Sunday July 5, 2015 - I learned something from watching the FTM web series Brothers

It rained all morning in Atlanta on July 4th. All of the BBQ's I was planning to attend were cancelled. Girl, I get so lazy when its a rainy day.

I was surfing the web, when I ran across the web series call Brothers. Its a series about the lives four Transmen.


It made me realize that I have been talking about all of the Transwoman shows and national discussion about transgender issuers from a MTF perspective. But what about Transmen?

I also noticed that Season 2 just posted.

So I decided to watch it.

In this episode, Max, the above Transman had started dating a cis women. After a date, he brought her home and decided to tell her he was a Transman. I am a firm believer that you tell someone about your gender issue early, before that person invests time and feeling into the relationship.

The "girl friend" did not know and was taken aback by the revelation. Be fore she was told, it appeared, she wanted to be intimate. So telling her became a requirement. Of course she left after the revelation.

But they met again and she decided to try the relationship.

The last scene of this episode really made me think. He got out of bed while his girlfriend was asleep next to him. They were both dressed. He got up to take a shower. He got undressed in the bathroom with his back to the mirror and then entered the shower.

His girlfriend got up and undressed. Smiling, she enter the shower with him. He covered up and yelled at her to leave the shower. She was upset, confused and left.

Wow.

As a guy, one of the great bonding events is that first shower with your new girlfriend (or bath). It allows you the have some intimate bonding. I am sure his girlfriend was trying to create that intimate situation with him and probably trying to figure out if she can handle having a boyfriend with a different body.

His horrible reaction was obviously due to his negative feelings toward his own body. I can understand that but if he is going to be a boyfriend to a cis woman, then he needs to try to understand situations from a male viewpoint. Yet he has not had the male experiences that would tell him what his girlfriend may have been trying to do.

As I have said in other posts (HERE), we can be our own worst enemy because OUR preconceived notions assume the worst. In some cases people are just trying to get to know us better. Our past may tell us to be cautious, but as society struggles to understand us, we must give people time to learn and we need to teach.

Or in the case of Max's girlfriend, he is not going to have a good relationship, if he will not let her learn how to love him as a cis woman knows how to.

Then I related it to me. Being a Transwoman will mean I will be in situations I may misread because I have not had the female experiences that would have taught me how to react to certain situations.

I have been reading Transwomen books to get a better understanding of life during transition.

But that might not be good enough. I think I am going to start reading more books and magazines about and for women, written by women. I need to learn how women handle different situations. For example, being out and a man persistently shows interest even though you are not interested.

You may want to check out the episode (below) and the series.