383: Transgender Issues, Featuring Dr. Robin Mathy

Transgender Issues Featuring Dr. Robin Mathy

Emily Dickinson, from Amherst, Massachusetts, was one of the greatest American 19th century poets, and after hearing one of our Amherst professors explain her life and work, I fell in love with her incredible poetry. When she attended Mt. Holyoke College as a freshman, she was obligated to sign up as a “Christian,” a “Non-Christian with hope,” or a “Non-Christian without hope.”

She was the only student who had ever signed up as a “Non-Christian without hope,” and she was given one semester to change her registration category. When she refused, she was asked to leave, and spent the rest of her life living in Amherst, baking cookies for children and writing her fabulous poems, which were sometimes included in her cookie packages.

Her poetry was all about loss, which was much the story of her life. However, she was not self-pitying, which is part of what makes her poetry so sad and magical.

Emily Dickinson always dreamed of visiting the west, but never got the chance to travel much beyond the outskirts of Amherst.

She once wrote,

To make a prairie,

It takes one clover,

and a bee.

One clover and a bee.

And reverie.

The reverie alone will do, if bees are few.

Tears come to my eyes every time I think about that poem! When I was a student at Amherst, we used to visit her grave, and I once actually knocked on the door of the house where she once lived. I explained I was a huge fan and actually got the chance to look around. I actually found a poem scribbled on a scrap of paper on a window ledge.

Today we interview Dr. Robin Mathy, who describes herself as “A human who hopes.” Robin is a well-published expert on LGBTQ issues, with a specialization in transgender research and political activism based on science to debunk hateful myths about sexuality.

She is also a new member of our Tuesday training group at Stanford!

In addition to studying to become a TEAM therapist, Robin is a Doctor of Social Work student at Tulane University.  She is a researcher and activist who has published four books and more than 50 peer-reviewed articles or book chapters.  She is a beloved member of David and Jill’s Tuesday TEAM CBT group.

Rhonda kicked off today’s podcast by reading two very moving endorsements from people who heard part 1 of the live work with Jessica, “Living with Regrets,” which we had published just prior to our interview with Robin.

Then Rhonda kicked off our dialogue with Robin by asking if there are any special treatment considerations when you are working with trans individuals.

Robin said that there really aren’t—TEAM-CBT is already highly personalized and individualized, so we let the patient set the agenda. Robin emphasized the importance, of course, of being warm, affirming, and supportive.

In addition, do not assume that the patient is there because of gender identity issues, or automatically refer them to a support group on that topic, because the patient’s issue may be radically different, and that would amount to stereotyping your patient.

I asked Robin for a simplified introduction to LGBTQ, including what these terms actually mean. That’s because I have to admit I never had any good sexual diversity training during my medical school or psychiatry residency, and I suspect that some of our podcast fans, perhaps many, would also appreciate a little enlightenment based on science.

Robin pointed out that transgender has to do with identity issues: what is your sense of self? Do you see yourself  more as a woman or a man? And sometimes, this will be quite different from the gender you were assigned at birth.

So, for example, you may be assigned as a boy at birth, but your sense of who you are may be a girl, when you are young, and a woman as you develop during puberty. In this case, you would be a trans-gender woman. To be respectful, you should refer to a transgender woman as she or her. And, of course, if you were assigned as a girl at birth, but your sense of who you are is a boy/man, you would be a transgender man, referred to as he / him.

Some transgender people are nonbinary, meaning they do not want to be referred to as either a man or a woman, and they do not want to be referred to with either binary pronoun. To be respectful and sensitive, you should always ask someone what pronouns they prefer.

In contrast, the terms, LGBQ, do not refer to gender identity, but rather to sexual attraction. So, a lesbian is a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted to women, and a gay man is attracted to men, and so forth.

The term, “cis,” refers to your gender that was assigned at birth. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality,

When a person begins to live according to their gender identity, rather than the gender they were thought to be when they were born, this time period is called gender transition. Deciding to transition can take a lot of reflection. . . . Possible steps in a gender transition may or may not include changing your clothing, appearance, name, or the pronoun people use to refer to you (like “she,” “he,” or “they”).

But it can be a bit more complex. Robin says:

A lot of people like me do not actually identify as transgender. I was assigned as a male at birth, but I have always felt like a girl / woman. I think of myself as gender-diverse, not as transgender. . .

I remember taking a bath with my sister when we were young, and I realized that I had something that didn’t belong on me. . . .

My parents raised me as a boy, but I was always effeminate. As I developed as a teenager, my transition was from being “me” to being “fully me” and completely embracing my identity as a woman. This was freeing to me.

We are taught to believe that there are two types of chromosomes that determine our gender: XX for female and XY for male. But this is misleading because there is actually a broad range of chromosomal makeups (sex), sexual attractions as well as gender identities, and gender identity and sexual attraction can be completely independent. For example, someone can be a transgender woman, and be attracted to either men or women or both.

Robin pointed out that some transgender women can look like glamorous women, and two transgender women have actually won national beauty contests. "It is cruel," Robin suggests," to insist that transgender women must use men’s bathrooms, just because they have the XY chromosome set."

She pointed out that gender identity usually develops by age 7, but in trans individuals the incongruity between their gender identity and sex assigned at birth crystallizes at around age 10 or 11, during puberty. Although many transgender people recall being gender nonconforming and/or identifying as another gender in early childhood, we now know this is not always the case.

We discussed the pain of discrimination trans individuals face, and Robin described her own suicide attempt in her early twenties, in part because her male sexual organs and secondary sex characteristics like facial hair “disgusted me.”  Fortunately, she was assigned a very understanding gay psychiatrist in the hospital, and he said that she could start transitional hormone therapy right away if she was interested, and this was a great help.

She said that she was a candidate for the Olympic wrestling team, and it was clear that she did not appear feminine to others because of her muscles, and she experienced a great deal of ridicule and rejection when began to transition. This negative bias included some medical professionals she consulted for help. Eventually she was able to obtain gender-affirming surgery. She said she came out as gender-diverse in March 2023 to be an advocate because 24 states in just the past three years have banned gender-affirming medical care for minors.

Robin also clarified the meaning of the term, queer, which used to be a pejorative term. Now it is embraced by the LGBTQ community as a term referring to all sexual and gender minorities.

Toward the end of our interview, Robin emphasized the importance of hope, and said she had a “glimmer” of hope, even in her darkest hours.

To learn more about Robin’s pioneering work, or if you are interested in the science and research regarding transgender issues, Robin warmly invites you to visit her YouTube channel, (27) Robin Mathy - YouTube. She says, “Please feel free to disseminate the information” and wants you to know that “I love comments (positive and negative).” So give her some feedback if you’re so inclined!

Thanks for listening today!

Robin, Rhonda and David