Hello and welcome to episode 4 of season 2. Today our student question is What were some major issues or struggles that you went through during your transition? This is actually a very large question. It can be looked at from several different angles and all of the views are large and could take several hours to answer fully and completely. I decided to focus on just a few different areas.
The first big struggle I went through in undertaking my transition is simply accepting that I needed to transition. For most of my life I avoided transition or even simply acknowledging that I am actually transgender. I just kind of just felt as though I was never trans enough that I had to transition. Which is a common refrain from many who have transitioned, don’t do it unless you absolutely have to. These days I don’t really think that as that is actually a very transphobic idea. There is nothing wrong with being transgender or transitioning.
The second really big struggle in my transition was and is in finding appropriate health care providers locally. This is really not just a transgender issue, this is an issue for all human beings living in rural areas. Instead of being able to stay local, and keep my money spent local, I have to drive at least several hours to either Southern California or Northern California so that I can get to the larger cities like Los Anglees or San Francisco.
The third area that I have found very difficult during my transition is being discriminated against by my employer. When I first began my transition, within hours of receiving my prescription for estrogen I was promptly informed that my employer does not pay for that sort of thing. They were fine for paying for my wife’s estrogen as she had an F for female on her driver’s license. And that is the traditionally accepted portion of our populace that operates on estrogen.
Prior to this I seriously thought that discrimination wasn’t legal, which actually is not true. Discrimination is alive and well, and actually not illegal. It just sort of depends on the discrimination that one is facing, some of it is illegal, but really most of it is totally legal.
The final area that I struggled with was staying with my employer and trying to figure out how to be a good employee but also how to change the organization that I worked with. Sometimes in order to effect change, one has to be a part of the group and we need to work from within it to get change to occur. That is what I chose to do with our employer and I actually got them to finally change their policy.
Our second big topic today has to do with high school biology. Many people try to rely on the minimal understanding of science to support their discriminatory stances. One of the things people are looking for is a definitive way to define what is male or female. Traditionally people said let’s look at a human being's genitals to determine who is male or female. But what bothers some is that some people have surgically altered their genitals and so it is no longer a definitive way to determine gender.
Many people have thus begun to look towards DNA and state that DNA can tell with 100% accuracy if someone is male or female. While this appears to be a certain way to know someone’s gender as it turns out that is not true. Some people can actually have both male and female indicating DNA within their body.
Some of the ways that this can happen are fascinating. One thing that can happen is that people can be born having absorbed their twin. While this phenomenon is widely thought to be a tumor or lump growing in a weird location, it does not always have to be so obvious. There does not actually have to have any visible signs of an absorbed twin. Or the signs can be so small as to be just some skin discoloration or differentiation. And when DNA samples are taken from differing parts of some human’s bodies, the DNA can be different.
Another thing that can happen, which might be happening often, is that mothers can absorb some of their babies DNA. And thus mother’s carrying a male baby can actually be shown to have both their DNA and the babies, even long after the mother has given birth.
Really people’s low level science knowledge is often not full enough to encapsulate the large diversity that is humanity. Being human is generally not black or white, it is extremely messy and has enormous differing shades of gray.
A couple of fascinating links on this topic are:
In our final segment today for Jodie’s What the Hell? We discuss weird food festivals from around the world. Unfortunately due to some production issues we were not able to release this episode early enough for you to be able to travel all of them this year. But a couple of them are still upcoming events so you might be able to actually go see them this year.
We discuss the following food festivals:
- Pizza festival Italy
- Birthplace of pizza
- Lots of people
- Can eat pizza and make pizza
- And concerts and wine
Okay lovely people, thank you so much for listening to our show. We super appreciate you being here. We would also really like to hear from you. So please feel free to reach out and send us a shout out or a question at hostess@transcister.com
