Privilege and PDAs

There has been an unexpected consequence with my husband’s transition. My husband and I have always had different levels of acceptance of public displays of affection. I have always been very touchy feely. I love holding his hand, hugging him in public, holding him, etc. I do have to say I haven’t been about heavy kissing/fondling in public for many years, but the rest of it is something I have always had a high drive. I like to constantly reassure him, hold him, hug him, just touch him.

He has always been the opposite. He never really liked a lot of public displays of affection (except with the insertion of alcohol). He has always tolerated the pdas and sometimes initiates them (but much more rarely). When we were younger this did cause some conflict, but we have worked it out so I am not too pushy, and he was a bit more accepting. Also to reiterate it when I mean pushy, I mean holding hands or hugging him.

It has been like this for over twenty years, at least until the transition. Since the transition Jello hasn’t been very responsive at all to public displays of affection unless in a controlled environment, and it has diminished over the transition. I was confused at first, “why would anything change?” I would think to myself. I noticed that he didn’t want to hold my hand in areas we weren’t familiar, especially with lots of people hanging around. I was so confused, and honestly I was hurt a little bit. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to “admit” he was with me.

My husband was kind about it though and explained to me why it bothered him more. He had a history of being attacked when he was younger for similar displays. He explained the danger he faced before we got together when he (at the time appearing as a woman) would date women and be attacked by homophobic assholes. I listened to him, and I can logically understand his worry.

I guess this is where my privilege stands out is that I am a very tall and broad guy and never felt fear about anyone physically. It never even dawned on me to worry about someone else objecting to being married to another guy. 

I do admit that at first I was unhappy, and a bit resentful. It hurt that Jello didn’t want to hold hands, or hug in public areas. Then I guess I grew up a little over a few days when I realized it wasn’t me, it was about the fact that Jello is a small guy and he had a history of getting attacked when he showed any sort of same sex or alternative lifestyle. Sometimes it is hard to step out of your own point of view and take into account other people’s worries.

I realized after thinking about it, that this is also another example of my up until now the heterosexual privilege, which I hadn’t realized I had lived with until it was gone. I am not used to living an alternative lifestyle (that is obvious in the public). It honestly doesn’t bother me, and it doesn’t help the fact that I like conflict and aggression. I have no problem engaging with someone who has an issue with my lifestyle. However this puts unnecessary pressure on Jello. He hates conflict, and with his medical issues it can prove bad to give him too much anxiety. I just need to let it go. I don’t want to make his life more difficult, and I like him happy so I need to work with it.

I don’t have an answer for this, or really any sort of resolution at the moment. I just thought I would post about it. It helps to talk it out here, although I have started to ramble due to no sleep so I will cut it here. I will revisit this later.

Jello passes!

Saturday was a first, the first time ever that Jello was assumed to be a boy when we went out together. 

We walked over to a local breakfast diner and sat and had brunch. It was a great time, just hanging with him is all I want to do. The meal was like normal, we joked around, talked about what we were doing later that day (also consoling each other on the cost of the recent car repair).

When Jello asked for the bill (he was taking me out), the waitress smiled and asked if we wanted separate bill for each of us. She obviously assumed Jello was a guy. It was not only the first time he had evidently passed fully (I am so proud of him) but also the first time in 21+ years of marriage that the wait staff assumed we weren't together.

He was stunned that he had passed enough to get that response. He chattered the rest of the day about it. I was very happy for him. I am so very proud of how far he has come. It was weird though, it was the first step into the LGBT+ world for me. The first time that we didn't look like boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife. I am sure this is probably what gay couples go through all the time. It was an unexpected feeling, and my first symptom of some loss of privilege of being a heterosexual, Christian, white male. I might unpack that later and look at how I feel about that, but right now I am just celebrating Jello's first time passing.

I have a picture from that meal (I take lots of pictures, I need a better camera) it isn't the best photo, but this is what he looked like.

Jello at the Strawberry Patch.

It was a good weekend.

Privilege

This post is the first in what will probably be a ton of posts about my privilege. I hadn’t even known the concept until just a year or two ago, and even now I am sometimes embarrassed by the privilege I didn’t realize I had (the only privilege I probably never had was class, as I grew up poor, but I am a white, male, able-bodied, and up until recently passed as a hetero) Because this touches on privilege issues I will cross post this with my normal blog as well.

Well, now that we are back from Geek Girl Con (GGC) I can put more thoughts down on paper, or blog as it is. It was a great weekend and I do have to say GGC is the most open-minded con I have been to. It was great to meet and see so many transgender people who are part of the con, and not the cast outs. There were some very pretty women and men there (and no, that doesn’t mean they all passed, I found some of both genders that didn’t pass just as attractive). Seeing so many of them got me thinking about my own personal view and some realizations I had made.

I will be honest, since adulthood I have always been attracted to trans* people. I watched a lot of porn featuring transgendered individuals (mostly transgendered women, I hadn’t realized how attracted I might be to transgendered men until my husband came out). Some of my friends knew I had a lot of different tastes in porn but remarkably I never got a lot of flack for liking it.

I had always imagined before I got together with Jello, and after we opened up our relationship (we are poly on and off), that I would be just as happy with a transgendered woman as I would be with a cis-gendered woman. The plumbing of the individual didn’t matter at all to me, my requirements for my female partner was for her to believe she was a woman, not if she had a cis-gendered body. I am currently discovering I don’t think an individual needs to identify as anything anymore, Jello’s transitioning opened my eyes up to what I really am interested in, and for me that is just someone to love and take care of.

However, recently I discovered one of many points of my cis-gendered, white male privilege that I had never considered before. I never understood why non cis-gendered women were so reluctant to date cis-gendered men that were sexually attracted to them. I heard the term fetishizing a lot, but I hadn’t understood what they meant by that. Why would a woman be reluctant to date another person who is interested in them sexually, especially because they weren’t cis-gendered?

I kept going over in my head trying to figure out what was wrong with that. Then I finally made a breakthrough. When my husband came out I began to look more into the social issues surrounding transitioning individuals. I wanted to be supportive for him and understand any possible issues that might affect him or perhaps anyone who I might date in the future that is not cis-gendered.

I had always thought if I dated a non cis-gendered woman that she would go out with me everywhere on dates and just to hang out, like any girlfriend would. She would get to know my friends and family and would eventually become part of my family if things progressed, just like any cis-gendered relationship.

However, I kept seeing that same set of references about men fetishizing these women. So I read a lot more blogs and YouTube channels by non cis-gendered women. It finally dawned on me that a lot of guys wouldn’t treat the women as girlfriends, but just as booty calls. For some reason there was a disconnect for me. I knew that women were treated poorly and as booty calls due to numerous other reasons (looks, social position, culture, etc) but it had never even glimmered in my mind that transitioning women weren’t considered “real women” and therefore were something to play with but leave at home. I was absolutely flabbergasted by that.

That was an eye opener. I feel like I was very naive, as I NEVER imagined not treating someone like my girlfriend (and now I can include husband as well) if we were intimate. It truly had never mattered to me for any reason, so I had wrongfully assumed everyone else was like that in believing there is no shame in being with someone, no matter his or her beliefs, social position, race, original gender or disability.

Now that I realize this, I feel incredibly dumb for not catching it before. It makes sense, I have seen other guys treat booty calls poorly and when that happened it always made me angry with the guy. It never even dawned on me that a transitioning woman wouldn’t be treated like a cis-gendered woman.

The fact I missed this I blame on my white, male, cis-gendered and outwardly appearing hetero privilege (I will lose the hetero privilege as soon as the T works on Jello, and I am more than happy to lose that privilege).

What makes it worse is that I sometimes felt offended by some of the posts. I felt defensive that someone would question my interest in him or her because I am cis-gendered. I never struck back at someone for it, but the frustration was there on occasion. Now that I realize what it was about I am ashamed of that, and especially with the understanding I gained in reading about the subject I feel like I need to hang my head in shame.

This just shows me that there are so many issues I don’t see because of my privilege. I need to make it one of my primary objectives to review everything around me with as clear a view as I can and get rid of that white male worldview, and if possible help others get rid of it as well.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming J