How has transition affected your relationship?

Our listener question for this episode is “How has transition affected your relationship?” This is a very large question as for me transition wasn’t ever any one thing, it was something that stretched out over a very large portion of my life. As well, I began dating Jodie when I was fifteen years old but I didn’t actually truly begin my transition until I was about 45. 

However, I have always tried to be very open with Jodie with every aspect of myself, even if I haven’t always understood that I would eventually transition. So I was very open with my gender variance as I saw it at that time of my life. Jodie was fine with all of those aspects of me and was very open and accepting.

Transition though wasn’t something that either one of us initially wanted. In fact we both decided that it was something that I never wanted to do, and Jodie also never wanted me to do that. 

What changed both of us was the possibility that this was what I truly needed to do. It took a lot of education for both of us to determine that transition was something that might actually help our relationship. We had always struggled even though we have seemingly known each other forever. We fought frequently with vigor and gusto!  So before my transition it wasn’t as if we had this beautiful thing that was going to be destroyed by me making this drastic decision. 

I eventually took the leap, changed my hormones and this opened our eyes immensely. We both saw how much that changed me and helped me and in turn that helped us to finally start getting along. With great relief we both realized that transitioning was actually going to save our relationship.

Our next topic has to do with photo filters and what their effects have upon society. I personally have never used photo filters, unless a friend is taking a picture of me. But I am of mixed opinions about their use. Having grown up during the 70s and 80s there was lots of discussion about the use of airbrushing and how that gave everyone totally unrealistic perceptions of other people. 

We all knew that it was happening, but we were aware of it. These days though we often don’t know if someone is using a filter. We encounter people digitally all the time and super filters like face app can entirely change a person’s entire appearance.

But what does this mean for transgender people? On the one hand we can finally see ourselves how we have always seen ourselves, which is great! But I think there are a couple of issues with it. One being that it can give people an unrealistic expectation of what they might look like if they transition. And secondly it can be discouraging to others if people are not honest about using a filter. Imagine, you transitioned and are struggling with your appearance, meanwhile people all around are posting pictures of themselves and they look amazing, and they do not state they are using filters. 

That can be a problem because we are talking about issues that can possibly make people kill themselves. It is for that reason that I think that we need to be able to have realistic expectations for our results of transition and filters can really distort that. 

 We are still figuring out the name of our final segment, this time we are calling it “Hey what the hell?” And in this session of Hey what the hell we are talking about weird laws around the world.

There are five weird laws that we chose to bring up:

• It is illegal to serve alcohol to a moose
• It is illegal in San Francisco to wipe your car with used underwear
• It is illegal for monkeys to smoke cigarettes
• It is illegal for a woman to undress in front of a picture of a male
• It is illegal to lie down and go to sleep in a cheese factory

For all of those laws we wandered the same thing, why? What necessitated the laws in the first place?

Thank you so much for being here and listening to our drivel! Please email us with any questions you might have for us to discuss on our show:  hostess@transcister.com