We’re human. But we have a leader sitting down the street who has made this such a sharp point to help energize or misdirect what’s going on. And being a Jewish woman, I remember—well, not personally, but I look back at what happened in 1933 and 35 overseas and think about the similarities of picking on one group of defenseless, underrepresented people to help focus everyone else to be behind you. And that’s, I think, what we’re seeing.”

Levine, a former assistant secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden-Harris administration, followed-up. 

“I would agree with Amanda about the political aspect of this, it’s been very well reported that this is a specific strategy, an iterative strategy developed by right-wing think tanks in Washington to split the progressive movement,” Levine said. “They lost marriage, did not feel that they could gain that back, and so they were looking for a scapegoat, and thought that they could make progress by demonizing us and otherizing us, starting with trans athletes, then going on to transgender medicine or gender-affirming care for youth, and now you see, you know, denying that we exist at all, and then potentially trying to go back to sexual orientation as well … It was a specific political and ideological strategy which, unfortunately, they weaponized and were very successful in doing that, and I think that we were conveniently there, but now, what do we do? Now here we are, in this extremely challenging environment, and the key will be how our community, supported by the broader LGBTQ community and our allies, respond.”

Keisling pointed part of the blame for right-wing attacks on the community itself, for its handling of trans athletes and its hyperfocus on JK Rowling, who she called “a jerk.” 

“They landed on this sports thing, which we totally screwed up,” said Keisling. “Instead of talking about the seven-year-old who wants to play soccer with her friends, we were talking about Olympians and NCAA swimmers, which we should have been defending against, but that wasn’t our strongest argument. What I have been saying for 10 years is we don’t seem to understand, we as progressives, that we are also part of the problem. We are not focused on what narrowness we’re hearing. Now, I believe this is about populism and politics, as Amanda said. But they came over and started picking people off on our side, and we have never done that. Progressives won’t do that. Progressives will never, ever, ever welcome somebody to come over from the other side. And that’s a mistake, and we’ve got to figure out how to do that, how to reach out to people, how to win over people. And once we win them over, we have to fucking embrace them. And most of the activists I know won’t do that.”

McBride stepped in to concur. 

“I agree with you, Mara,” she said, “I think we have lost the art of coalition building. We have created a space where there is no room for imperfect allies. We have eliminated space for people to grow because they at least perceive that they will be seen as permanently guilty for having been wrong.” 

Clymer agreed. 

“Say what you will about the Evangelical Church, and I have a lot of things to say about the Evangelical Church, but their greatest strength is that there is a very low threshold for entry,” she said. “You show up to the congregations, you don’t have to know anything, you don’t have to have any knowledge of theory or practice or whatever, you just show up and you’re welcome to the pulpit. We as a progressive movement, and I think to your point, Mara, we do not do a very good job of keeping a welcome threshold for entry into the movement. We tell folks that if you don’t know this sort of thing, or this theory, or if you’re not aware of this or that or whatever, we make people afraid to err, make mistakes. And I do think we need to get better at that.” 

Boylan got the last word. 

“I think that we were defined with some of the hardest issues to understand. And rather than the fact that, you know, I don’t particularly want to play sports with your kid. I want to teach them English,” she said, then turned to McBride. “You are not here to play sports. You are here to represent the people of Delaware. So, the main thing we want is we want to be able to do our jobs. We want to be able to walk tall. And guess what? We also would like to be left alone.” 

Boylan was asked if there was a bumper sticker for trans rights that could match what “Love is Love” accomplished for marriage equality. Her response: “Love is the wise person’s revenge. Love is the best revenge in the world.”