Hello and welcome to episode 5 of season 2. Our question today is Has anyone fetishized you? (Is that a thing in the LGBT community?) How should someone respond/interact with people like that? 

This is a surprisingly difficult set of questions to provide a good answer to. It’s difficult sometimes to really understand what somebody really means by their questions. There often becomes a surprising amount of assumptions that begin to need to be made to be able to answer some questions sometimes. This set of questions caused Jodie and I to veer off course right from the start! 

Eventually I was able to form a semi-coherent answer, that yes many people have fetishized me. Sadly as a transgender woman many people have seen me as someone who they are interested in sexually simply because I am a transgender woman. That isn’t something that I have any control over.

Now the next part of the question becomes much more difficult to answer well. Is that a thing in the LGBT community? The challenging part of this question is if this is something that happens to the LGBT community or if this is something that happens within the LGBT community. Which is ultimately what I think is problematic with fetishes in general. Is it something that you personally are wanting to show people or is it something that someone is forcing upon someone or something else? 

There is nothing in particular that is a fetish about anybody within the LGBT community. Transgender people especially so, as being transgender really says nothing about who someone likes to have sex with. 

I think a confusing part for many people is that some people see things that may happen in various public pride events sometimes as being a super sexualized presentation. So some people may think that is a large part of the LGBT community as a whole. And what I would say is that things like that are a part of humanity, not simply the LGBT community. It can be a part of any community.  

The third part of the question is about how to interact with people that fetishize another. We think that can best be determined by how the fetishizing happens. Is it because of wanted attention or simply by existing? If you want the attention and want to be fetishized, then getting that attention must be awesome, but if you aren’t wanting it then leave that situation or seek help with others.

Our second segment is about coping well with various insecurities and anxieties. Often people will see Jodie or I and think that we are super confident people and we couldn’t possibly have any self doubts, but that is far from the truth. We were both raised in very competitive environments where we were told to basically be perfect in every possible way. Okay, well maybe not perfect, but we were expected to rise up to our potential and we were never good enough. This left us with a huge amount of self doubt.

A large part of my transition has been learning how to deal well with those insecurities and Jodie has been figuring out her anxieties as well. Throughout this time we have come up with a variety of ways to help us to cope. We cover four of our most effective strategies, positive self talk, facing your problems head on, speak to others about it, and long term regular therapy with a licensed therapist. 

Our final segment of Jodie’s What The Hell, we review the latest list of banned words from two different sources. Our first one comes from Lake Superior State University. Apparently they put out a list every year for quite awhile and this year’s list includes the following:

• Goat
• The inflexion point
• Quiet quitting
• Gas lighting
• Moving forward
• Amazing
• Does that make sense
• Irregardless
• Absolutely
• It is what it is

The second group that puts out a list of words you shouldn’t use is Stanford University’s IT Department. They have an initiative called the elimination of harmful language. Their list includes:

• American
• You guys
• Karen
• White paper
• Straight
• Submit
• Abusive relationship
• Prisoner
• Crazy
• Grandfather

Okay lovely people, thank you so much for listening to our show. We super appreciate you being here. We would also really like to hear from you. So please feel free to reach out and send us a shout out or a question at hostess@transcister.com