(RNS) — When Sasha Allen, a trans singer, sat down to write his first release after going independent, he thought he was going to write an “eff-off” song. But the song he ended up writing, with its reflections on religious transphobia, had a different sentiment.
In “When I Forgive You,” which released Saturday (March 29), Allen imagines religious people walking back their beliefs on transgender people “at the pearly gates” and questions the level of vitriol such beliefs have provoked.
“I find it strange to hold such hatred for a stranger,” Allen, 23, sings in a rollicking song with acoustic guitar and harmonica. But then his lyrics take a turn.
“You’ll find it strange when I hold kindness to your anger. I find it strange, this shape you mold me into. You’ll find it strange when I forgive you.”
Allen’s 1.5 million TikTok followers heard the first clip of the song in the week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration and his executive order defining sex as binary and immutable. The song seeks to remind the listener of the everyday humanity of trans people.
“I’m not an act of revolution that you’re watching on the news. I bet you’d like me if we talked. I bet you wouldn’t have a clue,” he sings in the new single.
Allen opened the song with a description of his devout Catholic grandmother, explaining he would have understood “if she had been abrasive and confused,” when he came out as a teenager, but instead “she’s bragging to her friends how great her grandson is.”
Because of his experience with his grandmother’s love — and the way U.S. audiences embraced him and his father on the reality singing competition show “The Voice” in 2021, where they made it to the semi-finals — Allen believes that building relationships can transform transphobia.
“It’s a show that’s really heavily viewed in middle America and places where people don’t love trans people or people voted for Trump,” Allen, who was formerly under contract with Republic Records, told RNS. “I had kids reach out to me that were like, ‘seeing your story gave my parents a perspective of a trans person that they had never seen, and they’re accepting me for the first time.’”
Allen spoke with RNS two days before his single’s release on his religious evolution, people’s capacity for changing their minds, and where he’s finding joy.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was your relationship with religion growing up?
I didn’t grow up in a super religious household. My parents grew up in religious households, but it kind of faded off when they had kids. They’re both spiritual, but a little all over the place. My dad’s a little Buddhist, a little Christian, and my mom’s agnostic. I ended up finding my own relationship with God and spirituality later on as an adult in my 20s.
What was it like for you to find your own relationship with religion?
It was really beautiful actually. I think I had the space to do that because I didn’t grow up religiously. I was kind of simultaneously having all of these beautiful blessings in my life and also going through a lot of stress and coming into myself as a person, and I just kind of stumbled upon it and stumbled upon God and prayer and spirituality in general. I found that it really added to my life, and I found a lot of peace and a lot of joy in it. And I think growing up and realizing I can have my own relationship with God that’s not necessarily religious or linked to a church, you know?
Your single includes a voicemail recording of your grandmother telling you she loves you. What has your Catholic grandmother’s acceptance and support meant to you?
She has a beautiful faith and belief in God and has wholeheartedly and always accepted me and others and did not even have to consider it for a moment. She always just accepted me exactly for who I am.
It’s really powerful seeing acceptance and love come from such devout religious people where you wouldn’t expect it. I remember when I was first on “The Voice,” and I was going to be publicly trans, and my grandma expressed to me, “I wonder how people will react to that.” And it was all only positive (among her friends). I was even a guest at her book club, and they read a book about a trans person. And they’re all elderly Catholic people who don’t know anything about trans people, so I’ve had those experiences with religious people and specifically elderly religious people, which I think is even more special just because of how new all of these things must be to them.
You seem pretty optimistic in “When I Forgive You,” that just getting to know trans people will help with transphobia, but you also released a clip of another song that frames transphobia as part of a general lack of care. How do you analyze what’s going on more broadly in the world right now and what do you think needs to happen?
I’ve seen firsthand that people’s minds can be changed, but it’s impossible if you don’t open up and talk to a trans person and listen to a trans person and realize that, like, trans people are all over the place with different views and personalities and opinions, and we don’t all think the same. We’re really just trying to live a normal life and experience joy.
It is really frustrating, everything that’s going on. It literally makes me wanna bang my head against the wall because it’s so frustrating seeing such a lack of understanding from people who have not even opened themselves.
You have a model of change that requires trans people to be in conversation with people who actively don’t accept them. What does it take to be able to sit down with people who think that way?
I’m someone who would jump at the opportunity to be on Fox News or some sort of right-wing network where I could just speak and be seen as a trans person, not even in a sort of debate way.
That’s taken many years of going through it and coming into myself. I had so much anger in high school. I felt unseen. I felt like I wasn’t accepted.
Even being on social media has almost desensitized me to transphobia. It feels so insane that I’ve come to just see it as a lack of understanding and just ignorance. It’s taken a lot of time and a lot of processing what it means to be trans and move around in a world where people see you as evil. Like, people group trans people in the same group that they put pedophiles in. People really, really hate us.
It takes a lot of being fed up and a lot of frustration to be like, “Oh my God, just talk to me, just see me.”
There are a lot of different meanings and approaches to forgiveness. What kind of forgiveness are you talking about in your song?
I think of forgiveness. I think of how bad things are right now and how bad things feel when you watch the news and the policies and the (Trump) administration. And there is so much beauty on the other side of that if we overcome it and so much light that we can find and joy for trans people and so much acceptance. If we do forgive, if someone is transphobic and they open themselves up and come around to it, of course I would never hold it against them.
At the end of the day, you need forgiveness to get past things 100%. Because if you’re asking people to understand and open their mind and change their views, you need to be able to forgive them and to see them like they’re seeing you.
In your own relationship with God, faith and even hope in this moment, where are you finding joy? Where are you finding comfort?
With releasing this song, I feel like I’m in a place where I’m really thankful to God for my platform and my voice and my ability to write and play music, so I can express myself — because I really, really do believe God made me trans and made me trans for a reason and made me trans so I could have a voice and reach other trans people, specifically those that are hurting or feel unaccepted. I feel a lot of joy in the fact that I’m gonna be able to reach a lot of people with it and maybe impact a few people.
