View From the Other Half

Summary

This segment from This American Life shares the stories of a group of transsexual men and their experiences after making the transition from female to male. The purpose of the segment is to highlight the struggle associated with adjustments that must be made after the physical transition, including learning what exactly is needed to love and how to have a healthy, successful relationship as the opposite gender. The accounts that are shared in the segment vary widely, from individuals who have been successful in meeting and engaging romantically with others to those who have not, and those who have had the briefest relationships to those who are pursuing long term ones

Outside Connection

This segment did not spark any immediate outside connection for me, but as I thought harder on it, I was able to make a somewhat obscure connection between the reading and a scene from the third season of Stranger Things. When Steve and Robin are sitting in the bathroom after having escaped being tortured, they reminisce about their time in high school together. Robin reveals how during that time she had feelings for another girl in that class, and hated Steve because of the way that the other girl looked at him rather than at her.

Reading Connection

This scene is very similar to one of the accounts that is given by one of the transsexual men that is interviewed in the story, as the individual shared the emotions they felt when they were still female. The individual described a period of time when he hated men, for no particular reason greater than the fact that at that point, he was still female. Specifically, he highlighted times on the subway when he would look at other men and feel hatred, disgust and jealousy, sparked by nothing more than the way they carried themselves, or even because they just stood there, taking their gender for granted.