The View From the Other Half

Summary

    This podcast discussed how transsexual men and women must adapt to how to love after their transitions.  It centers around the difficulty of navigating love from the male perspective after growing up female and transitioning into the male gender.  The men explained that it was challenging to find a woman to date who would accept them for who they are. Many women that they dated before were strictly into women, and finding a woman who is open-minded is difficult, even in today’s seemingly-open community.  One of their friends, Nate, struggled with their sexuality until finally understanding that he was not a lesbian, or a straight woman, but a gay man. Another friend, Ray, met a straight woman, Amy, who had never dated a trans man before, and after they began dating, other people began looking at her differently due to her decision.  At the end of the podcast, the transition is compared to falling in love since both involve a leap of faith into the unknown. 

Example

    This podcast reminded me a lot of an episode from the television show Queer Eye, where the Fab Five makes over a trans man, Skyler, after his recent miscetomy.  They help him find the right tailor for him and change the gender marker on his ID.  Skyler also taught them about common misconceptions of trans men and women and the daily struggles that are often overlooked or forgotten about.  Up until this point in the show, mainly heterosexual men were the subjects of makeovers. This opened the show up to reach more people, while also allowing people from all walks of life to tell their story and have the difficult conversations necessary to learn and stay open-minded.

Connection

    This episode reminded me of the podcast because both told stories about the difficulties the trans men faced.  The podcast focused on the romance aspect, while the show focused on the everyday struggles that we might not think about.  The podcast highlighted the mindset others have around them, and in this episode, the Fab Five admit their own shortcomings or misperceptions of the transsexual community.  Both the podcast and episode taught me so much more about the trans community and the challenges they face that I had never considered or fully understood before.