Savage Love Episode 249

1. Well, Rachel? What was your answer?

2. That LGBT spokeswoman is crazy. She’s clearly infatuated.

3. I LOVED the proposal at the end. So cute, it made me cry!!

   I’m so gay <3

4. Eliza Gray is incredible. She tells my story – and the transgender community’s story – far better than I could. Dan it’s obvious that you do a great job, too. You like to challenge people’s thinking and move them to a better place.

   As to the question of when should a transgender person reveal their medical condition (there are medicines and surgeries used to treat us) to another:

   1) In situation when other medical conditions should be revealed.

   2) When a serious relationship is beginning to form.

   There are more times, too, but in the interest of brevity I won’t go into them all.

   But I do want to say this:

   Transgender people are as normal or abnormal as any other group of people that results when you take a look at a random slice of society. I know hundreds of them.
   Being transgender does not make you less of a person. We are equally as brilliant, loving, kind, sweet, and incredible as anyone else. Therefore, I feel that TG group members have no obligation to tell either every person they meet nor every person they sleep with. Personally I would be up front in dating situations, but again I feel no obligation, no morale imperative to disclose. Do you tell everyone you date I have slepy with (XXXX) number of partners? I have had these medical conditions that affect my sexuality? Why impose this on a community that is already picked on.

   It goes beyond being picked on. When I started talking to this reporter I was warned by a lesbian friend that I was putting my life in danger. And I fully understand the dangers are real. I have been to vigils for people killed or beaten for being TG. This broadcast did a great job of highlighting some of the violence perpetrated.

   A question that might have been asked here, “Does other people’s overthetop and inappropriate fears of transgender people impose a morale requirement on the transgender person to reveal their medical condition in any personal relationship?”

   Caroline T

5. In general I agree with Eliza Grey, she makes a lot of good points. However, I think there’s a larger component to violence against trans-gender people, M to F women in particular. That would be how many men are socialized and taught to regard masculinity. In society at large there is a pretty huge double standard about what men and women are allowed to do. In general lesbians are considered all right while gay men are considered kinda icky. Two girls can make out and it’s not a proclamation of their sexuality, but two men making out automatically makes them “fags”. Women wearing pant suits is considered normal business attire but a man wearing a skirt is considered transgressive. I think because of that M to F who are perceived as men becoming women undermine masculinity to some men. Additionally, because in general society there is a taboo against male/male sexual contact of any type, once the MtoF woman has fully transitioned any man who hits on her or is attracted to her could be perceived to be attracted to a man. Trans people are not to blame for this. It seems to be a deeper societal current that exists stronger in some places than in others. I think Dan mentioned something about this in an earlier podcast with regards to sex toys, and how vibrators are OK for women but Sleeves are “creepy” for men.

6. Good show. I was surprised there wasn’t more discussion on violence against trans women, though. I think violence against trans women by men is rooted in 2 things: sexism and homophobia. They see more “wrongness” in someone born a man wanting to be a woman than in the opposite situation; because womanhood is “less” than manhood. It is also more than likely that homophobic men also fear the attraction they feel toward trans women, and upon discovery that they were turned on by someone born a dude, they are prone to react with violence.

7. As far as I can tell the only reason to wouldn’t want your kids to engage is sex is that you don’t want them to get diseases, you don’t want them to get pregnant or cause a pregnancy, and you don’t want them to get too attached to the wrong person. None of those seem to apply here. Count your blessings and let them go to it!

8. A possible reason for the reaction to transgender especially those who hide their identities is that human evolution has made us wary of deception. You see this with the uncanny valley of computer graphic human beings or robots not looking quite human look quite disturbing to people. Cartoons do not set this off, but when you get closer and closer, it sets off alarm bells. This finding of deception is hardwired in people, it was important for a long time, whether it is just people lying or figuring out whether someone was friend or foe, our minds are probably heavily wired for this kind of thing.

   Reproduction is pretty important so if someone is tricking you into something that personal, then yes of course it can elicit quite a reaction. I”m not saying it is right or not, I’m just saying people shouldn’t be so surprised or try to explain it as some societal thing. This is a fundamental deception for any biological being, so one should not take it lightly, or pretend we can ignore it. After all tribalism is also probably hardwired in people, not to say we can’t intellectually get past it to some point, but one should always take it into account. Folks who believed in the blank slate in the past such as the communists or those who wanted to live in communes ignored the evolutionary wiring of people and it just always went wrong. So people have to always take human nature into account.

   Just be honest. After all what is a transexual saying when they use deception to get in a relationship? That gender doesn’t matter? Clearly gender does, or else homosexuals could become straight if they just met the right person!!! I know popular gender studies theories try to minimize the biological nature of gender, but this is like past efforts to minimize the impact of our hardwiring and promote the idea of the blank slate, it has no relationship to reality and the consequences are pretty ugly.

9. I think it was great that Dan had Eliza Gray on the show, and most of what they said together was tremendous.

   I was taken aback that she said, and that Dan let her get away with saying, that same-sex marriage equality reinforced gender norms – while implying that marriage equality is somehow something that leaves transgender people out. That it might not be the highest priority on the trans agenda, I could easily accept.

   But gender norms? Really? Has she seen no pictures of lesbian weddings, where it’s almost the standard to see one woman in a tux and another in a gown, or in some similar variation. True, not so much for gay male marriages, but that just reinforces my point. What people are wearing is clearly based on personal preference, not gender norms. While you could make a case (inaccurately, in my view and experience) that an emphasis on marriage reinforces heterosexist norms, I don’t see how even the ceremony reinforces gender norms.

   And as for the actual relationships, everything I’ve seen, read, experienced, and discussed about gay couples in marriage or in any other form of long-term, live-in relationships shows that we share the duties and pleasures by things other than gender norms. It’s vanishingly rare to find a same-sex couple that picks one to be “the man” and the other to be “the woman” and then forces all the domestic duties into that “gendered norm.”

   Even looking at it from the other direction, marriage equality for trans people is far MORE likely to enforce a gender norm in the absence of same-sex marriage equality, because even where allowed, it would force the trans person to declare a “traditional” gender and be pressured to stick to it, in ways that would not be true for trans people if gender requirements were legally removed from marriage entirely. Not pretending that the gay marriage movement is focused on trans rights, but I don’t see how it can do anything but help trans people with regards legalizing their own relationships. (And, of course, the benefits to their partners, who may or may not be trans themselves.)

   Since what was actually said is so utterly idiotic and completely counter to reality, I can’t help but wonder just what it is they thought they meant. Because it can’t possibly be that they meant what they said.

10. How is Savage Love now like a mainstream sports game? Both contain supposedly unusual and “big” romantic heterosexual marriage proposals. Because nothing says romance like proposing in front of a wide audience of strangers. Vomitron.

11. What?!! This caller first says he is a “young gay man” who has recently started identifying as a “young straight woman”, and he’s been on hormones for 4 months. Several questions/concerns went through my mind that no one has even mentioned…

    Foremost, why is a person who is becoming a ‘straight woman’ still commencing romantic relationships with gay men?
    And why is ‘she’ not living full-time as her identified gender, 4 months into hormone therapy? This person sounds as if they need some guidance and counselling on a more regular basis than just calling Savage Podcast. Playing with hormones and other people’s hearts is a dangerous business.

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