Next-Level Ally: How to Support Your Queer and Transgender Friends

Speak up, take action, and protect your community

How do you show up for the LGBTQ+ people in your life? You’ve figured out pronouns, you vote, and you don’t say hateful things, but you have a lot of unanswered questions and the strong feeling that you could be doing more. You’re committed to educating yourself, but where to start? 

Author and activist Eli Sachse has created a practical guide to being a better friend, family member, partner, colleague, and community member to your trans and queer friends. With anti-queer and trans bias and oppression on the rise, it’s more important than ever for allies to step up with radical empathy. Allyship is a skill that anyone can learn, and Sachse is a kind, clear teacher. 

With a focus on direct and effective communication, Sachse has filled this book with real-world examples for everyday people. Learn when and how to speak up at work and online without doing more harm than good. Create more inclusive conversations and challenge misgendering and harmful jokes. Learn to see and question your own implicit biases and assumptions. Celebrate and affirm your friends. Become a better friend, manager, or parent. Volunteer, march, and create true safe spaces. Further chapters advise people working in health and mental health professionals, educators, and law enforcement in how to do better by the trans and queer people they serve.

Read on for an excerpt from Next-Level Ally, shipping now from our site and available everywhere you find Microcosm titles!

Introduction

You’re conscious. You’re conscientious. You vote. You have queer and transgender friends and read about their struggles, and you sympathize. You encourage and say nice things to your queer and trans friends in private or in direct messages. You don’t say hateful things. You want to call yourself an ally, but you have the strong feeling you could be doing more. But where to start? The world is so messed up right now and you feel powerless.

Maybe you make your best attempt to honor your queer and trans friends’ requests, but you feel like you sometimes fail, though you’re not really sure. Sometimes you upset them and their frustration comes completely out of the blue. You were really trying to be nice! You were trying to use the pronouns and terms they prefer, but they ended up having to correct you again. Or, you were trying to stand up for them during a family discussion, but they ended up frustrated and embarrassed instead. Maybe you told a joke you thought for sure was funny and harmless, but they didn’t take it the right way.

I’ve got bad news for you: you’re not an ally … yet. But I’ve also got good news: this book will point you in loads of possible directions that will help you forge your unique path towards allyship.

I’ve seen a lot happen in the six years of direct advocacy work I have done in my rural community of Merced, California. California, in many ways, is in a very unique bubble of protection for queer and trans folks, at least compared to the rest of the country and world. However, pockets of of rural California have their ultra-nationalist, evangelical, and racist strongholds just like everywhere else in the country. I’ve given presentations to school administrators who counter back, “We don’t have those kinds of students here.” (Every school has queer kids. Gallup poll data released in 20241 shows 22.3% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ. It’s just a question of whether or not they feel comfortable telling you about it.)

We’ve had a local effort to counter Pride celebrations with a “straight Pride” parade organized by white supremacist groups, which ended up being shut down through counter-protest efforts. Our local queer community has been deeply divided by multiple organizations going after the same buckets of local grant money, and the resulting fractures make progress difficult. This is a common problem in communities across the country, large and small. So, even in California, there is a lot to be done, and a lot that you can help with.

In addition to being an advocate and community activist, I’m a registered nurse. I’ve worked in a transgender clinic that was part of a large health center, serving around 200 transgender patients in 2016-2018. I’ve worked as a home health nurse, hospice nurse, mental health case manager, and public health nurse. With the American Red Cross, I deployed to disaster recovery efforts as a health services supervisor, organizing teams of volunteers. As a transgender person, I have received good care, incredulity, and refusal from healthcare providers, good advice and bad advice, and I’ve interacted with nonprofits and health care systems on both coasts of the United States. Because of all of these experiences, I have seen a lot of ally-led actions that work, and others that don’t.

I’ve seen firsthand how well-meaning people have taken power from local queers and thus divided the community. I’ve seen straight allies take control of queer organizations through political power and maneuvering. This resulted in a (probably inevitable) fracture in the community between queers who insist on queer leadership, and those who think that muting queer or revolutionary voices in favor of political power is strategic (aka respectability politics). And I’ve seen larger organizations in neighboring communities with robust grant writing resources take money away from the local community here in Merced.

But I’ve also seen work done by allies that has made all the difference. I worked with cis doctors and nurse practitioners who used their power to make their clinics better for trans people, fighting for processes that ensure we are addressed with respect and receive the unique and trauma-informed care we need. I have been touched by friends and family who have stood up for and affirmed me personally during my gender transition journey of the last ten years. I know that LGBTQ cultural sensitivity education has improved over the years, as I’ve been exposed to it in many different workplaces on both coasts, and I know that means that someone, in some HR department somewhere, advocated for it. And I’ve worked with editors, producers, business owners, and project managers who are committed to uplifting queer voices and creating queer spaces and opportunities.

I probably don’t have to tell you this, but your queer, trans, and non-binary friends need your help right now in a big way. We face discrimination and phobia on a daily basis, from getting passed over for jobs because it might be “too complicated” to verbal slurs to the microagressions we face just moving around in this world as gender non-conforming people. People stare, trying to gender us mentally. On the train, in the bathroom. They wonder if we belong there. They silently accuse us of “perversion.” You might be familiar with some of these hostile looks. And studies are showing that this rain of minor but daily stresses takes years from peoples’ lives. A quick Google of “minority stress” will show you plenty of science on the subject.

This book begins with some fundamental concepts that support allyship, namely radical empathy and how to become more confident about speaking up about injustice. It will help you navigate when to speak up and when to let your queer and trans friends take the stage themselves. I’ll give you thought exercises about your specific workplace and community so you can start to strategize about how to make the biggest impact where you’re at. I’ll also talk specifically about talking to relatives, kids, and workmates. And I’ll give you ideas about ways you can support (or create) events and opportunities for queer people in your area which enhances visibility and safety for all.

Every ally’s journey is different because everyone’s skills, local community needs, and access to resources are different. But this book gives tons of concrete, real-life examples and actionable steps you can use in all kinds of different scenarios.

Want more strategies for strengthening and protecting your queer community? Grab your own copy of Next-Level Ally from our site or your favorite Microcosm dealer, out now!