015: Real Talk about Gender Identity and Polyamory with Dr. Kieran Grosman

Transcript

Karen Conlon:

Hello, Hello, and welcome again to the So, How’s Therapy? Podcast. This is a podcast that demystifies, debunks, and de-stigmatizes what happens in the therapy space. I’m your host, Karen Conlon, and today we have an amazing guest, Dr. Kieran Grosman.

Kieran, this is such a special treat for me, and it’s going to be an amazing treat for all our listeners. I would love for you to introduce yourself because I have so many words, that I prefer for you to introduce yourself and just tell us about you.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

All right. Well, probably one of the most important things about me is that I tend to be fairly terse, I’m going to try to expand my answers. I am a clinical therapist in private practice in Brooklyn. I am queer, I’m trans masculine, I am polyamorous. Those are some facts about me.

Karen Conlon:

Today one of the things that we’re going to talk about obviously is therapy and the kind of things that go on in the therapy space for the LGBTQIA community. Not only is there help out there, but there are people that really understand all the nuances of your relationships and of the things that you think about, the things that you need to consider.

Why don’t we start with that? Can you tell us a little bit about your own journey?

Dr. Kieran Grosman’s background and why he can speak so well on these topics

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yes. Hopefully, you’ll help me to remember what terms it is that I actually used. I know that I used transmasculine, which means that I’m AFAB, which means assigned female at birth. When I was born, they said, “Oh, what a lovely little girl you have, mom and dad.” And I was a tomboy.

I was someone who came out as queer, as being a dyke at 18. And I sort of lived as a dyke, as a pretty masculine-presenting woman, up until about five or six years ago. And then five or six years ago, I started taking a low dose of testosterone, and a couple of years after that I had top surgery, so I had my breasts removed and I think I have passed pretty well since then as a dude.

I’ve had the experience of having lived both as an adult, as a masculine woman, and then also as someone who I think most people will just see as a man. And so that is part of my lived experience.

Karen Conlon:

Being 18 years old, let’s just start there, because that’s pretty young. I mean, yes, legally, you’re an adult, but developmentally you’re still in these early stages of your life.

How did you know? What did you feel? What did it feel like as you were growing up, knowing that you were presenting as a girl and maybe having the expectations of acting like a little girl, but knowing that something just didn’t quite fit?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I don’t know that I was expected to act like a little girl. I do give my parents a lot of credit for giving me a lot of leeway to be a tomboy. I loved sports and I played tons of sports. All of my friends growing up were boys, that’s not totally true, but I had a lot of boyfriends who I used to play baseball and football with. And I don’t think there were huge gendered expectations.

My parents were hippies. They were pretty cool about that, which I feel grateful for. It was interesting because I never thought, when I was little, that I was a boy, the category tomboy actually worked totally well for me. I never felt like a woman either, but I felt the category of butch dyke also worked for a long enough time.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

And I think it’s really, I’m 43, I think it’s probably going to be impossible for younger listeners to recognize how terrifying it was to contemplate a transidentity up until probably 10 years ago.

I was at Brown, probably one of the most liberal environments in the world, and I wrote my senior thesis on transsexual autobiography and I just remember weeping because I was reading one story about a AFAB person who transitioned and whose partner stayed with him.

And that to me, at the time just seemed incomprehensible. It seemed like there was going to be a choice between, I can either live my truth as a transperson, which I wasn’t out to myself yet, or I can continue to be a butch dyke, and that felt way more comfortable.

Karen Conlon:

What you just said, “I wasn’t out to myself yet.” I mean most people think about coming out as this external process that you go through to present yourself to the outside world.

But what I’m hearing from you is that being out to yourself, there’s an internal process first that happens. I’d love to hear a little bit more about what that means, coming out to myself.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Sure. Yeah. I mean, as an undergraduate, I wrote my thesis on transsexual autobiography for my graduate work. When I got my doctorate, I did research, they call it me search, which is the joke as we’re all just trying to learn about ourselves, but there was an online platform called Second Life. I did research on gender swapping in Second Life.

When I came out, there was nobody in my life who was like, “Oh my God, we never saw that coming.” But for me, I think it was very, very clear that my transition to being more trans-identified was very dependent on ending a relationship with someone who I think, and I could be wrong about this, but my sense was that she was very committed to me continuing to be a woman in some way.

It wasn’t until that relationship ended, that I actually had the psychic space to begin to imagine that I could be differently in the world and still be loved. Still have a partner. That it wouldn’t just be back to that, “Oh my God, I’m trans and therefore I have to spend the rest of my life alone.”

Karen Conlon:

That breakup, that particular breakup, was that disappointing? Did that give you any sense of, “Oh no. What if this is what it’s like with future relationships?”

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I think I will always wonder about that in my relationships because my codependency runs deep. My ability to try to perform in the ways that I think my partner wants me to be, that’s something I have to constantly guard against. I’ve had a lot of effective psychotherapy, since that time, that’s allowed me to be way more cognizant of that pattern and way less willing to reenact it, but it’s still there.

But it also was interesting, because when I was in the process of breaking up with her, I started taking, one of the things that that allowed me to do was it allowed me to go to the doctor and say, “Hey, I’d like to experiment with taking testosterone.” And I also experimented with, instead of using she pronouns, using they/them pronouns very, very briefly.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

But also suddenly it was like, I was a grownup, but I was taking testosterone. I had the social skills of an adult, but the sex drive of an adolescent. And that was super fun. Oh my God, that was the funnest year or two of my life. It was like, wow. That was great because suddenly it was super, super cool.

An unexpected impact of transitioning

But then what was interesting what happened is that, a very short period into my transition, people can’t see me, but I look pretty much, I think, like a dude, and there was this pretty early shift in the way that I was getting related to. I was still dating primarily queer femmes and pretty early in my transition, it went from being an us against the world thing, to suddenly I was put in the category of man, enemy and I was getting all of these projections on me that I had never experienced before.

That was super intense. And that was super, that was terrible. That was not fun. I would not wish that on anyone and I certainly don’t want to continue to live that.

Karen Conlon:

Can you tell me about that? That’s really, really interesting. What did you hear and what was it like for you to have lived and be on both sides of the fence?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

It’s hard because I was very much a separates’ dyke. I do not particularly love men, and yet having had the experience of living as a man and getting anger, this hatred directed at me, it’s like you don’t want to be the apologist. You don’t want to be the hashtag not all men.

Karen Conlon:

Yeah.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

And yet, also it didn’t seem to me like I had changed a huge amount over what was really probably six to nine months. And yet the amount of anger that I was getting directed at me was horrible. It wasn’t everyone, but it was certainly a sizable minority of the women that I was dating at the time.

Karen Conlon:

It was that that hostility was coming from your own community, the community that you initially felt safe in.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah. That had been the place that I had hung my hat for two decades at that point.

Karen Conlon:

When these projections would come up, how did you handle it? What did you say? Did you put your therapist hat on? Did you try to empathize and say, “I’ve been there.” What do you do?

Because there’s a part of us that can put on our therapist hat, but then there’s this other part of us it’s just human and we feel the darts and the pain, and it’s hard to then put on your therapist hat and not defend yourself and say, “Hey, I’m still me.”

Avoidance VS Self-Protection

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah. I think in typical avoidant fashion, I tended to end those relationships fairly shortly after I felt like I was receiving these projections that didn’t really feel fair to me.

Karen Conlon:

And ending those relationships, do you in hindsight look at that, that was the right thing to do because I get to do that and it’s my choice to not allow people who are going to attack me into my life, or do you sometimes look back and say, “If I knew then what I know now, this is how I would have responded?”

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

It was also within the context of a deepening of another relationship. I had the contrast between what it felt like to be the object of people’s projection versus the object of someone’s care and love. I don’t wish like, “Oh my God, if I had just put in more work we could have worked through it.” That may be true, but I don’t know.

I’m also aware that there are people from whom I wasn’t receiving those projections and with one of those people that’s continued to be a very beautiful relationship. I think I prefer to minimize the amount of projection that I’m receiving.

Karen Conlon:

Thank you so much for answering that so honestly and authentically. I mention that because oftentimes regardless of how you identify, we’re put in situations where we feel like we need to defend ourselves or that we need to just put up with it. The thing is that you don’t have to.

I mean, there’s a difference between being able to have a discussion, agreeing to disagree, and getting bullied. You had mentioned before that you’ve been avoidant, and it’s interesting because when you said that in my mind what I actually thought about is self-protecting. We see ourselves sometimes in the worst light, and we tell ourselves the story.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah. I mean, I can also hold that as well. I think there’s the way in which we want to appear a little humble or something like that. That seems to me very similar, this self-protective versus avoidance.

What do AFAB, queer, and cis mean?

Karen Conlon:

If we could shift gears a little bit now, also talking about the other ways that you self-described. Let’s start with AFAB, because that’s one of the first ones that you mentioned. Assigned female at birth. How does that differ, if it does, from transgender?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

That’s a tough question. I’m not sure. Because presumably you are also AFAB, right?

Karen Conlon:

Right.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Because when you came out, they were like, “Oh, you have a baby girl.” You were assigned female at birth. The difference is that as I grew and changed, I said, “Wait, I don’t think that’s right.” Whereas, and I’m making an assumption, but you said, “Yeah, that fits.”

Karen Conlon:

Got it. Okay, great. Okay. Queer. What is it that we need to know about the term queer? What it is and what it’s not?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Sure. I think queer is at this point a pretty umbrella term, and it may be at this point that it’s expanded beyond. It’s expanded so far that it’s has lost any sort of meaning. I was talking with a friend the other day and she was like, “I stopped using queer once the fashion industry started talking about things being queer.” It was just this coaptation.

I mean, queer used to mean… It meant non heterosexual. It was lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, anything that wasn’t just straight and narrow. But I think with the co-opting of queer identity, people that are my age, we were like, “Agha, we’re not gay and lesbian, we’re queer.”

And what I see now is the younger kids being like, “I’m not queer, I’m gay.” We’re all just using language, I think, to try to just differentiate ourselves from earlier generations, and that’s one of the ways that it’s playing out right now.

Karen Conlon:

And you also made a distinction between gay and lesbian, right?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah. I think a gay tends to mean… At least when I was growing up gay meant much more gay men, and lesbians were lesbians. I think that’s different now. I think the millennial queers are using gay for both men and women.

Karen Conlon:

In terms of transsexual, transgender, those two terms… These are two terms, that amongst the cis-world are often confused used interchangeably. And also cis, I keep mentioning cis and I’m not explaining it. How about that too?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Well, Karen, please explain it for us.

Karen Conlon:

Cis is basically refers to me, I am an AFAB who identifies as a straight woman. Is that explaining it? Well, that’s my experience of how I explain it.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I think cis actually is a scientific term that’s in contrast to trans. Cis means that the gender identity that you were assigned at birth, fits with you’re in… Or the sex that you were assigned with at birth, fits with your internal felt sense of your gender.

You can have, for instance, queer cis femmes, people who were assigned female at birth, they think, “Yeah, it’s great that I’m femme, that I’m a woman.” But they’re queer because their partners are females or women.

Karen Conlon:

I didn’t know that. I made this assumption that it means you’re attracted to the opposite sex and that’s how you identify.

Why we should consciously create spaces for open dialogue

This conversation that we’re having, really, I think it’s, for me at least, it’s really shining a light on the fact that it’s not enough to just say that you’re open and that you are accepting.

What is it that we need to know? What are the kinds of things that we need to be asking ourselves and maybe even not afraid to ask someone in the LGBTQ community? It’s hard to ask these questions to you, because I feel myself wanting to be very careful to not say the wrong things or not offend.

But at the same time, I’m incredibly curious and I want to know, and then the other side of me is wanting to tiptoe and say, “Am I asking something that maybe I’m overstepping, where I’m overstepping?” I don’t think that that’s such an uncommon experience really.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah, no. I mean, I think it’s super common. And one of the reasons we… As we formulated this was originally, Karen, was this idea that it would be a white trans man talking with a cis woman of color, and we could talk, share our experiences.

And we could ask those questions that we want to ask, but because we’ve been taught, and I think rightly, that you don’t want to make the person who’s in the minority position, be the person who educates you. And at the same time, there has to be spaces where we can ask these questions, because otherwise how are we going learn?

Karen Conlon:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. How does it feel to you to have me ask these questions?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I think these are questions that anyone who knows me would not be surprised by the answers to. As I imagine potential patients listening to it, I’m like, “Hmm, that feels a little exposing.” And also, probably 50, 60% of my patients are queer themselves and obviously the other 40% are fine enough. It’s not an issue.

I think if it wasn’t recorded, I would have no qualms about these questions whatsoever.

What is the difference between transgender and transsexual?

Karen Conlon:

I wanted to turn back a little bit to the terms, because I don’t think we finished the transgender versus transsexual.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah. To me, transsexualism is a much more medicalized term. I’m not going to say there aren’t women currently who identify as transsexual women, but I think that’s something that tends to be older people who transitioned a while ago.

And even transgender, it’s certainly an acceptable term, is a little tiny bit old fashion. I think mainly now it’s more just trans, for self identification and also just as a better way of talking about trans people.

How does the trans experience differ between generations?

Karen Conlon:

What’s the biggest difference that you have seen, in your experience, of the different generations and what you’re seeing, maybe in terms of terminology or awareness, of how we got here?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I don’t think it’s a difference in terminology. It’s again, I said it before, I don’t think it would be possible to understand for someone who is, let’s say under the age of 30, what has happened in the last 10 to 15 years in terms of acceptance of trans identities and in terms of just the level… I don’t know how to express how beyond the pale that seemed for me.

And again, I was in very liberal environments. If there was going to be any place where that was going to feel like an okay thing to do, it was going to be in the spaces that I was in.

And it just was like the barrier to entry, in terms of claiming a trans identity, was so high just in terms of family alienation, in terms of am I ever going to be able to even be employed? Am I just going to be harassed walking down the street?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I think that, this whole non-binary thing is something that really is very, very new as well. And I don’t think it’s because there weren’t non-binary people 15 or 20 years ago, but I think it was, if the idea of being trans felt too alienating, the idea of being like, “Yeah, I’m neither a man nor a woman.” Would have just made people’s heads explode.

There are older people that did it, like Kate Bornstein, who’s a very, very famous trans elder. She’s been doing that for years basically, but there was much more of a push towards, bigender expression within the binary.

This whole non-binary middle space is also just mind blowing. I think for those of us who didn’t have that as a space that even really seemed like it was a possibility.

Karen Conlon:

Absolutely. And that’s another term as well, right? Non-binary. Like you’re saying, it’s relatively new, right? When we look at these new things that are… These new terminologies, these new descriptions that give people more freedom to identify, to self-identify, to self-label, it is something that continues to grow.

Why are pronouns so important?

And then again, for this reason that I think we all need to continue to become aware of pronouns. You mentioned pronouns before. Oftentimes now we’ll see it. What does that mean when people have pronouns next to, or under their names?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

It started out with just the idea that not everyone has access to medical interventions that might make their gender super obvious. It started out as just a way of, saying this is who I am and this is how I want to be referred to. That’s very new.

That’s happened only within the last 10 years and now it’s something that… It was a lot of queer people did it and now it’s something that I think people also do just as a way of expressing allyship.

Karen Conlon:

Exactly.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Trying to normalize that, where there’s a sense of, we shouldn’t just assume that if someone is femme presenting that they have she, her pronouns, or if they’re masculine that they have he, him pronouns. People can use that as a way of just normalizing it for people for whom there might be a difference.

What is polyamory, and how do polyamorous relationships differ from monogamous relationships?

Karen Conlon:

And then the other term also that I think is really important for us to help people understand, polyamory. What is polyamory and what is in your opinion, one of the most important things that we need to know about polyamorous relationships?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah. Polyamory just means many loves, and it is people for whom, they have the capacity and to some extent the desire, to have more than one relationship at a time. You know, it’s interesting, because I think for me, polyamory is actually a little bit of a misnomer.

I have a girlfriend, now fiance, who also has a wife and that person also has a girlfriend. For me it’s the idea of being able to really be in two committed relationships, seems actually not something that I’m up for right now.

I’m polyamorous in the sense that I’m open to exploring more than one serious relationship, but it’s different than for instance, Sarah, my girlfriend who has both now a fiance and a wife, and has been pretty committed to both of us, or I’d say very committed to both of us, for over six years.

Karen Conlon:

When we talk about relationships, any relationship, there’s always, some of the same issues come up, right? Boundaries, communication, honesty, openness, and also protecting, because sometimes we want to protect the other person from feeling hurt. What are some of the things that come up in polyamorous relationships within the context of those things for example?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah. I think healthy polyamorous relationships look remarkably similar to healthy monogamous relationships. The difference is that it can include more than two people, if everybody involved agrees with that. I think some of the skills for people who are polyamorous, is a willingness to stay in difficult conversations.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I think one of the things that happens a lot in monogamous relationships is, there’s an agreement of, often time, I don’t desire anybody else and you’ll pretend like you believe me and we’ll just get on… We’ll just get on with our lives.

Or if everything’s not okay, in monogamy sometimes the solution is, “Oh shit, if I feel like I’m attracted to someone else, that’s an indication that there’s something wrong with what I have with person A.”

As opposed to just like, “Yeah, this is what happens. This is what happens when you’re human.” This is what happens in the context of long-term relationships and it can actually be worked on, it can be talked about, it can be… Jealousy will come up, just because something makes you jealous doesn’t mean the other person has to stop immediately.

I would say that’s actually probably one of the biggest differences, is there’s a lot more sense of, “Yeah, what you’re doing doesn’t feel okay. Let’s figure out if there’s a way where you can keep doing what you’re doing and make it feel okay for me.”

Karen Conlon:

I think one of the things that I’m also wondering about as well is, decision-making in the relationship about, let’s say something like that. If there are three people in a relationship, are three people always involved in the emotional decision making and discussing the jealousy and discussing the boundaries or do we sometimes shift?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Definitely it’s okay to have boundaries. I think that can be something that, especially couples who are newer to polyamory and are opening up their relationship, there’s a sense of, I want to know everything about your conversation with the new partner or something like that.

And it’s totally okay for that new partner to say, “Hey, you know what, like actually, I don’t want you to know. I don’t want the other person to know about this.” Those kinds of boundaries, and it’s dependent, but my experience is that there is often a lot of talking that goes on…

You have the pivot, which would be (beep) for instance, and there’s a lot of talking that goes on between me and (beep), and a lot of talking that goes on between (beep) and her wife, but much, much less talking that goes on with the three of us together.

Karen Conlon:

Right, right. Got it. It takes an incredible amount of communication and an immense amount of maturity.

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I think it takes an immense amount of maturity to do it well. I think there’s a lot of people who like to imagine that because they’re polyamorous they’re in some way more enlightened.

It’s really important to check that, because I’ve seen a lot of shitty behavior, both in monogamous relationships and in polyamorous relationships. I don’t feel like either gets a pass in terms of, we do this well, because I think honestly we have a culture that actually does relationships pretty poorly.

Karen Conlon:

Kieran, thank you so much for your openness and your willingness to educate, to share the knowledge, to really help to increase awareness around things that we need to know about. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, that we need to at least be aware of in terms of our friends in the LGBTQIA community.

If there was something that you could leave us with, something that you’d like to say that would help to either demystify, debunk or destigmatize therapy, what would that be? What would you like to leave us with?

Being LGBTQIA+ and seeking therapy

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

I think us queers, we’re pretty good about therapy. I think we tend to be a community that embraces therapy. And I certainly think that’s true for polyamorous folks as well, because polyamorous folks tend to be very committed to personal growth and using their relationships as ways of maintaining their growth.

I guess for me, I don’t think I’ve ever had a straight therapist, and I think that that is totally fine. If you want to only have queer therapists, it’s going to be a little bit harder to find. We’re out here and I can give you a couple of resources if you want to link for people to make that slightly easier.

For people who need to use insurance and are in New York state, IHI which is the Institute for Human Identity, has almost entirely LGBT therapists and the few straight therapists that they have are very, very queer allied.

And then Manhattan Alternatives is a great resource for people who are wanting therapists who are queer, polyamorous and kink affirming. And that’s also for people primarily here in New York.

Karen Conlon:

Thank you so much. This is so incredibly helpful. I’ve absolutely learned so much. I mean, I thought I knew a lot, but guess what? I just learned a hell of a lot more. Thank you so much, Kieran. Where can people find you if they’d like to be in contact with you? Is their website, social media, email, whatever you want to give us?

Dr. Kieran Grosman:

Yeah. I presume you’ll put this in the show notes as well, but you can email me at… Let’s do website first kgrosmanpsyd.com. It’s a little bit hard, but it’s kgrosmanpsyd.com, and that’s my website and that’ll link you to my phone number, to my email. That’s probably the best way, or you can call me at (917) 687-8445.

Karen Conlon:

Well, thank you so much, Kieran. Everyone, Dr. Kieran Grosman. And again, all this information is going to be in the show notes.

And as always, if you want to know more about our practice or this podcast, please be sure to head over on to cohesivetherapynyc.com/podcast. There you can check out the show notes, find resources, links, and how to get in touch. Thank you again for showing up today. I hope you learned as much or even more than I did.

And I can’t wait to see you next time when I, once again ask, “So, how’s therapy?”