Episode 75: Catching Up with Jamison Green

Jamison Green, Ph.D. is an author, educator, public speaker, independent legal scholar, and expert policy consultant in transgender health and employment discrimination litigation. He is best known for his influential book Becoming a Visible Man, first published in 2004 and updated in 2020. This work is considered a classic in transgender literature, offering valuable insights into the experiences of trans men.

Dr. Green began working for transgender visibility and rights in San Francisco in 1994 when a newly implemented non-discrimination ordinance (which he co-authored with City attorneys) placed the City in violation of its own Equal Benefits Ordinance. It took until 2000 to win on the issue, and a trans-inclusive policy went into effect in 2001.

Jamison shares the latest news about his writing, activism and the history of transgender medicine in the United States.

Jackal: Hello everyone. Welcome to our new season of Stealth a Transmasculine podcast. I'm Jackal. I'm

Kai: Kai. We're your hosts for the Trans Masculine Podcast. The new season means new questions, and this season focuses on staying connected during these difficult times.

Jackal: Our show focuses on the stories of people who identify as transmasculine and who transitioned either socially or medically before or around the year 2005.

The name of our show highlights two important facts that one, for our generation. We were often told to hide our past and live in underground existence. And due to that, our stories are often overlooked.

Kai: We want our audience to know that we ourselves are part of this generation of trans masculine identified people, and that we value [00:01:00] the experiences inside our trans masculine community.

We want people to know that throughout our lives, each of us has had to navigate issues of disclosure, which have impacted us In many ways,

Jackal: the bond we share as persons of trans experience is precious and lifesaving. These are trying times. Throughout the world, there are groups removing protections in place for our trans and non-binary communities, safety is a real concern for us, particularly our trans and non-binary bipoc siblings.

Kai: We offer links to health and safety resources on our website, trans masculine podcast.com. We also have an incredible mentor mentee buddy program that has connected 88 trans men. If you're interested in becoming a mentor, please reach out to our awesome volunteer Clark. Via the mentoring tab on our website.

Please hold each other dear and stay in touch with us. If you're new to our show, welcome and if you're a follower from a previous season, thank you for your continued support. [00:02:00]

Jackal: As humans, we are always changing and transitioning. As elder trans men, we assume many roles. We get married and divorced. We are caretakers, we are parents.

We are professionals, academics, and advocates. We push for human rights and systemic change.

Kai: We invite our listeners to remember that we are a living community. We are healthy, we are contributing, we have experienced loss and success. We are loved, and we welcome you to our stories.

Sean: Hey, this. And I'm here to tell you about them. Boys podcast. I'm the host of them boys podcast, and as a black queer trans man, the podcast amplifies the voices of other trans men of color as we share our transition stories. The podcast not only amplifies the voices of trans men of color, [00:03:00] but it raises awareness and conversations around our lived experiences.

You can listen to the podcast by going to them boys.org/podcast. That's D-E-M-B-O-I s.org/podcast. I hope to have you join us on the next episode.

Jackal: Hey, Kai. This is our 75th episode. Congratulations to you.

Kai: Congratulations. Yay.

Jackal: It's amazing, huh? So today we have a very special interview guest. It was your suggestion, Jameson Green he's an editor of a new book on the history of trans medicine. You told me that you had moderated an event for him.

Tell me about that. How was that for you? What'd you learn? Tell me everything.

Kai: I'm lucky to live in [00:04:00] a blue area, very close to James actually. James asked me if I would facilitate a chat. And I was really honored and of course I said yes. I'd been to this bookstore before for another reading with Reed.

They're great and the owner does lots of advocacy and creates platforms for our community. So what was it like to do it? It was a little bit of pressure. Because I am not an academic and it's a research book, and I wanted to facilitate something that was of interest and talked about the history, but also James' experience of writing, so it was really enjoyable. There were mostly our community members in there, and then some folks that were in the medical field not many.

And there was also one woman who talked to me who had just come out off the street and thought it was interesting and was up from Hollywood.

She lived down there and was like 80. She reminded me of if Jane Fonda had a sister, that would be her. And yeah, she was there. So she sat in, but it was great. And there were over 50 people there, [00:05:00] it was the largest crowd they'd had. James did such a great job of talking about the book.

I haven't read much hard copy of a book, and my attention span is short. And I think it started maybe before COVID I just have like 40 sentence attention span.

Jackal: Tik tok Attention span

Kai: Yeah, exactly. But it's like over 700 pages.

This book. And when I did finally sit down and read it, it flows really easily. It's a very accessible book. 'Cause I am somewhat intimidated by a lot of research articles and that language and it actually flows really nicely. You don't have to read it cover to cover.

You can skip around and if you do read it in order it, the other chapters you go, oh, this connects to that. So there's some themes. Yeah.

Jackal: Yeah. Good. Awesome. That's great. Yeah. 'cause 700 pages is intimidating, even for scholarly people. I am definitely gonna ask about the favorite chapter so that I can read a couple of them and then see where to go from there. But I hear you when you say that it flows [00:06:00] really nicely and that's good to know because accessibility matters.

Kai: And it's not that long ago, it doesn't go back that far

Jackal: when does it go back to, the timeline

Kai: Oh shit, Jackal, just put me on the spot. It's okay. 19 hundreds. I wanna say, after World War I, world War ii, I know that there were it was probably World War I, excuse me.

And they talk about Hirschfield and Kinsey Kin, no, a hundred.

Jackal: No.

Kai: A hundred years? 19. 1900.

Jackal: I'm sorry. You're right.

Kai: It's okay.

Jackal: About, you said 19 hundreds. Oh, I was thinking 19th century. Okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. So about a hundred years.

Kai: yeah, I think about a hundred years. So if you think about 700 pages with a hundred years of work, it's in four sections .

And then the first part is just like the early, the origins and how trans feminine folks connected with medical providers to get them to provide [00:07:00] care. Like those are the first folks that are documented anyway in, in Europe, Western Europe, Germany, and the UK.

So those are the folks that come to mind most. But I didn't know about the connection between the German and the US culture. But Harry Benjamin was connected to Kinsey and Hirschfield over in Europe, and they talk about their research, which was probably not ethical in a lot of ways.

'cause the boundaries were a lot different. There.

Jackal: We watched the Danish Girl

Kai: Oh

Jackal: recently, and that was really, it was disturbing medical wise, but

Kai: I did not see that movie. It looked really hard. But anyway, the book was great. The experience of being there with James was great. Anything that we can do to help publicize his work and help us learn more about our history, I'm thrilled to do it. I'm so glad he came on the show today.

Jackal: what was your favorite chapter? Did you have one?

Kai: I really like the historical figures more recently 'cause there's a chapter about Jude Patton who is a guest on our show, and he's someone we've known since the nineties. Yeah. I learned a lot more about his background and all the contributions that he's provided, [00:08:00] historical figures that area was really interesting.

Trans mask, historical figures, so Jude Patton, we just adore you And cute. Oh my God. Yeah. So I would say reading that, and the second part is the future of medicine, we had Gaines on the show who's, med school and he's really interested in surgical techniques and, how our presence in the medical field and the mental health field is so vital.

So I loved the moving forward. I think that section can be expanded upon so much more

Jackal: there's your next editing project, Mr. Kai.

Kai: Not my job.

Jackal: Yeah. All right. All right. Thank you so much.

Kai: Thank you.

Jackal: Welcome back to Stealth, the Transmasculine podcast. We're happy to be here with you.

Kai: We wanna welcome back Jameson Green. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're really excited to have you back on the show. We wanna talk about a recent book that you're one of the four editors, A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States, from margins to Mainstream. We just wanna say, welcome back. How you doing today?

James: Thank you, Kai. Thank you. It's [00:09:00] great to be back with you. I am doing really well. Thank you very much. Yeah, the book was technically launched February 1st. I am one of the four editors and there are total of 43 contributing authors. And each of the editors wrote parts of the book too.

So it is a huge project that took many years and we are so excited 'cause I just found out that we have some statistics about the how it's doing after three months. The publisher, SUNY Press, which is an academic university press State, university of New York.

The statistics are.

We are the fastest growing new title from SUNY Press.

We've had 300% of expected sales.

Jackal: Wow.

James: We are the number one new release in its category on [00:10:00] Amazon

Jackal: Nice.

James: and the first new release to sell over 2000 copies.

Jackal: Wow. That's amazing. James, thank you so much. What inspired you and the rest of the editors to even start this project?

James: The project was started by the editor that is named first in, on the cover. Carolyn Wolf Gould. She is the only one of us editors who's a cis woman. She is an M.D. newly retired. She's in upstate rural New York. She started a trans clinic in 2007, I believe, and basically her first trans patient she'd seen, I think in about 2005.

This random guy called her up and said, can you treat me? I just moved to the area. I need to have testosterone prescribed. I need to have my labs [00:11:00] monitored. I need basic healthcare, and I don't know where to go. And she goes I've never treated a trans man.

I don't think she'd ever treated a trans woman yet at that time too. So anyway, she just was like, oh gosh, I don't really know anything about this field. And then she thought, i'm a doctor and I can't just turn a person away. And if it was somebody in my family or someone I already knew, I would say gosh, here's something I've never seen before.

Let's do some research. Let's learn about it and, let's see what we can do to help.

Jackal: I love scholars. I love researchers. Yay.

James: So that's what she said and that's what she did. So that was her first trans patient. And then she realized, of course, as she did her research, that there was a dearth of available. Care, especially in rural areas. So she started her clinic and over the last year [00:12:00] roughly, maybe a little longer, she's been looking for someone to take over running the clinic and get some doctors and, training nurses and other support people to also treat trans people, treat them well, and she found people and she's was able to retire as she had hoped she could do. And she's now pursuing a master of fine arts degree in creative writing.

Jackal: Oh, that's amazing. that's amazing.

Kai: That's cool life does continue after retirement.

James: It does in a big way.

Kai: Absolutely. I'd like to ask you another question, about the book. You talked about the book coming out in February in the United States. This is the history of transgender medicine in the U.S. Came out right after the inauguration.

James: Yeah. Nobody planned this

Jackal: Who shall not be named Yeah. Yeah.

Kai: And so right now the trans community is under unprecedented opposition and rights are being removed from us. Healthcare is threatened, it's being taken away, access to care. Can you talk to [00:13:00] us a little bit about what it's like to, put out your book right now?

James: It's a little bit frightening. Nobody wants to get attacked. Nobody wants the book to be suddenly censored. Nobody wants. Any of this to be happening, frankly.

Let me also tell you about the other two editors in addition to Carolyn and myself.

One is Dallas Denny, who has been my friend since the early nineties.

She's a prolific writer and a long time activist from, Tennessee, and now, she's retired and she's as retired as a writer ever gets. and of course Dallas is a trans woman, needless to say. And then, the other editor is Dr. Kayan Lynch. He's an MD mostly doing education work in a hospital, and he's trained in OB GYN. And he is a trans man. He's young. He's really bright.

He is [00:14:00] just has been a joy to bring along for the ride. He was. He was of course ready to jump in, but he's kinda shy at least with us, but he's getting a little bit more bold with us after.

Jackal: guys are intimidating. You're like the experts of the experts there. How can he not? But I'm glad that he was involved.

How did you all get involved? Did the doctor reach out to you first? Did she reach out to Dallas? How did you three get involved in her project? I.

James: Let me just say this. The project originated because she took on an assignment from the sage encyclopedia of transgender, and I wrote four entries for it. But she was asked to contribute an entry and she chose to contribute on the history of transgender medicine.

And she, because she didn't know anything about it, she wanted to learn so. An encyclopedia entry is pretty condensed. They're not extremely long generally, but she started to research it and was blown away by it. [00:15:00] But she had seen Dallas give a presentation at Fantasia Fair, which is now called Transgender Week in Provincetown, about some of the history.

And she thought, oh, and Dallas is a writer and I'll get Dallas to work on this with me. So she reached out to Dallas. And Dallas said, sure. So then she knew Kayan and she wanted somebody young and bright and incredibly talented in many ways. And although he did not consider himself a writer, he brought a lot of technical expertise. He could do stuff on computers that the rest of us couldn't do. It was a few years. They made a website and posted a big thing about looking for authors to contribute. And I saw that and I agreed to write the chapter on wpath. They also had [00:16:00] proposed a chapter on legal and insurance issues, and I wanted to write that as well.

So I signed up for those two chapters and a couple years went by. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't heard anything from them. I'd been doing a lot of other things at the

Jackal: You hadn't been doing anything for this particular project, but you do a lot.

James: yeah. Yeah, sometimes.

Jackal: Eh

James: out of the blue, they called me up. Carolyn called me and asked me if I would be the fourth editor on the project. 'Cause they realized they needed something, somebody who was really capable and knew stuff about the history and could actually pull this thing together 'cause they were floundering.

And so I said, sure, I would love to. And that was about 20 18 they reached out to me and they'd already been working on it at that point for at least two years, maybe three.

Jackal: Wow.

James: And,

Jackal: eight [00:17:00] year project.

James: It actually turns out to be an eight to 10 year project

Jackal: Okay.

James: From time of conception.

Jackal: Wow. Wow.

James: So the manuscript was due in 2021 and we didn't actually finish it until 2022

And then it went out for blind peer review that the press organized, and we didn't hear anything from for nine months.

But imagine the manuscript was about a thousand pages

Jackal: Holy.

Yeah.

James: and it was supposed to be 500 pages according to the contract. But the press recognized what an important topic it was and decided not to pressure us about the pages.

And about 300 of those pages was references.

So we pulled it all together and I reorganized the contents and as different writers got their chapters in, I said, no, this chapter can't go here. It needs to go over here. So [00:18:00] I was doing a lot of that big picture structuring for the book. And then because I am an experienced manager of writers that's what I did for about 30 years. I was the one who, if something went wrong or if things were difficult, or if a writer needed to be coached, I was the one who had to do it.

Kai: That's really good to know. You have mad skills as kids say. Yeah.

James: Thank you.

Kai: When the book was released, the political climate you mentioned that it was a frightening time. What you mean by that. Are you concerned about people coming for you or your own personal safety, your family's safety, or what?

James: Right now, for the past year we've known of doctors. All of us have known of doctors who have been sued.

Of course, Dallas and I are not doctors. Kayan and Carolyn are both MDs. They have licenses to protect. Dallas and I are [00:19:00] mere writers and activists who tend to get in trouble for a lot of things what we were worried about was being silenced, of course. And we still are worried about it, but we're also worried about, those folks living in the east coast, in a rural area or myself living in Washington state in the west coast, in a kind of a purple-ish district where I live, but very close by is Trump country. And I worry about. Appearing in a bookstore or in any kind of public setting and having somebody walk in with a gun.

I do think about it

Jackal: Yikes.

James: So far that hasn't happened and I don't want to let that kind of fear stop me.

I'm out here on the West Coast, so any public events, it's just me. I don't have the other editors to support me. They were all out on the East Coast, it's just a little intimidating [00:20:00] sometimes. They had to do completely redo the all the doors and locks and windows in Carolyn's clinic because of hate messages that they receive just from operating a clinic.

But when you start speaking out.

You can do what you do. You're careful and quiet, and you do your job. That's one thing. You start promoting something, you start what they think of as proselytizing, then you become a target.

Jackal: So you mentioned that Carolyn's a cis woman. Do you feel like there's any difference in the level of targeting that's happening? Or, does anybody know? Is it obvious that three of the editors are trans.

James: From our names. It's not obvious. If you don't know who we are, it's not obvious. We're just people. But I think, most of the doctors that are being targeted in a lot of the red states, people are trying to take their licenses [00:21:00] away because they prescribe hormones or because they treat adolescents. It's very threatening.

Their livelihood, they've got families and if they can't practice in their field,

Speaker 3: yeah.

James: Writers don't want to be muzzled, doctors don't want to be handcuffed,

Kai: Yeah, you're touching on an issue about just how we exist in the world, how much or how little we disclose, which is the whole, theme of our show. And then when faced with unprecedented violence and anti-trans legislation, it's really hard to balance all of that. You're going out by yourself, you're promoting this book you're part of a team. One of the themes in your book, James, is this need for us to tell our stories, the important of our voices.

James: Yeah, more so now than ever.

Kai: And while yes, of course, research and medicine and experts are really vital, talk to us a little bit about how important it is for those of us who feel safe enough or who can [00:22:00] balance that how important it is for us to include our stories.

James: Out in the world, the average person doesn't know a trans person. They hear this crap that is spewed about who trans people are and what we're trying to do in all kinds of podcasts and broadcasts and, they read about it and it's just everywhere all this false information and deliberate misinformation in instigated by people who you would think should know better.

And it feels very overpowering and overwhelming. But if people understand that we are human beings. Frankly, this is the way I felt back in the eighties when I first, when I began my transition

Jackal: We have a

from you almost like this, from our first interview with you?

James: oh really?

Jackal: I think so. Go ahead. Tell me again. I wanna hear it.

James: I don't know if it'll be the same [00:23:00] words exactly, but people need to understand that we are human beings and I think we need to conduct ourselves just like ordinary human beings and be unashamed of who we are and unafraid to tell our stories. Now that's one thing to say. It's one thing to say that, 20 years ago, or 40 years ago. It's another thing to say it now, when there's real political threats and people are being, captured and disappeared, we don't know of any trans people who've been captured and disappeared, he's focusing on immigrants right now, but he's capturing people who are not immigrants and disappearing them

and this is really dangerous.

We have a government that seems to be paralyzed, and so we have no recourse. They have eliminated the Equal [00:24:00] Employment Opportunity Commission where you could complain if somebody harassed you on the job or if your management went against you and didn't give you support

Jackal: And even if they do, if even if it was there, they've eliminated DEI so much that you can't use it based on this. It's so hard right now. What are the biggest myths do you think that exist about us that are being perpetuated? And do we perpetuate them ourselves?

How do we perpetuate them ourselves, and how do we stop doing that?

James: Really I think the most volatile one is that we are perverts.

That we are child predators, we are perverts, and this is so old.

Jackal: Yeah.

James: has been going on for centuries that anybody who's different. They associate us with sexuality and now gender ideology is a new catchphrase.

It's been around for a while, but [00:25:00] in 2019, the Vatican published a paper that talked about gender ideology. And that's been co-opted by what we now call the gender critical people who are trying to save childhood. They're focused really fundamentally on the treatment of children and adolescents.

And they think gender affirming care is horrible. That it's being forced down people's throats. People are just, randomly getting their sex changed. Although they don't think you can change your sex because sex is the natural category and gender is something that we just made up

Kai: you can change the thing that you can't change at school and come out without parent permission. Enough to ride a bus without parent permission,

Get a sex change, quote unquote.

James: And so there's all this mythology, but the really amazing thing about this gender ideology, if [00:26:00] you read what has come out of the Vatican it's partly this mythology about who trans people are. And partly it goes right back to the feminist movement from the sixties and seventies. They're afraid of women stepping out of place. They're afraid of having to share bathrooms.

These are the same things that they talked about in the sixties and seventies, that they're gonna erase the differences between the sexes and you know it, and that goes against God. God created men and women.

And we have to perpetuate that system because that's what God made, and we need to be respectful of it because God made it.

Excuse me, where is science?

Jackal: Hold on one second. Not only that, but talk about Puritan values, right? Our country is so based in [00:27:00] these Puritan values, and we're in 2025 here, like Europe, there's all kinds of gender neutral bathrooms.

James: They had 'em a long time before trans people. They even realized trans people were living

Jackal: Exactly. It's has nothing to do with trans people. They realize that gender equality should exist and that, it's okay to share bathrooms and they seem to make it work very safely. So whatever. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Kai: One of the things that's really been made clear and that you're touching on in your book. The majority of transgender medicine research has been focused on trans women, transfeminine

right.

Right now the whole rhetoric is about trans-feminine folks in women's bathroom, and You're exactly right. Because

To quote, unquote, protect children and protect women

when actually controlling women's bodies and cis women's bodies.

we're not gonna get into a really huge conversation, but I know reproductive rights.

It's the same [00:28:00] thing, and these arguments are used over and recycled. I think, trans men, we're not even in the discussion.

Jackal: Not on the radar.

Kai: what do you think about that?

James: I think the same thing that I thought. 30, 40 years ago, it's misogyny. We don't matter because we're just women who want to be men and who wouldn't. And of course they do. And they're powerless, they're meaningless they're whatever. And they're certainly not gonna be a threat to men, to real men, that is so ridiculous.

Jackal: Yeah.

James: It's completely inhumane, but that's the thing about when we tell our stories. If people have heard all this horrible stuff about trans women and they think that all trans women look like people on RuPaul's Drag Race or whatever, and then they meet somebody like us, they.[00:29:00]

Suddenly realize that this is a human story and there are human beings here.

So keeping us in the shadows and out of the limelight, I actually think is part of their strategy on some level. I think most of the people engaged in all this, haven't thought about it probably, but I think there are people in this anti-trans movement who have thought deliberately about it? No we wanna keep oppressing the trans men because they're the ones who make it real.

Kai: Okay. All right. So you're talking about the history of transgender medicine. What does history teach us that's important for doctors to know and about us, about our communities, about our care.

James: It's a bigger issue than they think. It's not simply [00:30:00] mechanical, it's not just about hormones and surgery. It really goes broader and deeper into humanity and what actually makes up humanity and how do people relate to each other. How do we form relationships and how do we maintain dialogues and how do we tell people about who we are?

Not just trans people, but everybody,

 We bring out every aspect of being human beings

Jackal: We are the embodiment of humanity.

This is an amazing project. The history of trans medicine. And Kai brings up some really good points about us being under attack right now. I recently heard in the news that, gender dysphoria because it's an illness, is now being used as a way to [00:31:00] exclude trans people from the military. So talk to me a little bit about the dichotomy between putting out a book like this, maybe reinforcing that ideology, and what do we do against it? Like how do we fight against that crap?

James: Dallas and I wrote the chapter on the early psychiatric history. The history of the diagnosis and wpath and the formation of medical associations that focus on this. Basically, you realize that, we have two divergent systems here. One is the way our insurance is set up, to have a diagnosis in order to get some care. So what are they gonna diagnose us with when there's nothing really wrong with us, except that we need a hormone and possibly we need a surgery, or two. But you know [00:32:00] what it, how do you frame that? So we've framed it in an illness model a hundred years ago when people thought that there was something wrong with us.

And now they realize there's not something wrong with us. We are not mentally ill. Version seven of the standards of care, came out in 2011 and say that this is not a mental disorder, but the only mechanism our societies have created to allow us to get treatment that's supported by insurance. Anybody can buy anything they want.

This is true. This is how Kaitlyn Jenner got her transition. She had enough money to buy anything,

She didn't need to go through any deep counseling. If she didn't want to, she can just go out and buy the surgery.

'Cause there will be people who will do it with if they've got the money. [00:33:00] You could buy anything, but if you needed financial help, insurance is what we do.

But if you need medical support, you have to have a reason. If you need financial support, you have to validate it. 'cause they're not gonna just pay for you to have surgery after surgery after surgery. The validation has been a diagnostic condition, so to have a diagnosis, you gotta have something wrong that has to be repaired.

Kai: When you think about medical folks therapists too. We're often called gatekeepers, and I just own that as a therapist. That Yes, indeed, that is part of my role. Because you need a letter. And I can give you the letter because of the letters behind my name.

What suggestions do you have for doctors to be affirming and how to talk about this with their patients who have, historically medicine in the US has discriminated against people of color discriminated against women have discriminated against marginalized community.

There's a [00:34:00] lot of reasons for us to mistrust medical and mental health communities.

What suggestions would you have for a healthcare provider to talk and ease those,

those concerns people have.

James: I think that medical providers need to be able to listen openly, listen without prejudice, and understand. They need to do their own research and reading about the condition and about the population? And then to treat each individual individually, not assume we're all alike, not assume we all need the same thing, not assume we all have the same motivations. The early psychiatric chapter will tell you what the doctors were looking for. You had to have the right code words,

Jackal: Oh yeah.

Kai: Even since we were trying to get care, we knew what we needed to be telling the mental [00:35:00] health folks during our session,

James: Yeah. And that's not necessarily helpful to anybody. To be able to speak openly, listen honestly be respectful and this goes both ways. Because what we're looking for is not a cure so much as it's assistance.

Kai: Yeah. It was interesting too in the book you were talking about who has treated many folks whose rationale for treating and providing gender affirming surgeries was heterosexuality versus queerness, and that really got me, I was like, oh dear. I think, motivations for why are you a surgeon? Why do you provide this care? It's just really wild,

Jackal: I have to interject here because in Mexico they had quote unquote, gender affirming care before the United States did, and it was just because of that. It was exactly what you say, Kai, that they were [00:36:00] curing homosexuality by giving sex change operations. They weren't gender affirming care. It was sex change operation to create a more heterosexual society in their mind. That's exactly what it was. It is just of course ass backwards. My brain can't wrap itself around him. Lou Sullivan comes to mind, like all of these different things

James: and they do that in many countries where there's a coded gender system and especially where women are oppressed, if men in particular violate the code of masculinity in that culture. For instance, it's Iran or Iraq, and now I can't remember which. But I wrote about this in becoming a visible man that if you were discovered to be a gay man. You had a choice. You could either get a sex change or you could be stoned to death.

Jackal: Oh, that's a choice.

James: Yeah.

Jackal: My God.

James: So some of them got [00:37:00] sex changes

Speaker 3: Wow.

James: because they didn't wanna be stoned to death. And that's a horrible reason to have to transition. Gay men don't want to be women.

Jackal: Oh

James: Maybe there are some who can survive it, who would be okay being women but most gay men are happy being gay men and all lesbians don't wanna be men.

Kai: Yeah.

Not

Jackal: at all.

James: No, they definitely wanna be women . actually, from my time period, the only option people like me saw for a place in society was in the lesbian community. If you, if we were attracted to women but I never felt like a woman. And being in the lesbian community was hard sometimes.

Jackal: Yeah.

Kai: One of the things that I find hopeful about our communities today and the world today, there are a rays of light, we're more flexible and fluid as people who are, gender non-conforming. And I really find that [00:38:00] hopeful. And I think that message is pervasive, particularly among youth. I think that is absolutely fabulous. There's more ways to show up as a cis woman. As a cis man, and then as gender nonconforming, whatever that may mean. It's really beautiful.

James: Yeah. I have never really, been a super rigid about how I think you have to be as a man or as a woman, and I wrote in Becoming a Visible Man, which was. A lot of it was written in the nineties, and all put together in 2003 and published in 2004. But I was writing back then about, those kinds of limitations on people or prisons for so many.

Whether you need hormones and surgery to actualize yourself or not, nobody should be forced into those kinds of restrictive roles.

Jackal: Yeah.

Kai: It's interesting too because as trans men, we have this variety of identities in the spectrum, some [00:39:00] of us are so locked into, m to m, male to male transsexual. And then there's the other end of the spectrum gender, non-binary or trans mask or whatever it is. Sometimes I think it's very hard for us as a community to be introspective, to really examine our gender. And that might sound strange, but just to be more flexible. Like I, when I hear that rigidity, it makes me wonder.

James: Absolutely. I think we self-police in that sense. And it just depends on who you know. if you get somebody in your circle who, if you haven't read a lot or met a lot of people, if you're young and you're out, or you're new to the community.

The first people that you run into are often the most influential for you until you learn, get more knowledge, and it can be very easy. I noticed this back in the 90, early nineties, mid nineties when [00:40:00] people would, get this ego trip about being influential and they would gather their people around them and they would spread rumors about other people who some people thought were influential and how ridiculously damaging that can be.

There's no valid rationale for treating other people that way, and that's trying to control other people too. I just really reject all of that.

Kai: Yeah,

Jackal: I think that there's a lot of things in society, right? Like people grow old without ever being reflective. And I think that we as humans, as an embodiment of that humanity, we too are fallible. And we too are brought up in a puritanical country.

Misogynist. Patriarchal. And some of us do embody that, unfortunately, [00:41:00] that's not all of us. And, they're my brothers as well. I'm sorry. Like I don't have political agreement with my sister. She's my biological. I don't have political agreements with all of my trans brothers either.

That's just the way it's

James: Yeah. And that's life.

That's life. And if we didn't think we have to just be with people who agree with us, we're gonna be in trouble.

Jackal: yeah. It's true. Hey, we're getting close to wrapping up here. But I want to ask a couple of questions. One is, you've mentioned a few of the chapters in the book. It's a 600 page book.

James: It's 794 pages.

Jackal: It's 794 pages. I'm probably not gonna read every single page of that book. What chapters would you recommend to me?

James: I really recommend, frankly, reading it. Take your time and read it from cover to cover in the order that you see it. Because when you get, I never did that, until it was time to proofread the galleys. I'd never seen it in that order. I'd always [00:42:00] seen each chapter as it came in,

Now I read it the whole, I read from cover to cover and I thought, oh, this actually falls together pretty nicely.

And you end up with this sense of the. Depth and breadth of what this is about by the time you get to the end and it's pretty easy to read.

Jackal: audio book?

James: no

Kai: Oh my God. That would take weeks.

James: months, years.

Kai: Yeah, I agree with you, James. It does read really well. It's a series of research articles and it was accessible.

I'll just say that, and I really appreciate that. And one of the things I found hopeful is just thinking about the future of medicine and Dr. Kyler Lynch's contribution at the end. And I'm really fascinated by technology. I'm really fascinated by new surgical, techniques. I'm so thrilled that trans folks are in medicine , health, influencing each other,

And how the future plays out is just [00:43:00] amazing. We've had a few guests who are in medicine, healthcare, who are innovators and shakers, and I just absolutely love that. So I wanted to say that. And as we look forward, James, you are working on many things. You are a busy man. Talk to us about what you're working on. What are you up to?

James: Yeah, I'm doing an anthology, another one with Dallas and another editor Ms. Bob Davis. The three of us are doing an anthology on how trans people find and talk to each other in the 20th century. So we're going right up to the start of the internet

But a lot of it about print and community formation and stuff from the time between the two World Wars basically up, up to through the nineties. And KJ Rosson is gonna write the afterward for it. He's the guy who started the digital transgender archive. So we're really excited about that.

Jackal: Sweet, sweet.

James: So that's one thing I'm working on. And then I'm also working on a couple of fiction novels that I've [00:44:00] already written first drafts of them but I'm one at a time. I'm going through them and bringing them more up to date and deepening the characters and, shaping the stories.

And I'm really enjoying that process. It's really great.

Jackal: Tell me a little bit more about your fictions. 'cause I have a trans character fiction guy that I'm working on right now that's the. Time that the Titanic went down, and I'm trying to do a historical weaving in like women's rights, pre suffragette movement. Like all these different things, trying to throw in some trans characters. Alan Hart, like they're not exactly all in the same timeline, but tell me a little bit more about the plots of those fictional stories. I'm fascinated.

James: One of them is based on my own experience being the first woman construction cable splicer for the telephone company in Oregon. And so it's about that kind of feminism, it takes place in the 1970s. There was no language really. It was very hard to find any kind of connection to trans [00:45:00] people, although they were around, you didn't know how to find them.

So it's about that kind of questioning in that time period and the gender dynamics. That were such a dichotomy, between men and women at that time when women were just really getting into the workforce in jobs that were not pink collar. Certainly women who could work, but they could only do certain kinds of jobs. The classified ads were jobs for men, jobs for women,

Jackal: Yeah. Wow.

James: So it's that kind of. Exploration and so there are two buddies who are questioning and, one goes ahead and decides to start transitioning, and the other one at the end is still questioning.

Jackal: Awesome. Awesome.

James: But there's a lot of action, a lot of stuff that happens in between there.

Stuff with women, stuff with men, stuff with in between people.

Jackal: I Love it.

James: And the other one takes place in the [00:46:00] nineties. And the main character is a cis man who was injured in a car accident as a child and lost his testicles and he also lost his mother in the accident. His mother died, and so he's raised by his father. His father. Ultimately, about 10 years later, remarries has two more kids, a girl and a boy. So there's a big age difference between him and his half siblings. And then he goes off to college, becomes an architect. Lives out of state in relation to his family.

He's building his life and all this stuff. He has this stuff happen to him, and then he's coming home for his half brother's wedding and his half sister announces she's transitioning.

Jackal: Wow.

James: So it's the challenge of, for him, of accepting her as his [00:47:00] brother and coming to grips with his own damage.

Jackal: Wow, that's intense. Thank you so much,

Kai: You mentioned that your anthology is coming out and I know you have some appearances happening. Can you plug your openings?

James: I'm still trying to organize a few more readings for the history book, but I'm also a contributor to an anthology of personal essays. All queer authors. I think there are 12 or 15 authors, and three or four of us are trans. I think there are four trans authors.

The anthology is called Defiant Moments. It will launch in Portland on May 22nd at Friendly House for a reading that's gonna benefit elder Pride. In Portland.

Yeah. And we'll be reading it in Bend in Portland, in Pendleton in Eugene. Eugene and Pendleton are in August.

Bend is in June, I think. And then we're going to [00:48:00] LA the last weekend in June. read it at the, at west Hollywood Library and then at a church.

Kai: Wow. That's cool.

James: We're gonna be doing something in Hillsborough, several things in venues around Portland metro area, it's pretty exciting.

We have different authors read. At each venue. So there's somewhere I won't be there, but all the ones that I've mentioned, I will be there.

Jackal: James, you're really amazing. I am so inspired by you every time I talk to you. It's just great

and I don't know if you know this, but we're dropping you as our 75th episode. So you are our very special guest and we have loved having you here. really just wanna say the line in this. Interview that's stuck with me is there's nothing wrong with us, and I love it, and it's so true, and I thank you so much.

James: Thank you, both of you and I admire your work on this podcast and how you're keeping [00:49:00] the community together with it and sharing knowledge and amplifying the voices of so many of us. So thank you. This is wonderful.

Kai: Thank you, James.

James: I'm proud to be here with you.

Kai: Thank you my brother. Thank you so much.

So Jackal, what was it like to reconnect with James and talk about his new book?

Jackal: I love James. He is amazing. You mentioned at the beginning, Jude is one of our elders and our transpa, but James is too, right? Jude is on my mom's side. James is on my dad's side. I don't know, these are my elders and I just love him to pieces.

Just want to, wrap up in a blanket with my little hot cocoa and listen to him tell stories all day long. It's just amazing. Just so warm and so inviting. So smart. So dedicated. I wanna stay on the positive side. Like I know that there's some things that can be concerning. And I really do hope that he and everybody involved in this book is safe out [00:50:00] there. But I just really wanna say there's nothing wrong with this and that we are beautiful and valid. And James, I love you so much and it's been amazing. What about you? Did you have anything more new to add?

Kai: No I think I'm so grateful that he came on the show and continues to be such a pivotal figure for us and brother to us. And I just am really grateful to learn from him and about him and to hear his stories. And you're right, he's like an encyclopedia in his head.

So it was really great to, to connect with him and just happened to live so close to him, it's nice to get to know him better and be connected. It just speaks to the bond that we all share, this is our thing. Our stories matter.

Our stories are valid, and the input from trans people and trans mass people is critical,

Jackal: I love his new book Idea coming out. This anthology of how we connected. Because I know that was one of our [00:51:00] inspirations for why we are even doing this podcast is because we have existed for a long time and yeah, it's a lot easier for people today to get connected through the internet and social media and all these things, but we didn't have that.

And so our stories are really invisible and so we created this to highlight that and he's gonna make a whole book out of it. I'm so excited. I'm just really excited

Kai: I know our generation, the mid nineties as the message boards, dial up was coming into fashion. We're like that next chapter so I'm really looking forward to learning about the just grassroots movements, and the more we know about history, the more we learn that it repeats itself. But I'm so glad that we got to talk with him. And I wanna express a lot of hopefulness about the direction of medicine. I wanna thank all the people who show up every day, who provide gender affirming care, who do the research, who are ethical and treat us well as we should be,

Jackal: Yeah.

Kai: And within community, just, keep going strong and there's lots of hope out there for us.[00:52:00]

Jackal: I also wanna say to any military trans people out there keep fighting, you have the right to be in the job that you want, and it isn't a mental illness, it isn't a disability. You need to get this book into your lawyer's hands and fight for your rights.

Kai: yeah. Yeah. Thank you for your service.

Jackal: Thank you for your service. Thanks, James Green. Happy 75th Kai.

Kai: Happy 75th episode Jackal. Thanks for listening y'all.

Jackal: Thanks for listening.

And now it's time for adventures and disclosure with Kai and Jackal.

So adventures in disclosure, Mr. Kai?

Kai: Yeah. This isn't actually me disclosing, this is something that I [00:53:00] was always curious about. I get healthcare through a big healthcare company, right? And one of the things that they were trying to do was be affirming so they flag many trans people and say, gender incongruence, or whatever it is that they say just to flag people.

And then they write pronouns down. So I'm basically highlighted that I'm a trans person. And then intention was to be affirming. And also not everybody needs to know my medical history, right? So I was always wondering who sees this at. Healthcare companies. So you know, is it the person when I make an appointment that they see it or how?

Because who actually needs to see it? Because I'm going to an eye appointment, do they need to see it? They don't need to know. My eyes are not transgender,

Jackal: Your eyes are transgender.

Kai: I have transgender eyes. But anyway, so I did happen to

Jackal: what they call hazel eyes? Now

Kai: what I have, Hazel eyes, I have Trent. Yes. So

Jackal: they're.

Kai: that's so funny. Anyway, so [00:54:00] yeah, the other day I was at a physical therapy appointment.

I actually saw the screen of the provider and you can see all of my medications on that thing. And you can see gender affirming hormones on there. And I'm like, okay, why does she need to see this? So that's my disclosure story. 'cause I didn't tell her. I don't know that there's anything specific about my anatomy or my hip structure or anything that's gonna help her make decisions about my care.

Jackal: Yeah, that's a very interesting thing. What it brings up for me is two things. One, our information is out there. It's out of our hands. So you tell one doctor and how many doctors do they tell, you've released your information unknowingly. You have to sign that they can transfer your medical records into somebody else.

And even though it's gender affirming, I didn't give you permission to have that information. And the other thing is how they use it, right? So it's all of a sudden about your hip structure, it's like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My eyes are not transgender.

Okay. You don't need to give me a different [00:55:00] exam.

So it's those kind of things that get brought up. It's like the people that have my information and how they're using it, how they're, sending it out into the world. And then how it comes back to me.

Kai: Yeah, and trying not to fear monger, but there are, scraping the internet of something, like somebody doji or whoever it is can get in there and see, flagged accounts like that. That could be a potential, like while good intentions were to help people be more affirming.

Jackal: Since the administration has gotten in, I used to get my testosterone through the mail. Like it's just Kaiser, whatever. They would just mail it to me, every time I needed it, blah, blah, blah. And they're not mailing it anymore. It's off the list of being approved to be mailed now, so I don't know.

Kai: One thing I do wanna say is that, as a healthcare provider myself, mental health, one of the things that healthcare companies do sometimes is share an electronic health record platform.

In some [00:56:00] ways that's fantastic because if I am a doctor, say I have a doctor at Kaiser and I have a doctor from one state to another, they can see my chart and they can access my care, right? So relevant. So if I have a heart condition in Idaho, and I move to Tennessee, they can see it if they buy into the same platform.

The thing is that you're supposed to sign something that says that you'll use this ethically. As a provider and not access information unrelated to the care that you're providing, right? You're not gonna just snoop because you're curious, right? So you have to decide, and it's subjective about what's relevant to the care you're providing.

It reminds me of when Finn came on our show and Finn was at dinner. He had guests at his house and there was a colleague of his partner who is a surgeon who was curious, remember during the procedure about what this trans person's genitals look like, and talked about it.

And then they, and

Jackal: so true. I remember that.

Kai: Shared, I did not look, but I sure was tempted. And [00:57:00] imagine having access to this electronic record information. So anyway, it's ethics, and what do you actually need to see? And then. Who's gonna be ethical

Jackal: Don't fear monger, but

Kai: I know.

Jackal: anybody either.

Kai: No, they're trying to be helpful and you don't wanna get misgendered. And at the same healthcare company, there's somebody who provides gender affirming care. Actually, I had a really horrible experience recently talking about a revision.

It's related to gender affirming care, but the doctor in the notes was so lazy because he used they them pronouns throughout.

And in my chart, it's he, him everywhere. And I used, he, him and I even said, I'm he, him. It's just a lazy notation thing, maybe it was like AI, he's just dictating and, everybody's they them because they've provided gender affirming care. And I think that is so not affirming in so many ways.

Jackal: Anyway thank you for sharing. It's always interesting to hear about disclosure stories,

Kai: Thank

Jackal: That's our adventures in disclosure.

[00:58:00] good job today, jackal. Good job to you, Kai. We want to thank our listeners and especially our guests. This show would be nothing without our guests who share their insight, expertise, and heartfelt stories. We absolutely adore you and are forever grateful to you. Stealth captures the living history of men of trans experience.

Kai: We recognize that language has its limitations. The words we use to describe ourselves and our community evolve over time and will not represent everyone's experience. We also want you to know that the health and wellbeing of our community is our number one priority. We want to give a shout out to parents who are supporting their gender non-conforming kids.

Jackal: We support you and love you for supporting your kids. We want to put our podcast in the spotlight. Thanks for not trolling us, but really is this just another form of trans mask and visibility? We offer links to health and safety resources on our website. We monitor our social media [00:59:00] platforms. We respond to feedback from our audience, and we will be accountable when we screw up.

We want you to know that we are just two guys doing this in our spare time and two old farts to boot. The opinions expressed are our own and those of our guests. We do not represent any entity outside of this podcast. Remember, if you're interested in sharing your story, we would love to hear from you.

Kai: Also, if you're interested in volunteering, please let us know. Your feedback and support are essential to our show's success. Help us get the word out about our podcast. Tell your friends, share on social media, and rate us on your favorite streaming platform. Be sure to check out our website, transmasculine podcast.com.

Jackal: Thank you for joining us Until next time.