UC Berkeley

I was at UC Berkeley again today. Even since I participated in the Vagina Monologues in 2004, I've been invited back to talk about transgender topics with the Femme Sex class. I don't know the average demographics of the class, but, from what I have seen, there tends to be more lesbian and queer women in it than average.

So, anyway, there was myself and two other transgender people as panelists...one MTF and one FTM. What's really nice about the panelists I have always been there with is we provide such a vast perspective on the topic...which, in actuality, is really even more diverse than 3 people can do...but we manage.

We told our personal stories of awareness and transition, chatted about family, surgery, hormones, and then we touched briefly on relationships.

"If your best friend was a fully transitioned transsexual....would you want to know?"

In last semester's class, it was split on whether or not they wanted to know. Some said it would help them in being more aware of their friend's life and what they had gone or are going through. Others said they didn't want to know because they either didn't want it to affect their current relationship or they were just interested in knowing the person now...who they truly were. In either case, it seemed that there was a lot of compassion for this hypothetical friend.

This semester's class answered quite differently. Almost all of them said they would want to know....for basically the same reason as last semester.

"If you started dating a person, and they told you they were a fully transitioned transsexual, would it stop you from dating them?"

One woman said "yes", it would stop her. A handful of women said it wouldn't, and the remainder weren't sure...saying it would depend on who the person was and how their relationship was proceeding.

They became curious, and asked if I had gone through this. I told them I was starting to see a woman and that I had not told her. I can't read minds, though, so I couldn't tell if she knew or not. I told them I didn't want to get too close to make her feel uncomfortable when I did disclose to her, yet, I wanted to get close enough so that she could get to know me. Although we might think that a transsexual woman disclosing to a woman might be different than a transsexual woman disclosing to a man, some women might feel very uncomfortable dating or kissing someone who used to live as a man. I realize there is a lot of stigma behind men being gay, but a lesbian woman might feel just as bad in the same situation.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time as we were really starting to delve into this subject, and I wish we had about 30 more minutes to really ponder some of the intricate details. Bottom line, though, more people than not preferred knowing. Unfortunately, "knowing" sometimes changes the way the transgender person is perceived.