Who is Dr Z?
People always ask how she got into it especially since she herself is a cisgender woman. Some people tell her she shouldn't be in this field—not being transgender means as if only transgender people are supposed to be offering information and services to other transgender folks. Dr. Z really disagrees—she thinks it's shaming somebody in what they do. She doesn't think a person has to be transgender to help transgender people—she thinks the person just has to be good at what they do and know what they're doing. Just like with anything else, she doesn't think that somebody going through transgender experience is going to make them understand another person any better because each transgender experience is so individualized and completely different—you cannot generalize to everybody else.
Watch to find out how Dr. Z got her master's degree in counseling psychology in Portland (lived there all her life until moving to Los Angeles 7 years ago), why her first internship at SMYRC (Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center) was transformative (her very first client was a transgender woman struggling with secondary issues and wanting access to medical care—this was Dr. Z's first introduction to gender diverse people, very minor touch on gender diversity in university education), why she resonated with this work (even though client was going through isolated experience, the emotions rising from it were very familiar—emotions/feelings
Dr. Z had also experienced in completely different situations: loneliness, fear of abandonment, isolation, fear of rejection, not feeling connected to yourself, not feeling in touch with yourself—it felt very natural, she was able to understand and help), why Dr. Z has always been gender non-conforming herself (very comfortable with biological sex and gender assigned at birth, but always rebelled against ideas of what a woman should be, how a woman should present herself, what woman should do with her life—especially cultural Russian notion that woman should marry, have children, be housewife—went against what she wanted, she personally doesn't have children and doesn't want children, never had maternal desire, women ask if she has kids assuming she can't have them, she says "no maternal desire," they say "just wait," well she's 40 years old and still has no maternal desire), and why Dr. Z is outspoken with strong opinions (not correct opinions—they just exist in context she operates, in context of her experience—her opinions are just one point of view of so many, but she tends to be very strong vocally, has been shut out throughout life being told "you really shouldn't be so spoken as a woman").
