The Joy Tuck Club

The Trans that Time Forgot

• red+freckles • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Have you ever wondered about the rich tapestry of transgender history and the challenges we face today? Journey with us, Rachel and Phoebe, as we traverse through the annals of time, retelling the often overlooked stories of our trans ancestors like King Henry III of France and the group "Rebecca and her daughters". We celebrate the beauty in the diversity of our community, sharing personal tales of acceptance and coming out in different cultures and eras, and reminding everyone that transgender identities and expressions have always existed, and will continue to do so.

The conversation doesn't stop at history, though. We tackle the hot-button issues that affect us daily, shedding light on topics like the fetishization of trans women in dating, the struggle for gender balance on public boards, and the complex topic of trans women in sports. Hear us break down stereotypes and debunk myths surrounding these issues, all the while being true to our identities and our experiences.

As we wrap up, remember this: you are valid, beautiful, and transcending boundaries. Come, join us on the Joy Tuck Club, where every episode is a celebration of our diversity and resilience.

Listen to the podcast where we were guests for Transgender Awareness Week at We Recover Loudly.

Support the show

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Visit The Joy Tuck Club online at redandfreckles.com for transcripts, commentary, community, news, and much, much more.

Meanwhile, you can always find red+freckles (Rachel & Phoebe) on

Twitter/X: @twodamptrans
Instagram: @twodamptrans
and
Bluesky: @twodamptrans.bsky.social

The Joy Tuck Club is written, produced, and edited by red+freckles, of Two Damp Trans Ltd, UK.

Rachel:

Hey, you know, one thing we haven't discussed on our podcast yet is the time that I was fan mobbed.

Phoebe:

I know you mentioned something, but I don't know how it goes. It's never happened to me. Was it like being Taylor Swift?

Rachel:

Oh, it's absolutely identical. It was amazing. Well, if she had only one fan, it was really nice, though, and she likes our podcast. She was a little bit nervous to speak to me. She recognised me, came over and was gushing to me. It was delightful.

Phoebe:

Yeah, it was really good. Oh my God, I'm totally not jealous.

Rachel:

Oh, I was bathing in the glory.

Phoebe:

Oh, I bet you were.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Phoebe:

I don't know how often this is going to happen. I was looking into our stats and couldn't see any trajectory in particular. They've been doing really well, even during our brief hiatus. But I was curious about which episodes are doing best, because it's not always the first one right.

Rachel:

I've got the information here if you want me to break it down for you.

Phoebe:

Oh yeah, hell yeah, please do Okay.

Rachel:

So out in front we have the original episode Bulls and a Mason Jar, and about two horse lengths behind is race against time, managing to hold off a charge from her to paternity, who's just currently out on her own. Getting trans their child and notes brings eternal running together with Satan head by nose and bring out career. But coming up fast on the outside is the late starter bonfire of the trannities.

Phoebe:

Whoa Can we?

Rachel:

I think it might be a photo finish.

Phoebe:

Can we stable this till later?

Rachel:

Oh goodness, start the music. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Joy Tap Club, a podcast that celebrates the diversity and beauty of transgender identities and expressions. I'm Rachel, and calling in remotely from a cottage across the English channel is my co-host, the beautiful Phoebe. Oh, maybe I should call you Mamazelle Phoebe, I like that. Maybe, we're also known as Red and Freckles and are the team behind two damp trance.

Phoebe:

And one soggy one when we're separated.

Rachel:

Oh yeah, we're two individual damp trance. We're not together at the moment.

Phoebe:

So there's been a little delay and we owe you, dear listeners, an apology because this episode took a little bit longer than expected. I was held back returning to England from overseas and now all I'm allowed to do is lie back and think of her a while.

Rachel:

Me or England?

Phoebe:

Well, you actually.

Rachel:

By the way, you know, we're Red and Freckles. If we're doing this for our French listeners, which seems quite good, we'll be Rouge et Tassie de Rousseau.

Phoebe:

Rousseau, it's a lot more syllables than Freckles, isn't it? Yeah, I feel like it makes me feel more valued somehow. Yeah.

Rachel:

But do you want to let our listeners know where you're calling in from?

Phoebe:

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do do.

Rachel:

Is that your French cafe? Are you going to insert the L-O-L-O music?

Phoebe:

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, well, I'm just across the channel. I'm a little hike up from Calais where the channel comes in.

Rachel:

Oh, I know I've come through that channel many times. I welcome it when you do. When I come out the other end I get a. Oh no. Like I couldn't even, suddenly Rochelle appears.

Phoebe:

So far, I've found the baguettes to be cheap and the village men, by the way. Oh my God, I'm very curious about this trans person in their midst. They, literally they don't stop staring at all. I'll go walking up a long street. They stop. Their van is in the middle. They're unloading something or doing whatever they're doing. They drop everything and just look and stare as I go all the way up and pass them and disappear into the distance. I'm learning to get stared at in French, which is much louder than being stared at in English.

Rachel:

I hear the baguettes can be quite a pan when used a certain way, just in case it gets too much. But it is going to be fun to visit you soon. Well, not as soon as we're hoping, but I am coming to see you soon and find out what they think when there's two mystical creatures in their midst.

Phoebe:

Oh, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.

Rachel:

I think it's quite village attire. It's more Parisian catwalk.

Phoebe:

You know, there's a cafe and I've been there a few times. I've gotten to know the locals in my silent, being ridiculously unable to communicate in French way. So there's a really big person with long, lanky, greasy hair gray, greasy hair and he doesn't say anything to anyone, as far as I can tell. You sound like a catch. Then there's the, I think, who was previously at the talk of the town, because whenever he comes in he makes a point of saying hello to everyone, including me. He either hugs or shakes everyone's hand, and he seems to be the elder Lothario, like he had his day. It's gone, but he hasn't given up his old hopes or habits. But the biggest question we're going to have is what do we wear? Anyway, what's our topic for?

Rachel:

today. Well, currently, as you know, at time of recording it's Transgender Awareness Week and leading up to Transgender Day of Remembrance on Monday the 20th, and given the ridiculous claims by some people online that trans people are a new phenomenon, I thought it'd be good if we could do a thorough debunk and talk about transgender history.

Phoebe:

I want to do that too, can I just say to celebrate last time on this side of the channel. Fantastic, we have always been here and we are here to stay. Oh, it sounds like a sign off almost.

Rachel:

It does, doesn't it?

Phoebe:

Nice. So Transgender Awareness Week is observed from November 13 to November 19. It's a one week celebration leading up to the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which memorializes victims of transphobic violence, and while you had a sad recounting of some of them in our last episode and one of the extraordinary things I find is just in the past week we've had people calling for disruption at funerals of dead trans teenagers We've had leading figures in anti-trans groups in the UK try to claim that celebrating the Transgender Day of Remembrance would be a legal risk for any company. Transgender Awareness itself is now a legal risk.

Rachel:

Why, why?

Phoebe:

Because they're misinterpreting the law and they're taking advantage of a slight opening that they see in the government's current rejection of the EHRC, the European Human Rights Commission, to say well, if they do that, then the definition of sex that was passed down in a Scottish court or I should say upheld in the Scottish court can be overturned, and so they're seeing an opening of the gates brought about, of all things, by a really important topic, but about the resettlement of refugees to Rwanda.

Rachel:

Basically, they're saying if a company celebrates or recognizes Transgender Day of Remembrance, then all those people that don't believe that trans people are real and disagree with Transgender Day of Remembrance will then be able to prosecute them or take them to some kind of tribunal. Well, that's just ridiculous, because not everybody believes in Christmas, yet every company and corporation celebrates Christmas. So how is this any different to that? Believe it or not, non-binary and trans people have always been here, not least in every recorded society, from the ancient world onwards.

Phoebe:

So why is it that we don't often hear about them? Why are they absent from the tales and lists of historical figures we hear about?

Rachel:

The answer lies in part with how history is recorded and who records it.

Phoebe:

So, as always, history is recorded by the victors. People who belong to groups that fear being ostracized and persecuted don't dare reveal themselves, except to a few people. So if you fear being persecuted, then you're not going to come out and say hey, I'm me. And so what we have is the visibility of LGBT plus people, essentially when they've faced hostility at different times through history, and so they're just not that often seen.

Rachel:

No, and we were discussing this earlier actually, and I've just finished reading the Excellent Adult Human Mail by friend of the podcast and Transpiration, Oliver Radcliffe, and he actually touches on this in his book.

Phoebe:

Yeah, which I haven't read yet. You have to get it, yes.

Rachel:

Well, now I'm going to bring our copy and hand it over to you.

Phoebe:

Everyone needs their own copy, though.

Rachel:

Everyone should have their own copy, but he mentions this, and the line that I just wanted to read out of the book was I don't want to alarm anyone, but just because you couldn't see us didn't mean we weren't there. Yeah, there's a whole little bit in the book about that, but it's difficult, isn't it, to trace the history of a group of people that instinctively hide.

Phoebe:

Yes.

Rachel:

Yeah, we're conditioned to. Well, certainly in the past, in the recent past, we've been conditioned to hide our true selves, which is why so many elder trans leave it so long to come out, because it wasn't accepted. So how can you then talk about how many trans people there were? Because they were probably all just as many as there are now, but they're all in hiding. They're all eggs waiting to crack, or if they knew they were trans, they weren't openly trans.

Phoebe:

I'm starting to feel like we were once figures of horror, because you're there, but under the surface you remain, not seen, but you get spoken of in fairy tales or something. This time I ever heard about a trans person, it wasn't until I was about 40. Are we mystical figures?

Rachel:

Oh, we are, absolutely, we are, yes, but like I've heard you, you certainly are.

Phoebe:

Well, I've also heard you call us unicorns. Yeah, we're, in other words, magical figures.

Rachel:

Certainly on the date, and a lot of people referred to me as a unicorn.

Phoebe:

I'm not surprised.

Rachel:

But I think that means something completely different here. We'll leave that for another discussion. Oh, for goodness sake, straight couple, six unicorn.

Phoebe:

No, is that a? Thing?

Rachel:

That's a. Thing. Oh did you not know? No, we'll talk about this in the future, so I'm sure we'll talk about apps dating, apps dating as trans. Yeah, anyway, let's get back on track.

Phoebe:

All right. So what you're saying we know this to be true is that transgender people have been around throughout all of human history.

Rachel:

Yeah, hundreds of cultures used to honour and celebrate transgender people. We've existed probably for as long as humans have actually been around, and throughout human history we've been recognised and sometimes celebrated for having more than two, like there's been more than two genders.

Phoebe:

Part of my coming out story was a Native American woman telling me that I'm of two spirits, and I didn't understand what it meant at the time. I was just expressing to her how I'm so confused about how I was born as one person and was meant to be another, and she said well, this is exactly who you are and we revered you. So be proud and it might be my first recognition of this idea of trans. Pride is essentially don't let them get you down. You exist in your special and you're a unicorn and you're mystical and you're magical, and you might have been hidden in certain ways through the effect of historical recording that you were always there.

Phoebe:

So I know you've been doing some research into this. Yes, we have a big long list. Yeah, can we?

Rachel:

go through some people most interested, trans people through the 80s, but there's quite a few here, so we won't touch on all of them. Okay, probably just the more interesting and relevant ones. Let's take a stroll through transgender history, highlighting the most interesting and notable. Do you want to go for the first one?

Phoebe:

Sure, king Henry III of France, frequently crossdressed and while dressed as a woman, was referred to as Her Majesty by his courtiers, I want to say her courtiers. Even the male ones she wore when she was dressing that way were considered outrageous, despite the flamboyant standards.

Rachel:

So when was that 577? So you know, there's numerous other examples of transgender people 1654, 1676, 1700s, but I'm going to jump from 577 to 1839.

Phoebe:

What's that?

Rachel:

This is a good one. So between 1839 and 1844, there was a group who were dubbed Rebecca and her daughters, and they were a group of male to female crossdressers who were protesting the Welsh road toll barriers which were making the poor even poorer. So what would happen is a guy dressed as a woman would shuffle up to these toll booths and pretend to be blind. Yeah, and you can't cry out, so tap it with a stick and say there's something in my way. And then suddenly all of these other men dressed as women would appear out of nowhere and they would smash the toll booth up.

Phoebe:

Oh my God, can we go back in time? I want to be part of them.

Rachel:

Yeah, and these warriors also adopted the names and identities of women. They were, like some of the earliest examples of MTF.

Phoebe:

Okay, so if we jump and we have Dr Magnus Hirschfeld, who set up his Institute of Sexual Research, which was the first Institute focused on transgender people, and if you've ever seen a very famous photo of books being burned by the Third Reich, they were the books from his Institute. When they were burned, we lost as a community a massive part of our history and scientific research. His Institute included the Museum of Sex and there's not a big leap from what happened there to the bookbannings that happened today in America.

Rachel:

No, I was in Hirschfeld, the person that coined the term transvestite yes, and also known to cross-dress himself.

Phoebe:

Yes, yes, and I believe it was Lily Elby who had the first sex reassignment surgery. She was one of the first transgender patients. But she also died from complications from a uterine transplant. I mean, remember it was. We're going back to early 1900s.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Phoebe:

When these surgeries were developed, but they're not experimental. It was also back then that the first hormones were made available.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Phoebe:

And it's our history of medical and surgical transition coming from those moments. Of course, then it took a massive step back, which I think you could compare to the Dark Ages, and took a renaissance to come through that. And the Dark Ages saw libraries being burnt and they saw a dismissal of all recorded knowledge in favor of whatever the propaganda of the day was. And that's where we're getting to, in a way, with the current attitudes in the board by the political right wing.

Rachel:

But, yes, almost like a bonfire of the trannities.

Phoebe:

Exactly yeah.

Rachel:

Okay, you mentioned the first person to undergo sex reassignment surgery, but now we're jumping to 1952. And the first American whose sex reassignment surgery became public. I love this.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Go on. So I'm actually just going to read this because this is lovely. So it's 1952. And a young woman sits down to write a letter to her family. The act itself was nothing remarkable, christine Jorgensen, yeah.

Rachel:

I think, I'm saying that right. It was 26 and preparing to return to the United States after undergoing some medical procedures in Denmark, but the contents of her letter were entirely unique. I have changed very much. She told her family, in closing a few photos, but I want you to know that I am an extremely happy person, and it's this next bit that I love. Nature made a mistake which I have had corrected, and I am now your daughter. So she was the first American to undergo gender confirmation surgery, and she would arguably become the world's most famous transgender woman of our era.

Phoebe:

So crashing on. In 1969, transgender and gender non-conforming people were among those who resisted arrest in a routine bar raid on the Stonewall Inn the origin of Stonewall in New York City's Greenwich Village, thus helping to ignite the modern LGBT rights movement. And so this is from whence we have the Stonewall Riots, also known as the Stonewall Uprising, a series of protests by members of the gay community. It was all in response to the police raid and we fought back. We fought back even harder when the police came violent. The movement was led by people like Marsha P Johnson, a black trans woman who stood there on the front lines, and let's not go into the violence of it. But it was a year after this uprising to mark the anniversary June 28th, 1970, that the first gay Pride marches took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, new York and San Francisco, and then gay rights organizations were founded across the US and the world. It started with Stonewall.

Rachel:

That's an important one. I think it's one that not just trans people know, but that resonates all the way through the LGBTQ plus community, because it's literally the beginning of Pride, and it's important to note that the T was with the LGB then as well. Yes, all these people that say like we're muscling in on the LGB community, we were there at the beginning.

Phoebe:

So what does Pride mean to you? Wow?

Rachel:

Let's just chuck this one out there. What does Pride mean to you? What does Pride mean to me? It's a sense of community. You know, I was lost. I didn't know, I didn't know it, but I was lost my entire life. Yeah, and we've spoken before about found family, and I'm not just talking about trans people, I'm talking about the whole of the LGBTQ community. Yeah, that there's a link between us all, some kind of shared history of persecution and having to hide, and it's just that sense of community. It's so welcoming to be amongst people that understand even just a little bit what you've been through. Yeah, and I am proud. I'm proud of who I am. I'm a proud trans woman and I wouldn't change that.

Rachel:

So, I live every day with Pride. Yeah, it's not just one month a year, pride is all year round, right?

Phoebe:

Yeah, I remember in one of our early conversations how we talked about Pride being the recognition of what we survived, what we overcame to be, who we are. And I agree with you so completely that there are important weeks of recognition and remembrance, there are important months, but if you are part of this community, you feel Pride 365 days a year.

Rachel:

Absolutely. Do you know? We haven't touched on one of my favourite stories that I found while doing a little bit of research for this episode. Can I go?

Phoebe:

on, yeah, yeah.

Rachel:

There was a really great article written by Jacqueline Murray and it is possibly my favourite historical trans person. I literally love this person, and it's a person called Eleanor Ryker.

Phoebe:

Oh yes.

Rachel:

Who is also known as John. Now, this person, eleanor slash John, was arrested in London in 1394 for having sex with a man, and the testimony before the court reveals the complexity of the trans identity and how they were linked to an individual sense of self, because in their testimony, still wearing the women's clothing in which they had been arrested and calling herself Eleanor Ryker, confessed to having sex with men while wearing women's clothing, but also admitted to having sex with women while wearing men's clothing. Oh my God, I love so. Is this the first example of a gender fluid person? Oh, wow. Anyway, this gender ambiguity seems to have confused the shit out of the court, because they couldn't make up their mind what the crime was. Was it between two men? Was it sodomy between two men, or was it prostitution, sex between a man and a woman for money? Now, there's no record of what the court actually decided, or even if Ryker was charged with any crimes. Their trans identity blurred the clearly defined boundaries between the genders in medieval society, and I love that. I love that.

Phoebe:

Oh, yes, yeah, oh see, you're blurring these boundaries, these boundaries that are clearly defined. By what? By the need to categorise people in different ways. That happened, no matter what, because of gender roles, and we already know that gender roles were quite fluid in the past. Anthropologists have been there. They've discovered that what we thought were unusual instances of, for example, the Amazonian warrior women was actually extremely common, that people performed the roles they were best suited for, which is kind of funny in the context of today's debates about trans women, particularly in sports, because we've always had a massive overlap and the idea that one sex must in all instances be better at one sport than another is absolutely ludicrous. Gender roles are fluid, just as Eleanor Ike, and it was fluid.

Rachel:

Yeah, you asked where the gender boundaries come from, but the gender boundaries are constructed by the cis.

Phoebe:

They are, yeah, and they're constructed for conformance and we don't.

Rachel:

No, we live outside the boundaries or we live without boundaries.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Phoebe:

There's one other person I want to mention only because I well, I admire her, because I read her most famous work, and she's a British journalist and then author called Jan Morris. Well, she changed the name to Jan Morris and she did things in the past like covering war zones and climbed Mount Everest. But the story of her transition she was very early to transition in the UK and one of the things I remember her going through because we didn't have things like lasers, you know, laser hair removal that came later was that she had an electrolysis over her entire body. Wow, I know.

Rachel:

Wow, that's no mean feat.

Phoebe:

No.

Rachel:

And she probably had it on her feet as well.

Phoebe:

Probably she also had one of the first bottom surgeries, and when she wrote the book I think I read it a couple of years ago, I think she had been 10 years into her transition Right, and she wrote about how, another 10 years further on, everything was completely normal for her. She was a woman in every which way. She was still with her partner. Yeah, they had gotten through that because of their love and, I suppose, respect for what she was going through. But she was living a normal life.

Phoebe:

And isn't this back to the beginning where we're talking about trans? People are documented through recorded history, but they also disappear. Yes, because we just exist, and most of the time people don't even know we're there. We pass, we go to the bathroom, we go through our lives. It surprised me, but I've passed many times because I haven't been under some sort of gender scrutiny. Because, frankly, why would you do that? Do you look at a cis person and say I need to know what your genitals are? No, no, we just are. And yet right wing politicians want to make us disappear.

Rachel:

They do, but we spoke about this before the podcast. I was fortunate enough, through my current work, to attend an award ceremony in Liverpool and, like a manufacturing award ceremony, and I got to do my hair, put on the dress, wear some heels, which I haven't done for a while and so I traveled up to Liverpool.

Phoebe:

Side note sorry just to interrupt, but for the listeners out there who don't have a visual on this, you looked absolutely stunning and incredible.

Rachel:

To go on. I felt absolutely stunning and incredible and it was a black tie event, so I picked my favorite color, green. It was the dress, and it was a green silk dress and it was a very bright dress and with my red hair I stood out. But the thing I wanted to get out is I kind of had to pinch myself Because I looked good. I know I look good, I felt good, which made me probably look even more good because my confidence, you know, I glided into the, into the awards, this green beacon in the middle of this sea of black tuxes.

Rachel:

Not once, not once, did anybody make me feel anything less than a woman. I was talking to other women, the guys were looking at me, the people that I went with, you know, there was not a single shred of any doubt in their mind that I was a woman. So all of this stuff you know we were talking earlier about how bad the government are getting and the things they want to do to bring us down and erase us yeah, but they, they can't, it doesn't matter. You know it might seem like it matters. Yeah, oh no, this law's changing. They're going to do this, they're going to erase us, they're going to take away our rights.

Rachel:

I just had the most wonderful night in amongst people and it was amazing, and there was not one little bit of hostility towards me. So what I guess, what I'm trying to say is in the grand scheme of things, these politicians and the media Can fuck off with whatever you know, they can do whatever they want to us, but we will always exist and we will always have allies and people will see us for who we are. I believe that it was incredible. I just wish that you were there with me, baby.

Phoebe:

You know what, when, when I saw that photo of you and what I thought of because we're separated by the channel and I mean not being in England right now you were my green light from the great Gatsby on the end of the pier, and if only I could reach across to you, if only I could get there. You looked amazing.

Rachel:

Thank you, I felt amazing, yeah, oh, and the other thing that happened was it was really sweet actually because I went with some a couple of really close colleagues from work.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

One CS guy he's pretty fly for a white guy and another woman that works on my line and I'm not going to name her. I'll say hello to her. Hello, she knows who she is. Yeah, but I was so proud of her because she stepped outside her comfort zone to come to that award ceremony and the the cutest thing was because she's not really confident in social situations.

Phoebe:

Right.

Rachel:

And I convinced her to come to the award ceremony because we're a team and it was the first time she'd properly worn a dress. And the nicest thing is she turned to me. She was getting my opinion on dresses, shoes, bags, makeup and I was helping her, but she didn't realize it at the time, but all of her actions were so validating and were helping me. Yeah, we were, we were lifting each other. Yeah, it was just. It was just a really, really nice thing.

Phoebe:

Wait, so are you suggesting for a second here that a trans woman can help a cis woman in gender-related matters?

Rachel:

I am, but but what? What I would probably like to say is take, take the trans woman out of that, that comment, yeah, Take the cis woman out of that comment. It was just a woman helping one woman helping another woman.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And that's what it felt like.

Phoebe:

That's what I saw in in in the photos of you standing there, was it's. You're just a, not just a woman, because you're an extraordinary woman. Take the trans out. I know we're both proud to be trans, but there are. There are blurring of moments. We, through passing, become women. I left being a man a long time ago, trying to do that, trying to fake that.

Rachel:

Yeah, you left pretending to be a man.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Acting as a man.

Phoebe:

Yeah. So after that lovely discussion, where are we at? What comes next?

Rachel:

Hang on a minute. I'll just check my notes. You know what that means. It's time for the trans news.

Phoebe:

Quartz Gotcher's turf tantrum.

Rachel:

GQ chases trans romance.

Phoebe:

San Fran trans fan film cram oh my God.

Rachel:

That's quite the tongue twister.

Phoebe:

There's only three days left for it too, so we better get on with it. Yeah, all right. So a campaign group lost its appeal against a legal judgment relating to gender balance on public boards. Now, this was reported in a very different way. The end result is that the court wrote that in our view, it is clear that the intention was that, on receipt of a gender recognition certificate, a person's sex was to be that of their acquired gender, man or woman. It was about the balance of people on public boards and that a trans woman with a GRC is a woman in terms of that balance, yep, but it has far wide-reaching ramifications. The group that lost its appeal is very likely not going to give up, and there is now some movement within the government to undo the association of the UK with the EHRC which, by the way, has nothing to do with the UN and see European Human Rights Commission and legal international human rights law to start undoing things such as protections for refugees.

Rachel:

Which will then lead on to affecting other protections, such as trans women.

Phoebe:

Yeah, so it's quite scary, but it's certainly not a fate of complete.

Rachel:

Okay, this is the second story.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Now this was GQ Chase's trans romance. Now, this was not exactly news, but it came to us through our when we throw out the net to trawl the sea of news for any trans stories. This one got caught in the net and it piqued my interest. Gq magazine ran a story and it was 12 rules for cis men interested in dating trans women. When I first read that headline I was a bit like well, there doesn't need to be any rules, Right? Yeah, Treat a trans woman exactly the same way you would treat a cis woman. Again, it's like what we just spoke about Take the two terms cis and trans out of that and just treat women as women, whether they're cis or trans. But then I read through the 12 rules and actually there's a couple of things in here that I hadn't really considered.

Rachel:

Yeah, and they're worth mentioning, especially if you are cis and you're thinking about dating someone who's trans. Now, this isn't just women. I'm now talking to cis people who are interested in dating trans people. Yeah, I mean. The first one I want to touch on is your fetish is not a green light. So these are people that don't actually see us as people, but potentially see us as sex objects. We see these a lot on Twitter or Twix.

Phoebe:

Yes.

Rachel:

People are calling it now. It's like, quite like, oh that's not bad.

Rachel:

Yeah, it's good, isn't it? Yeah, we call them chasers and we touched on it earlier as well. These are the sort of people that go unicorn hunting, yeah, and basically GQ say just because you watch trans videos on porn hub doesn't mean you should date transgender women. And just to give you some kind of context and frame of reference, transgender women was the fourth most searched category in 2022. Right, which just says a lot about how these cis guys see us. And do you want to tell me what you said earlier about how they see us?

Phoebe:

Yeah, so we have things flung at us that make no sense, like your all AGPs, auto-gynephiles, which is a term. It's not an official term, but it refers to men.

Rachel:

It's one that they use quite often.

Phoebe:

Yeah, it refers to men who get their sexual pleasure from cross-dressing, essentially. But being trans isn't that right. All we're doing is it's not a fetish to put on the clothes that belong to our gender. And you can argue as much as you'd like that clothes shouldn't be gendered, but the fact is that certain cuts and styles and so forth are, and don't personally get a thrill from wearing the clothes I wear every day. They're just the clothes I wear.

Rachel:

Well, you know you've got everyday clothes, but I do get a thrill, like the other night when I put on that dress and I did my hair and I was in heels. I had a thrill then because I knew I looked fucking good. Yeah, you looked beautiful.

Phoebe:

Exactly, and who doesn't want to?

Rachel:

It was no different to the guy that one of the guys with me hired a tux. Yeah, and he looked good in that tux and he knew it. He literally wanted, he rented it. He couldn't have afforded to buy it but he rented it and he was going to get his money's worth out of that tux. I'm sure he went back to the hotel and slept in it, but it was no different. That's the thrill of seeing yourself going. Oh, I look good.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

But they would have us think, or they would have everyone think, that we actually get a sexual kick out of dressing the way we dress.

Phoebe:

Yeah, whereas what you get is a feeling of euphoria from looking as good as you can when you can, yeah. So going back to these guys who fling the they're mostly these gender criticals who fling that real letter acronym matters. They're the ones who are looking for the fetish and they so often also see it in trans women. We are their fetish and in their shame, they declare that we're the problem.

Rachel:

Yeah, fourth, most search for our term in 2022. Yeah, so the other one of the 12 points that I just wanted to touch on, and this is one that I hadn't really considered, and I think this is the important one.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

So, cis people, if you're dating a trans person, you need to be ready for the fact that others may not understand your relationship. You may get sucked into all this hate that we experience and people will say some probably quite shitty things about your relationship and they will probably question your sexuality. So if you're a cis guy going out with a trans woman, some people may turn around and go well, are you gay? Yeah, yeah, it's not something I've really considered before. Yeah, because obviously we're tea for tea, so we're as gay as they come. Straight guys date in a trans woman You're still straight, but you will get these haters that will fling accusations at you and question your sexuality and you're going to have to be prepared for that.

Phoebe:

You can.

Rachel:

And you're going to need. You're going to need another dimension is that you're going to need to mentally prepare for these sorts of conversations with your friends, colleagues and family, unfortunately, yeah, because people don't see trans people, trans women. Well, it goes both ways. It goes both ways. If you're a woman, straight woman, dating a trans man, if you're straight cis woman dating a trans man, then you're going to get exactly the same stuff flung at you. People are going to say, well, are you gay? Because you know he used to be a girl or you'll get that? So, yeah, it's sad really that people don't see us as just who we identify as. That's the saddest thing.

Phoebe:

So if you want to date a trans woman and let's just please say this as dating and not this is your fetish for the night, because you can find that in places but if you want a real relationship with a trans woman or a trans man, be prepared for having their gender misunderstood or you to be declared a sexual identity that you actually do not identify with, and in that way, hello, welcome to our world.

Rachel:

I know you're dying to do this last story.

Phoebe:

I really am I mean pretty much.

Rachel:

We probably shouldn't even have this in here now because it's so close to the end of the dates that is running, but I think you're very proud of the title, so I'm just going to hand this one over to you.

Phoebe:

Oh, you know, I see it as a title worthy of John Oliver, because I just like the way it's constructed.

Rachel:

I make it no secret that I'm a fan of things like this. I love a good bit of wordplay, and this really appeals to me. So okay, so running from November 8 to the night and I do the title again Come on.

Phoebe:

I'm getting there, I'm getting there.

Rachel:

All right.

Phoebe:

Is the the San Fran trans fan film cram, which otherwise it's a beautiful thing. It's known as the San Francisco transgender film festival, and they exist for a really important reason there aren't that many outlets, that many opportunities for transgender and gender variant media artists to have what they create shown. They're now the world's longest running transgender film festival and they exist to give marginalized communities an opportunity, an opportunity to authentically represent their lives and experiences in mainstream commercial media, and you and I know there hasn't been that much mainstream commercial media that focuses, that has some trans angle.

Phoebe:

It's becoming more and more. But also, every time something appears, then people jump up and down and threaten to boycott it. Yeah, which we don't have one, do we?

Rachel:

A boycott.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

So, just rounding out the news, I believe we have a very tenuous GC boycott of the week, but it's a boycott all the same and it's a good one.

Phoebe:

It is so, depending on your source of news, a female pool player received a round of applause or just a round of silence and shock when she forfeited a pool tournament rather than competing. Why did she forfeit a pool tournament?

Rachel:

Well, wasn't she in the final, she was indeed.

Phoebe:

She forfeited her own match.

Rachel:

But why? That sounds a bit like she's cutting her nose off despite her own face.

Phoebe:

Yet it is. Yeah, she was competing against a trans woman and we don't yet know, in the spirit of why trans women are banned from now playing in the chess women finals. Yes, what exactly is the advantage? This has been happening in sport after sport. But she did walk up and shake hands with the other player, then declare that she was forfeiting.

Phoebe:

Yeah, and packed up her pool cue and walked off, whilst her opponent, harriet Haynes, raised her hands in disbelief because now remember, if this was the statement, it was a very, very small one. So it turns out that Haynes has actually won at least eight tournaments since the start of the year. Right, we don't know who would have won this one, but the jury is not so much out as going to sleep on why a trans woman has any physical benefit in playing pool against a cis woman.

Rachel:

Well, I've thought long and hard about this, yeah, and the only thing I can think of is that they have a mental advantage. Uh huh. What's that I think cis women are saying that trans women are better at judging distances and physics, so angles. I've read some people say that, oh, trans women have an advantage because they're stronger, so when they do the break they can hit the ball with more power.

Phoebe:

Because you just got to hit the ball and get everything going in every direction, and that's actually a winning move, yeah.

Rachel:

But you know, I'm really tired of this biological strength advantage that trans women are supposed to have over cis women. I'm weaker than a kitten now. I've been on hormones for three years.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

I can barely open a jar of pickles. Yes, which is quite validating, but you know, this whole thing that I'm stronger than cis women is just ridiculous. In actual fact, I'm probably weaker because I've probably got a lower testosterone level than most cis women because I'm on blockers.

Phoebe:

Which means that your hemoglobin levels are also lower, which means you don't carry as much oxygen through your system, which means you don't have as much stamina. Also, an argument is often raised that we have a larger reach, but when you consider that muscles are attached in the same position and those muscles have become much weaker, then the larger reach is actually a deficit. You don't have as much leverage anymore. Physically, I'm the same. My muscle mass has disappeared. My fat mass has gone up. Apologies to the scales.

Rachel:

I don't have. I think your weight's probably dropping off now on a French diet that you're on.

Phoebe:

A bit of baguette and butter. Yeah, yeah, but it's simply not true. And there is not as vast a difference between men and women, let alone trans women and women, as accounts for the overlap and overall capabilities, strength, physical stamina and so on between all humans. So you won't find the weakest man being stronger. It just doesn't work like that. We have this massive overlap, and that overlap is further blurred with trans women.

Rachel:

Yeah, do you want to do a couple of quick questions and then finish?

Phoebe:

Yes, so we've come to the part of the podcast where we try to answer your transitional related questions or offer you any information that might help you out on all aspects of being trans, from how to come out to what to wear when you go out.

Rachel:

We should just point out that the content of this podcast is for general information and entertainment purposes only. You should always seek the advice of a qualified expert before making any decisions based on the information provided.

Phoebe:

Red, are you suggesting that you're not a doctor?

Rachel:

That's exactly what I'm saying, but I do have a lived experience that I will be drawing upon.

Phoebe:

Oh, excellent. So we need to draw upon this lived experience for this first question. Okay, hit me Okay well as always as always, it comes from the Reddit Ask Transgender Forum, and it's actually an important one from someone in this week of transgender awareness who doesn't quite know how to come out with their pronouns yet. So they're closeted empty. F.

Rachel:

Right.

Phoebe:

They've started surrounding themselves with LGBTQ friendly environments, and it's very common that people ask for their preferred pronouns. But they also don't want anyone who shouldn't hear their pronouns to hear their pronouns. And so they're. They're in a state of conflict. They dread being asked the question and they can't lie. If they lie and say their male pronouns, they feel very dysphoric. So the question is they don't know how they should respond. They feel like they have two options to lie or to not Whilst they come out. So how do you deal with, or how did you deal with, coming out before you were ready to come out? What a question.

Rachel:

It's a tricky one, you know, and they say in the question that it makes them feel dysphoric to lie. But if they're closeted, I don't see how they have a choice unless the person that's asking them is a safe person.

Phoebe:

Do you know what I did?

Rachel:

What did you do?

Phoebe:

I went halfway, I switched to them and then I could prevaricate and I could say well, I don't really know yet, but I no longer feel quite male and I only did that to make other people easier to come out, partly to other people before I was ready to go the full way.

Rachel:

Yeah, yeah, that's good advice. I suppose you could do that, but do you think that that's going to be enough to alleviate the dysphoria that I get?

Phoebe:

I had trouble when I'd be on meetings, for example, and I'd have to put my pronouns on the screen and I wanted it to be she, her, but I had to be they, them, and I was just like I hate this. But the discomfort associated with coming out fully to someone who wasn't ready to hear it yet, before I was prepared to deal with any ramifications from it and to just be myself fully was alleviated by a slight kind of I'm getting there. I'm not there yet.

Rachel:

I mean also, they're probably only going to get asked their pronouns in an LGBTQ plus environment. Nobody at work in my current work ever asks what my pronouns are. Yeah, it's not something that happens. It's only when you come face to face with someone else who's part of the community that that normally happens.

Phoebe:

Oh, you're saying so. When they're asked by the community, they'll be.

Rachel:

They'll be amongst safe people. Yeah Of course the other thing. If they don't want to lie, they could do what you said, but the other thing they could potentially do is just say you know what? I'm still trying to figure that out.

Phoebe:

Yeah, that's the best advice, the non-committal answer. Yeah.

Rachel:

So you're not lying.

Phoebe:

Yeah, I really like that advice.

Rachel:

Yeah, I'm still figuring out who I am, so I haven't decided yet.

Phoebe:

That was a good answer, though, hon.

Rachel:

Yeah, Okay. So our next question. I'm just going to read this verbatim how to hide my junk without tucking?

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah, okay. So this person says they're 18, assigned male at birth and non binary. I've always just laid everything down as flat as possible, but when I get aroused I have difficulties and usually have to discreetly rearrange things. Is there a trick that I can use to minimize this? Side note, I haven't been through HRT yet, so advice for a similar situation after HRT would be cool.

Phoebe:

Oh, fine cold water.

Rachel:

All right, shall, I take this one. Okay, they don't specifically say that they don't want to tuck, but the crux of the question, the main title of the question, is how to hide my junk without tucking. So just for our cis people who are listening and unaware, tucking is when a male to female trans person tucks their penis to hide the fact that they have a bulge and pass. That's it, it's just to pass. Also, it probably helps relieve dysphoria and historically, tucking ranges from using duct tape, which I tried once and I do not recommend because, although you get a really good tuck with duct tape, taking it off and going to the toilet can be problematic.

Phoebe:

So obvious question at this point Is there something called tuck tape?

Rachel:

Tuck tape? Yeah Well, you can get a gaffe. There are a DCIF I can't remember the name of the company. There is a company out there that does these DCIF strips and you can get a gaffe, which is an item of clothing that will hold the tucking place. There's a great company in Australia who make tucking underwear. These are all ways of tucking and I don't know if that's an option, but that they're certainly very effective. I've got a couple of pairs myself, so it's kind of tucking without tucking, so you haven't got to worry about tape. Yeah, so you literally just put on a pair of knickers and you can tuck, and even if you don't tuck, they're pretty good at flattening the bulges.

Phoebe:

Yeah, yeah. So one of the things when you wear a tight dress like you kind of you really need something to smooth it all out.

Rachel:

Yes, yeah, and you can buy these knickers that have. They've got like a reinforced panel at the front, really flattens everything down, but it's reinforced and padded so it pushes everything in and flattens everything out and they're very effective. So that's kind of tucking without doing the traditional tuck, and the other obvious thing would be to start hormones.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Even if it's just like a low dose, because that would solve the arousal issue and also eventually there would be less to tuck.

Phoebe:

Right.

Rachel:

As time goes on, the penis shrinks due to atrophy. Atrophy, yeah, yeah. But if none of those things are working, if you really don't want to go on HRT yet and you don't want to tuck at all, the only other thing you can do is things like change the way you dress so they say they're non-binary, but wear tops that are longer. The top overhangs the region. Oh my God, I did that alone yeah. Yeah Right, big baggy jumpers that hang down below the waist.

Phoebe:

Yeah, because you wear those and then you can wear tight pants and no one's going to know. I'm sorry.

Rachel:

Yeah, trails us and your trousers, thank you. And the other thing you know, I don't know how you present. You say you're non binary, but I don't know how you. You're a signed male at birth and you're saying non binary. So I don't know if that actually means that you're Wearing feminine clothing or just androgynous. But the fact that you Don't want a bulge tells me that you're leaning towards the feminine side. So if you're wearing feminine clothing, pick a skirt that's not so tight like a puffy skirt. A line skirt yeah, that that'll hide it all as well. A line so it spreads out yeah.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Like a little pyramid. Yeah, so that that's basically the options. If we answered that one.

Phoebe:

I think you did so. But you can just wear shape wear as well, that works.

Rachel:

It does.

Phoebe:

Yeah, it's quite effective actually, yeah and then you're not going through the gaffer tape and so forth, you just Just keep it all in that that's good yeah and it's oh or don't, tuck and Be proud of your bulge, yeah, so yeah, I've got a girl dick.

Rachel:

What of it? Yeah, I'm a trans, that's the other thing.

Phoebe:

I own it.

Rachel:

Yeah. I own it. I Think that's it. Is that it?

Phoebe:

That is. I think that's it for our episode. Wow, our first remotely recorded episode and no, I Think this is a wrap for this episode of the Joy Tuck Club. We both want to thank you, our listeners, for tuning in and being part of our community. If you want to connect with us further, you can visit our website at the joy tuck clubcom, where you'll find different parts of these episodes and show notes and so forth.

Rachel:

You can also follow us on Twitter, instagram and blue sky with the handle at to damp trans, and Facebook as well, where you can DM us if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to discuss. I'd really like it if just one person, ever just one person one Sent in a DM with a question. You know it doesn't, it doesn't have to be a translated problem. You you could have. You could tell us how much you enjoyed the podcast. You could tell us how much you hate the podcast. Tell us if you think we're doing something wrong or if we're doing something really right, or if you've got anything you'd like us to do.

Phoebe:

Oh, and it's weird too, isn't it? Because we know there's lots of people from different feedback that you've had for the most part, but yeah, also for me that love this podcast, and we do know there's one person who hates it so much.

Rachel:

Oh, actually, yes, I think we now know there's two people. Oh shit, we've had the, the feedback. Oh, I've had the feedback you did about our shitty podcast. Shitty podcast. Yeah, we've been away on a bit of hiatus, but you can actually Catch something that we did. We guest starred on another podcast. We did, and it's it's called. We recovered loudly.

Rachel:

Yes and that that's available on Most podcast platforms, and it was a trans awareness week special. Yeah, I think that should be available Any day. Now do you want to say a bit about what the podcast is about?

Phoebe:

Yeah, it's. It's a really special one that focuses on people in the hospitality industry who are in recovery and I don't mind saying that I'm in recovery even though I hadn't been in hospitality but our Experiences as trans people trying to cope within the incredibly male, dominated environment, it's something to be valued and that the host, michelle, is lovely.

Rachel:

She's very funny, she is very, very easy to talk to yeah, we had a great time we we did. Yeah, we could have done that for a lot longer than we actually did. Yeah, yeah, so so, if you like what you hear here, yeah, yeah yeah, and you can catch a little bit extra of us on Shell's podcast. We recover loudly, yeah.

Phoebe:

And don't forget to subscribe and rate us on Spotify, apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. We're on all the popular platforms now and, of course, some of the unpopular.

Rachel:

We really, really, really are that. There's some on that list I've never even heard of. I know that list of where we hosted is like oh my, what is this?

Phoebe:

I know, yeah, we appreciate your feedback and support so much.

Rachel:

So until next time, remember you are valid, you are beautiful.

Phoebe:

And you are trans. You are transcending boundaries.

Rachel:

Oh, we've missed that last one up. Yeah, okay, let's do it again. It's do it together, ready and you are.

Phoebe:

Wait, wait, I gotta, I gotta put you on screen so I can see you, okay.

Rachel:

Yeah, I need to make you bigger as well. Okay, I'm gonna count us down three, two and you, and you are transiting. That's no good though, because I don't want to say it funny, because you did it so lovely and shivery, that middle bit I want to be like, and you are transcending boundaries.

Phoebe:

I'll do it again and you are transcending.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Phoebe du Maurier

Co-host
Head Shot

Rachel Fishwick

Co-host