AS187: On Being Transgender, with Fiona

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 187 and I'm your host Thomas Smith. Well guys, it happened, it finally, the rubber met the road in terms of this new format. I did an interview that was too important and also too long to just be one episode. It would have been far too big for me to upload as one episode, I edited down quite a bit and it still was too, so I figured I'm going to do what, one of the the options that I said, I'm just not going to do a commentary this week, or I may try to squeeze one in on Thursday, like a short one. But I think it's too important, and I'll tell you why. And I think maybe you'll agree. I got to interview a transgender listener named Fiona, who you're going to hear in a minute.

0:01:17 Thomas: And, I realize, I don't think I've ever really had the transgender community represented on my show at all. Completely an accident, of course. Nothing nothing intentional, but I thought since I've got someone who's here to talk about it and here to talk about a lot of different things, and since we had a nice, long, good discussion, and one which, by the way, involved a lot basic stuff, but also some stuff we disagreed on, so it was pretty interesting. I thought it's very important to have that whole discussion take place. I don't want to make people wait until next week or anything, so I'm gonna have that be this week's episodes. It's part one and part two. Part one and part two are very different. So it's it maintains the feel of having kind of two different episodes and all that.

0:02:06 Thomas: It is not just one long drawn out thing. So I liked it a lot. I think it is very important that this conversation take place and I hope you guys get a lot from it. So without any further ado, I am going to take us over to Fiona.

0:02:32 Thomas: Joining me right now is Fiona. How are you doing?

0:02:36 Fiona: Uh, good. How are you doing, Thomas?

0:02:37 Thomas: Doing very well. And I had seen this absolutely idiotic story, and I want to emphasize, and I should have emphasized more, but in Twitter it's kind of hard. This was an idiotic article, critical, but in reading it I thought of what I thought was kind of like maybe a difficult issue that might be worth considering, and so I tweeted about it, and what I got was a lot of response, well, interesting response about it. And what I didn't do perhaps was emphasize, like I said a minute ago, truly how awful I think this guy is, Matt Walsh, people will probably know, and and apparently, Fiona, you didn't know, which is good for you. But he's, I don't know.

0:03:23 Thomas: This is not the first time I've seen something he's written that was just absolutely bonkers. And I thought we should take a minute, or maybe as many as we need, to go over some of the absurdities of this article, which has called, "With the Transgender Movement, Liberalism Has Finally Descended Into Total Madness." So is that true? Has that happened?

0:03:46 Fiona: I think so. Um, I won't lie, I was pretty mad after reading the article, so he might be on to something.

0:03:53 Thomas: Oh yeah. I mean, well, after all it, you being a transgender person, you would be an expert in the fact that your entire, you being is just designed to make this guy mad, right? Like you're not, youre not actually serious. You're just, you came up with a way that you wanted to make Matt Walsh mad. Isn't that, is that roughly speaking true?

0:04:12 Fiona: That, along with all the lovely benefits of to figure out which public restroom to use, and

0:04:18 Thomas: Yeah, right, right. Good point. So you did it, you did it to piss Matt Walsh off and for all just the, the open arms that all of society has shown you, right? Like just the easy time you have with it. It must just all be that. It can't be, it can't be some real thing that you're going through. So now I'm glad we've cleared that up.

0:04:37 Fiona: His article, as you said before, I'd never actually heard of Mr. Walsh. Reading the article when you posted it, my mind was blown. I never read so much just fear-mongering in One person could fit into one article, and there's really not any other way to put It was um just full of just outright, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and not call it straight lies, so can we just say ignorance?

0:04:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:10 Thomas: Yeah, well, I he, I he probably believes everything he's saying. I don't, I, I think it would be worse if he didn't believe it. You know, I don't know, I think he actually believes all that crap.

0:05:21 Fiona: I don't, I honestly don't know what's worse.

0:05:23 Thomas: Well, Clearly. You aren't a regular reader of theblaze.com, so I guess we'll just have to yeah

0:05:29 Fiona: I'm I may not be their target audience, that's true. Well, it's because I'm busy, you know, sneaking into women's bathrooms, so I'm actually doing that, that's actually why the recording is a little rough, because I am actually in one right now. Well,

0:05:35 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. So your plan is working, it sounds like. Your entire life plan to get into a woman's restroom is working. Congratulations.

0:05:53 Thomas: Let me ask you seriously, though, and we can go over a lot of the madness here. And honestly, it's first of all, there's a homosexual slash transgender lobby. I don't know if you knew that. Do you guys, do you work with the homosexual lobby? Are you in the same office or do you,

0:06:14 Fiona: Uh, we're not directly related, but uh, we We do just, you know, pass memos back and forth, you know, about the agenda.

0:06:21 Thomas: Yeah. Updates to the agenda. Yeah.

0:06:26 Fiona: Right. You know, public restrooms one day,

0:06:33 Thomas: Well, they're more about turning. Yeah, I was going to say they want to turn all your kids, all, you know, conservatives, kids, gay. Is it the transgender lobby's goal to turn them all transgender as well? Or is there like some turf war there between the homosexual slash transgender lobby?

0:06:50 Fiona: There really isn't. I mean, we're perfectly happy with transgender and gay children.

0:06:51 Thomas: Okay. Oh, good.

0:06:57 Fiona: So, you don't know.

0:06:57 Thomas: So you reached a compromise. Well, I apologize, but really, what more can you do with an article like this but make fun of it? Because it is just so paranoid. And

0:07:06 Fiona: Really is. As I said before, it's hard to tell if it's ignorance or if it just willful lies. I have a feeling it's probably a mix of both. In the article he did talk about public restrooms. I think he touched on high school locker rooms, things like that. The biggest gist of the article, and he just flat out directly said it, was that he called transgender people sexually perverted, which is – that's just – it's insulting and it's untrue the most part. We're no more perverted than anybody else, I should say, seriously though.

Uh, don't know how to explain it to people, a lot of people, and this is one of the bigger things that has been a difficult topic for transgender people to express to to other people, is that that gender and sexuality, while they're connected, they aren't the same thing. Just because I have issues with my it doesn't change anything about my sexuality per se. I'm either going to be straight or I'm going to be gay. Being born a different gender doesn't really change that I'm going to be the same person I am no matter what, and that's it's difficult for people to understand that because in our society those two things are so heavily intertwined. Um,

0:07:40 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:08:38 Fiona: And, you know, even more more so when you start dealing with religious and conservative people, because to them, they're so intertwined that for the majority of them, if you're a man, you have to be attracted to women. If you're a woman, you have to be attractive to men. And then let's add on top of that, if you're a man, you have to be a man. If you are a woman, you have to be a woman. Um, it makes for a very difficult situation and it makes it even more difficult to try to educate people because you're talking about subjects that, at least in American society, are incredibly taboo to bring up.

0:08:54 Thomas: Right. Yeah... You Yeah, everything... I consider myself somewhat of an expert on conservatives because I have to interact with them all the time. Everything... No, I am probably generalizing, but the conservatives I know, the religious ones, it's like they just need everything to fit into their perfect boxes, you know, just everything has to fit right. You, Fiona, you are male because you were born that way. You just got to be that. You have to fit into that mold. You Have to like women. You have to do everything they want you to do. And the minute you're not, they just can't handle it. It's just the weirdest thing to me. And I can, I can understand. I was raised in that mindset, but once I started learning about different, you know different people, different preferences, different everything, it's like, oh, okay, just live with it.

0:10:06 Thomas: Some people are different. It's really not a bigger deal than that. I mean, unless someone is trying to harm you personally, which I don't see anyone doing that, I really don't know what the big deal is. But for those people, for conservatives, for religious conservatives, it oftentimes is important for not only their lives, apparently, but for everybody else's lives. Everyone else's life has to fit into the exact compact mold that they want it to. And it's really a curious thing.

0:10:37 Fiona: Really is. Um, and let me take a second to have a little bit of a disclaimer. Um, of course, as a transgender person, I can't say that I'm speaking for every transgender person. Everyone, of Course, is going to have their own opinion and their own feelings on these subjects. All I can do is speak for myself and my experiences. But difficult. It's difficult to explain the way these topics affect my life as a person. You, when they talk about, in like, in the article, um, the author talked about, like I said, um, the issue of transgender people in public bathrooms, or, um, I'm sorry, it's it's actually a little difficult to talk about when

0:10:50 Thomas: Yeah, of course. Oh,

0:11:22 Fiona: The time comes, um, now from my own experience, um, uh, it's just in the last year that I've actually, um, uh, come out, so to speak, and uh, started female, and I spent several months kind of running from place to place trying to get home in time so that I could use the restroom when I need to. Not to get too graphic, but I spent a long time avoiding having to use the restroom in public just because it was difficult. It was difficult to to get up courage to, I don't know how to say it, to do what I need to do. Finally came to terms with it. And I, you, there's just situations where you can't avoid. Mr. Walsh thinks that I'm going in there to, I don't know, I guess to cop a view or something. I can tell him this, all I wanted to do was not be seen.

0:11:22 Thomas: I'm sorry. Yeah. Oh.

0:12:23 Fiona: Just want to go in, do what anybody else does in the restroom, wash my hands and get out. And it's deeply insulting, insulting, to be labeled a pervert for simply just wanting to use the restroom. Um, you think of it's some, such a simple thing, but that's a really deep, cutting thing in your life, is to have something that everybody takes for granted to become such a difficult, trying, crying circumstance in your life on a day-to-day basis.

0:12:52 Thomas: Yeah, it, there is a lot that it's easy to take for granted when you're cisgender, of course, and sorry if I was making light of it. I really didn't mean to. I just don't know how to react to this article because I think it's so dumb. Um, um, but I didn't mean to make light of your situation at all.

0:13:08 Fiona: No, no, um, I of course, I I don't think you are. Um, in the, I guess the other side of the situation would be, you know, you kind of got to laugh at it, otherwise you'll cry.

0:13:19 Thomas: Um, yeah. Can I ask you a little bit about yourself? I mean, so how, I just would love to know, and maybe it'll help others. I don't know, like just more about what it's, what it'S been like for you, you know, like how it, how hard it's been. What are the challenges? When, when did you know this about yourself

0:13:19 Fiona: Uh, I actually knew from a pretty young age, um, I would say around the age of 10 or so, maybe just a little bit before puberty kicked in. I started realizing things were a little different. And again, it's actually hard to explain, but the best way I can say it is, once puberty started happening, I just knew inside that the changes that were happening weren't the right ones. And I was raised in a very religious household, very religious. And it was just, I was feeling, um, was no way to talk about it, there was no way. It was that I just kind of held inside my entire, my childhood, to be honest with you.

0:14:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And what, so is that, is that as, is it really as, I don't know what the right word is, but is it really as simple as that? I mean, it's just a, it's a feeling that, you know, that you were, what, born with the wrong gender, or whatever the correct phrase would be. But is it just as simple as that? I mean, it's so hard for someone like me to imagine, and I assume it must be apparently even harder for religious people to imagine, because I don't know how they would justify it with their religion or whatever, but is that really it? I means, it seems so simple, yet it's so profoundly difficult, you know?

0:15:12 Fiona: Guess that's really a good way to describe it, simple and difficult, cult, um, I, the best way I could ever describe it to somebody who's cisgender is, as much as you know that you're a man, I knew that I was not. And again, it's one of those things you take for granted, you, you are who you are, you, you feel the way you are, but for me, I felt the way I was, but then I would go look in the mirror and I saw somebody else. And I knew that, to even compound the issue more, I felt that before I even had words to put to it. For a long time, I didn't know how to even explain to myself how I felt. I would remember long nights of just, just trying to understand how I felt and being raised in a religious environment, trying to also square that with doesn't make mistakes. So obviously the way I felt was wrong, not there was something actually with my body and my mind's connection connection.

0:15:25 Thomas: Yeah, So which came first? Did you lose religion or did Did you come to terms with, did you finally find words for what you're going through first? What was the timing of that?

0:16:29 Fiona: I would say the two, the two kind of happen together but separately. Um, I lost my religion through a pretty long process, um, it started out, I guess, probably I kind of have the same story that of religious people have, have with losing my religion. Um, I was raised, in you know, went to church every Sunday, um, and I was also sent to a religious school. In schooling, of course, we had Bible classes, so I basically was seven days a week soaking in the Bible, and in those classes, um, things just started not making sense to me. They, we would tell stories, that one of the deeper ones that cut me was, uh, the story of, um, Abraham and Isaac.

0:17:18 Thomas: A classic.

0:17:18 Fiona: God asking Abraham to, uh, kill his son, and uh, Abraham basically going, okay, sounds solid, yeah.

0:17:27 Thomas: Good plan. All right. See you then.

0:17:29 Fiona: And uh, know, as a child, that, perhaps unsurprisingly, that story is not that great to hear, that perhaps at any time God might just ask your mom to, you know, pull out a knife and take you out, know, just to see if she's cool with him still, I guess. But there were a lot of other stories, you, now, Noah, of course, makes no sense. There's so many. I mean, where do you start with the Bible?

0:17:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:54 Thomas: Oh yeah, of course. So, and once again, was this, this, do you think it was along the, around the same timeline as you struggling with your identity and right.

0:18:01 Fiona: Yeah, I Yeah, I would say, um, you know, about the time that I really started questioning things was probably around the same time frame, um, you know, I was probably around, you know, nine, ten, something like that, um, and once I really started, like, you know, kind of get understanding things a little bit better, it obviously just, you know, didn't make much sense to me, so, like I said, it happened kind of in parallel, but they weren't really necessarily connected. A big thing for me in my schooling was, it, uh, was a religious school, so you can only guess how, uh, science class was for us. Um, it's interesting when you're studying about, you know, stars and how far away they are, and then you get told that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, you know, all of existence, 6,000 years old.

0:18:50 Thomas: So are you, you, You were raised in that level of religion where, oh man.

0:18:51 Fiona: Well, Oh, Absolutely, yeah. Um, the earth was 6,000 years old, maybe 5,000, I guess, just depends on who you ask. Top

0:19:01 Thomas: Yeah. Well, we got to do some research into that. Get our best men on it. It's either, you know, five or 6,000, one or the other. We just got to kind of figure it out. Yeah, Yeah.

0:19:08 Fiona: Men. Top men.

0:19:11 Thomas: Well, we're talking religion, so it's obviously going to be men who get to do that sort of research. So, is your family still that level of religious?

0:19:16 Fiona: Um, My mom is actually, just a couple of weeks ago I was visiting with her, and we had a discussion about it because I had to tell my mom, I had to admit to her that religion was actually, and this really doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about, but I had a tough conversation where I did admit to my mom that her religion was something that was getting between us.

0:19:44 Thomas: Well, you said you were, but had you come out to her? I mean, I know it's separate, it sounds like, but okay, okay.

0:19:44 Fiona: Um, I I have not come out, um, to my mother yet. I don't, uh, that's that's I think that's the toughest one.

0:19:54 Thomas: You're working on it. Yeah, yeah. Well had you, okay, how about this? Had you, you, does she know you don't believe in, in her religion though? I mean, it sounds like she, you sort of have come out to that level.

0:19:56 Fiona: Um, Oh.

0:20:06 Fiona: She knows that, um, uh, I've made that clear to her many times, um, and I, I don't like to, you know, I don't like to throw it at her or anything like that.

0:20:14 Thomas: Sure, sure. One thing I was going to mention is I thought it was interesting when Caitlyn Jenner came out and she said, I don't follow that much. I'll be honest, I just don't like the Kardashians. It has nothing to do with Caitlyn Jenner. I didn't care about it before. And I said, oh, good, good for her. And then I want to continue not caring about them because I just don't really like Kardashians. But that aside, I found it interesting when I saw one quote about, she said like, oh. It sounds like she's very religious and maintained and still maintains her faith. It seems like. Again, I'm no expert. But the quote I remember reading was was something like Caitlyn Jenner looked at it as though God gave her a challenge, like God's made her, you know, as a woman in a man's body, and that's her challenge, and that sort of thing.

0:21:15 Thomas: Do you know anything about that? I mean, is that, what are your thoughts on that? It seems like there, you could go either way. I mean maybe there's some way you can always justify religion with whatever's happening, you know?

0:21:25 Fiona: Think that's really, um, I think you already hit it right on the head there, it's, um, there's always a way to to justify religion, um, and it's, I don't know, at least personally, I believe that's kind of the way it's set up is, uh, they've always got a way out, you know, um, oh, this is a bad thing that's happening to me, oh, it's a test, oh, this is a good thing that's happening to me, well, obviously it's because, you know, God loves me, know, there's no wrong answer. Caitlyn Jenner is kind of a mixed bag to me.

0:21:54 Fiona: I think it's good there's somebody who was able to bring transgender issues to the public spotlight in a direct way, but I think South Park said it best that, uh, Jenner was an asshole when she was Bruce and I think she's still an asshole now, um, and I don't think there's much, uh, I don't think there's much, uh, cognitive dissonance there with, uh, appreciating somebody working to bring an issue to the spotlight but not liking them personally.

0:21:33 Thomas: Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sure.

0:22:24 Thomas: Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, because I think there are probably many a liberal who had to all of a sudden pretend to really really love Caitlyn Jenner, lest they be looked at as, or just many, everyone really. And I think you nailed it right on the head there. I mean, I think she's obviously had to go through a lot and there's elements of it that are very brave and that she's doing at the same time. Like I said, I just don't have any interest in narcissists like that entire family. So really don't care.

0:22:55 Fiona: Exactly. And the bravery issue is also another thing that rubbed, um, me the wrong way when that came out, because a lot of people were talking about like, oh, you know, she's very brave for doing what she's doing, and then I'm sure you saw it too, Facebook, you know, Facebook conservative is exploded with Jenner's brave, but our soldiers are you know, jerks and, you know, murderers, I guess, right, and it was just amazing how, um, there's always this false dichotomy.

0:22:55 Thomas: Yeah. Oh yeah.

0:23:12 Thomas: You're right. Yeah,

0:23:20 Fiona: You know, there's there's no, there's no, uh, there's no gradience of brave, it's you're either brave or you're an asshole, I guess.

0:23:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah or if one person's brave somehow that means another person isn't or something like

0:23:31 Fiona: Right, you know, it's apparently a zero-sum game with bravery.

0:23:32 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah and Caitlin stole all the brave. Yeah darn it. Yeah sorry

0:23:40 Fiona: Damn, it, we're out of brave, she took it all.

0:23:42 Thomas: Sorry soldiers. Yeah that's funny and I and we've jumped around here and thanks for fielding questions and stuff. I'm sure maybe it gets old for you. I don't know. I can only imagine what it's like for you."

0:23:58 Fiona: Um, to be honest with you, it doesn't really, um, I mean, some people it may get old, but to me I think that, uh, any chance that I get to talk with somebody, especially on a one-to-one basis, it's a chance for me to change somebody's mind or at least give them something to think about.

0:24:12 Thomas: Well, that's really good. I am glad to hear that. I totally appreciate that. And I hope that it's definitely helping me kind of understand more about what trans people go through and hopefully it's helping others too. So I think if I were to just theorize, and maybe you can definitely provide a more educated opinion on this based on what you've had to go through, I'm assuming the last year, you said, when it seems to me from from my conversations again with with religious family members and stuff, it seems like they think transgender people are just wanting attention. And so they're doing something to kind of be different or like it's unclear to me, but they think it's something you're just going to get over. Is that, have you had that reaction from people?

0:25:01 Fiona: Personally, I've, my, my experience has been that I think a lot of people tend to mute their reactions towards me, um, like for instance, in my experience at work, um, I worked in a mostly male environment for a long, long time, and, uh, when I came out I kind of did it, you know, kind of slowly, but eventually got to the point where I was coming in presenting fully female, and, um, nobody said a word to me, which I thought was actually a little weird, um, think people are kind of like we were talking about before with Caitlyn Jenner, people are, you know, afraid to say anything other than something positive about her, just didn't react to me.

0:25:09 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Hmm.

0:25:45 Fiona: And, uh, that was just the strangest thing, um, I thought there would be some type of reaction, some questions, uh, but it just didn't happen, and I felt like I was holding my breath waiting for, for this, uh, this event, and it just never came about, and eventually just got to the point where I was like, oh well, I'll just live the rest of my life the way I'm going to, and

0:25:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what, what was your, what Was your strategy or so to speak? I mean, did you, I would imagine kind of agonizing about that kind of thing. Did you, were you worried? It sounds like you were expecting a reaction. Did you try to warn anybody? Did you Try to talk to anybody ahead of time? What did you? What are some of the things you did? Or did you just decide, I'm just going to present fully female and end of story?

0:26:06 Fiona: Um, Well, I didn't, honestly, I didn't have much of a game plan, um, which maybe in retrospect I should have, I guess, um, I didn't actually start, um, seeing a therapist about it until I even started presenting it, uh, in public, so, and my therapist actually got on to me and she told me, like, hey, you know, you probably should have, you know, thought about this a little bit more than you did, which in retrospect is probably true, but just kind of, uh, in my personal life I had been kind of adjusting, um, the way I was, uh, doing things, um, it just kind, kind of started bleeding over into my professional life and a little bit of my social life, so, uh, you know, I started wearing different clothes, um, I wouldn't necessarily call it female, but kind of more general gender neutral clothing.

0:27:17 Fiona: I started, uh, growing out my hair, wearing it differently, uh, and then it just kind of, I just kind snowballed, I would add a little thing here or there, um, like I said, you know, it felt like nobody caught on, that's the way it felt to me, but I mean, obviously, you know, you could see differences over time, and, uh, eventually get to the point where I knew I was gonna have, I to was going to have to talk to somebody about it, and I talked to, um, my boss at work, and my boss is fortunately a very, very good, uh, boss to have, and he, um, he was totally cool with that, he said, you know, yeah, I get that something's different with you, and, uh, he's, uh, he said that gonna judge me by the work I did, uh, which is probably like the best thing you can hear in that situation, yeah.

0:28:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, there you go.

0:28:02 Fiona: So I had a very supportive work environment, fortunately, least as far as I knew at that time. From the top up, it was great. Some of my coworkers, I found out later, did have problems with it, but it never became an issue, fortunately.

0:28:08 Thomas: Oh, okay, good. That's good to hear. What was your biggest conflict? If did you have any? I mean, where did in people's reaction? Or was it all just more of this kind of muted reaction thing you're talking talking about.

0:28:23 Fiona: Yeah, for the most part, the reaction was pretty muted. I did have a couple of uh more high intensity uh incidents, I guess we could call them. I work for a contractor, I'm a contractor for the airlines, and uh one of the airlines' managers apparently had a problem with me, and uh that was not fun because I started catching flack uh while I was was doing my job from this manager, um, and I found out later that he was also uh getting in contact with my upper management and trying to get, um, I don't know, something done about Me. I- I know, I don't know what he was looking for, but um it ended up uh pretty good because uh, uh, our, our home office ended up sending them a letter telling them that, uh, the choices I make are mine and as long as they don't affect my work they aren't going to do anything about it.

0:29:11 Thomas: Get you fired or what?

0:29:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:31 Fiona: So, um, yeah, And, uh, that was, like I said, you know, that was a great situation as far as work goes, um, all things considered. Oh.

0:29:31 Thomas: Well, I'm glad you've had that support. That's really cool.

0:29:42 Thomas: Yeah, it's really interesting thinking about it to me, like how, this is probably, if I'm, again, doing more armchair speculation, I mean, this is probably why conservatives often view it as such a like, oh, a transgender lobby and, you know, a movement that's going out of control is that a lot of this is sort of technology based, you know, like we, it used to be that you just kind of be stuck, you know, and now, uh, with the way sciences and medical science, you're not really stuck anymore, you know, with with the gender you've been, uh you know you're born with, it's interesting.

0:30:18 Fiona: Absolutely, um, uh, just to kind of date me a little bit, I, my teenage years was uh right around the bloom of the internet, and I remember my parents, uh, got their first uh computer and got themselves an AOL account, yeah.

0:30:33 Thomas: Yeah, on one of those CDs that came in the mail or, yeah, yeah.

0:30:37 Fiona: Absolutely, um, you know, 8743 free hours of America Online, I'd be lost without, um, the internet, um, I remember

0:30:47 Thomas: Yeah, as a support system, huh, it's, yeah, hmm,

0:30:48 Fiona: Yeah, I remember, you know, going online and, like, that was the first chance I really had to kind of find anything that wasn't like a medical journal to try to find some information about myself, and even the medical journals I got a hold of didn't really have much information on it, um, at the public libraries, so, um, being, you know, a middle schooler, I remember, you know, hopping online and trying to figure out, you know, what was up with how I felt, and uh, also trying to hide that from my parents.

0:30:58 Thomas: Yeah,

0:31:20 Fiona: It was always interesting, um, because I was being sneaky about it, and of course my parents assumed the worst, which was that I was obviously addicted to pornography.

0:31:18 Thomas: Yeah, well, In their mind, though, I don't know that that would be the worst, the worst they could imagine, I guess, maybe, yeah, yeah, oh, man,

0:31:34 Fiona: That was, I guess that was just simply the worst their minds went to, um, I guess you're right, it probably what the actual case was would have been much worse on their minds.

0:31:48 Fiona: But, um, you know, I found, um, found a, again dating myself, I found a chat room where, uh, people were talking about, you know, how they felt, and I discovered that they felt similar to me. And so I made some friends and we talked about things and, kind of, you know, I learned from there, you know, like, that the way I felt wasn't, there was anything wrong with it, it was simply, was simple, it wasn't an issue, I wasn't a bad person because I felt that way either.

0:31:52 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah, do

0:32:24 Fiona: And that was a huge thing in my life to realize that, that I was, I wasn't bad.

0:32:30 Thomas: You mind if I, I ask you some basics that I just have never thought about or researched? Do, when you're talking about medical journals, I mean, is there some, like, you know, medical phrase that they use for this, or like a condition? I suspect years ago, it probably would have been something awful, sort of like it was for homosexuality. I mean, they used to look at it, to some mental illness.

0:32:36 Fiona: Absolutely. Yeah.

0:32:53 Fiona: Don't quote me on this, but I'm fairly certain the medical term is actually gender dysphoria. Right. And that's, um, that's simply, uh, having issues with your gender, gender.

0:33:00 Thomas: Okay, yeah, that sounds familiar, hmm,

0:33:09 Fiona: Um, you know, just to put it bluntly, uh, like I identified as female without even knowing what that meant to me at the time, and um, as my knowledge on the subject grew, started realizing that, uh, I wasn't alone, of course, uh,

0:33:09 Thomas: Right, yeah, do you have any idea the prevalence of it, I've yeah, yeah, yeah,

0:33:29 Fiona: I, I couldn't give you a solid number off the top of my head, but it's incredibly small. It's come into a lot of influence lately in the media and

0:33:43 Thomas: That's the interesting thing, and I think that's what probably people like this idiot Matt Walsh are reacting to, it's like it seems like it's this new thing when in reality it's, well, no, now, now you just can see when it happens because people aren't as afraid, and they're going to be more open now because society has frankly progressed to where they can feel comfortable, don't you think? Or at least, sorry, maybe not comfortable, but more comfortable than historically.

0:34:07 Fiona: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's Only been relatively recently that we could even have a public conversation about this. If you'd have asked me 10 years ago, you know, if you'd come to me 10 year ago and told me I would be in the situation where I was publicly out and talking to somebody else about this, I would have thought you were mad. It's pretty amazing how far we've come just in the last decade on this subject.

0:34:34 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what it and it's been really fast. And that's What I think these conservatives are, of course, they see their, their, I guess, what? Their world crumbling and the fact that attitudes are changing so quickly, you know, that's their worst nightmare, I think. But yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, though. I was just curious. I've never, you known, haven't done any research on it or anything. I wasn't sure how prevalent it is. And it seems like we still don't fully know how prevalent just being gay is, for example. Example. I don't know why it's such a difficult, maybe because people like to stay closeted or whatever, but it's interesting that that number is kind of debated. But now when I think about that as like, oh, that's a minority of people, compared to people who are trans, it sounds like from what you've said, it's a real small number, which makes it, of course, probably all the more difficult for

0:34:54 Fiona: Damn hippies.

0:35:37 Fiona: Oh, absolutely.

0:35:37 Thomas: People to get used to.

0:35:39 Fiona: My ex is going to school for psychology, and it was really interesting to hear her talk about statistics, because that's a huge thing for psychology students. Students. And it actually gave me a lot of insight into, you know, like you're talking about, you know, why would you get a number that you can't rely on when you ask people, you know, when you try to Find out, you know, what percentage of your population is gay or transgender or whatever. It's a part of it is exactly like you said, you know, you're going to have, of course, you can have a certain part of them that's closeted and won't self-report and I mean that's something that's never probably going to go away. Um, there's always going to be reasons to not um report on yourself, even even if it's a supposedly safe setting. Um, I I could, I I I can personally test. Um, up until you know year ago, I guess. Um, if you'd asked me, you could have put me under oath in a sealed room with only one person who would never have told anybody and I wouldn't have admitted it.

0:36:05 Thomas: And

0:36:54 Fiona: Um, just because it was, it was so deeply personal at the time. And I had spent, you know, literally decades up to that point internalizing it. Took uh, it took a lot to finally uh come out to somebody, and it was just one person at first. Um, it took a lot and a lot of alcohol. Um.

0:37:18 Thomas: What inspired that? Was it finally, is there anything specific or just it was finally too much, you know, or what?

0:37:25 Fiona: It was partially having somebody that I felt safe. Um, the other part of it was that I realized at that point, I come to the realization that was never being honest with somebody until I disclosed this to them.

0:37:30 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Kind of colors all your relationships.

0:37:43 Fiona: Um, does, It really does. Um, I wanted to be open with people and um it was something that I was working on, my personal life was, you know, being a more open person, uh, sharing more of myself with people that cared about me, and I realized that, uh, if I was going to do it, you can't, you can, you can work on that and hold back still.

0:38:10 Fiona: So, I found somebody I trusted and I did it and

0:37:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah yeah. Okay, so it wasn't just a too much a particular night of too much drinking.

0:38:14 Fiona: Uh, No. No, no, no, um, no, but uh, I uh, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I did uh make use of a little liquid courage to uh grease the gears, but uh the funny thing about it was that I found over time that you You come out to one person and then you come out to the next person and the next person and it becomes easier each time, especially if the previous people have been accepting because you realize that you're not alone anymore. After you come up to one person, you've got one person backing you. And once you come out to another person, you've got two and then three and so on. Have to say that uh all the people that have supported me through this have really been um key in helping me get get through this and it's been rough sometimes. Sometimes, sometimes it's been a lot of fun. Sometimes it's been horrible,

0:38:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, does It feel a lot better? I mean, is it a relief in

0:39:22 Fiona: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, feel like people finally know me, um, and really know me rather than somebody that I'm pretending to be.

0:39:29 Thomas: Yeah, Right, that makes sense.

0:39:36 Fiona: Feels good. It feels wonderful.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yeah, well, we had talked a little off air about just what it's like, and you kind, kind of touched on it with the muted reactions you were talking about, but talking about talking about it. I wondered if you wanted to get into that now.

0:39:55 Fiona: Sure, yeah. The internet nowadays it's It's groups shouting back and forth at each other, and I think that sometimes that's a disservice because, they say in Men in Black? You know, a person is smart and intelligent, but people are dumb, stupid, and reactionary or something like that. Um, so I don't know, I mean, how the hell do you, do you, should go like national talk to a trans person day or something, uh, it

0:40:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:22 Thomas: Yeah, it's hard. I think it is just, just the fate of humans, it's kind of the, I don't know, the bane of a lot of humans that we just aren't good at dealing with small groups of people who are different. You know, we just, across the board, I do not think there has ever been a small group of particular humans with different characteristics that have ever had an easy time in all of human history. Unfortunately, does not it seem like we are just kind of wired that way?

0:40:58 Fiona: Does, and I guess, um, as you go through and, you know, humanity becomes more comfortable with groups, those other groups start getting smaller and smaller as you start digging deeper and getting into more and more unfamiliar territory, um, You know, last couple of decades, you know, it was really the gay rights movement and, you know, you were trying, we were trying as a know, as a species, to understand this other smaller part of our own group. It is a small part, but then you get into, well, we're getting to the point where we're becoming a lot more accepting and they are getting the rights that they deserve, and then we move on to the next group and, wow, this group's smaller and more obscure and more unknown, and maybe naturally the fear is higher when it comes to that group, maybe, maybe the less you know, no, it makes it easier to be more fearful of these people.

0:41:17 Thomas: Right. Right, yeah.

0:42:01 Thomas: Well, And I, I think you have higher burden of proof too, you know, it's like the smaller the group it is, the harder it is for that group to say, like, no, I'm not just pretending, you know, like I'm not just trying to do this for some unknown weird reason, like I want to get into a different bathroom, you know, there's a higher threshold that for other people that that you need to meet almost as a group. Does that make sense?

0:42:26 Fiona: Yeah, yeah.

0:42:27 Thomas: So I think once the gay rights movement and once gay people were visible enough, I don't think, I think the number of people who doubt that they exist has gone down drastically. And that might sound funny, but I'm not, I'm being serious. I think there are a lot of people, who just maybe still there might be a lot of people that are in denial that gay people exist. They think it's done for attention. They they think, I don't know, it's weird, but they, that is what they think. In Iran right now, they think that gay people don't exist and that's an American problem. And it just goes to show that the further along you come as a society, the more you recognize like, oh, these are just people who are that way, you know? But

0:42:28 Fiona: But speaking of Iran, ironically, people have mind-boggling number of rights there compared to a gay person. I was just reading an article a couple weeks

0:43:21 Thomas: Oh, is it as long as they're interested in the right gender? Oh, sorry to interrupt. Yeah.

0:43:25 Fiona: Correct, yes. Yes. And because of that specifically, there's been this weird situation where a lot of gay people in Iran have gone through gender reassignment surgery so that they can, you know, live the life that they want.

0:43:26 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah that, that's really interesting. Yeah Yeah, you know, that sounds familiar now that you say it. It's sort of a, what, like a loophole almost that you're trying to squeeze through.

0:43:53 Fiona: Yeah. It's just, you Know, something you wouldn't expect. And I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not like it's a cakewalk over there for transgender people at all. Um, but they just, it's something that they just weirdly are accepting of in their own ways.

0:43:55 Thomas: Yeah. No, no.

0:44:08 Thomas: Yeah. Was it, was it Texas where, I think there was another weird situation in Texas where like, theoretically, if you're transgender, you couldn't marry like anyone because somehow you were, once you're, it was something like that. I'm probably misremembering, but it was, I remember someone mentioning something like like that, the way the laws were that they were trying to pass, you, you wouldn't be able to not be gay or something or, oh, that was it. If you're transgender, then you had to be gay. Otherwise it wouldn't go with some other law that they had. So people have a, people are still catching up when it comes to the laws around that, which obviously there just shouldn't be any, but but right, right.

0:44:46 Fiona: Kind of uh kind of jeopardy when they're down there, either gay or you're gay, which is it, you know? Yeah.

0:45:07 Thomas: Alright, so that does for part 1. Sorry it got a little fuzzy there in parts. Fiona was on a phone and we did our best, but I think it was for the most part okay. Tried to edit around a few things. Anyway, part two, we actually debate a bit about the issue. Well, I kind of brought it up at the very beginning, but I didn't talk about it. The issue of when it comes to kids and particularly high school kids where, you know, there's sometimes open locker rooms, open showers. How do we deal with that when someone comes out that they believe they are the wrong gender and they want to start living as the opposite gender? Or how do we deal with that in high school? So very difficult issue, I think, and one that we talked a lot about.

0:45:53 Thomas: It's going to be going to make for a really interesting Thursday episode. So join me then. And in the meantime, thank you so much for listening as usual. And I will see you soon.