Expressing Identity through Tattoos: Jessie McGrath's Transgender Voyage

Prepare to be inspired as host, Shelbe Chang sits down with Jessie McGrath, a Deputy District Attorney, who transformed her life from one characterized by shyness to one that radiates self-confidence. 

In this short clip, episode, Jessie shares her life journey vividly in the form of her tattoos, each with potent symbolism and a story to tell. 

This episode is an enlightening and powerful journey through Jessie's transitioning experience - come join us.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Transparency, Transition, and Body Art
• 13:17 Experiences and Challenges of Trans Individuals

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:00

This is the Transparency Podcast Show, so it's not as shown as TV or like Judge. Judy shows authority. So after you transition, when you start going to the courtroom, do you feel that authority is demolished from anyone in the courtroom?

Speaker 1: 0:22

No, I've had great interactions with judges, supposing counsel. I don't try cases. I haven't tried a case in over 20 years. Ok, because of the type of work that I was doing. I did a lot of civil work suing corporations and businesses and so it was, everybody was really pretty good about stuff and actually a couple of times I had like camera crew go into the court with me because they were doing some stuff on things, yeah, but I know I think I feel more empowered now being myself than I ever did previously.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Yes, I can feel you on this as well, because I was a shy guy before. I was a shy person and now I'm just feel like it is a blooming like a line to what I feel inside and I can do better. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:23

For me, it's been an incredible change. I think I had 213 friends on Facebook Thanks On my old one and I think I have, between friends and followers, like 6,000 people on Facebook now. So, I interact so much more with people.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Your online preference is very creative. I noticed because I see you inside in the kitchen showing cooking show and then you also play guitar, right, yeah. And then the clock walk.

Speaker 1: 2:04

The clock walk. Yeah, it's a famous one. Oh, that was always fun, because there was nothing funner than having like 15 drunk hot gals in, you know, lingerie stuff walking down a couple blocks on Hollywood Boulevard. It was such an amazing time and experience. I absolutely love that. But yeah, I sometimes, you know, do cooking with Jesse on my Facebook Live. We had the Slejevich Sisters, which was a Russian group of Russian spies comedy group that I did with my roommates, and so, yeah, I try to be a little bit creative.

Speaker 1: 2:41

But, I have kind of two personas, yeah, Like on Instagram. I have two Instagrams. I have one that's my work Instagram that is like, mostly for professionally related things. I try not to get too. And then I have my, my clock walk, jesse one, so, and that's got a lot more followers.

Speaker 2: 3:06

So I see you bring your creativity onto your body, your tattoo, your ink. Do you design all those tattoos on your Um?

Speaker 1: 3:17

I have a very, very amazing tattoo artist who's over in New York Boulevard in Highland Park. He's been doing it for like 30 years and he's tattooed half the porn stars, half the rock stars in LA, so he's one of the inked magazine icons. And so he and I work together on a lot of stuff and I tell him what I want and he kind of comes up with an idea. Like my favorite one is my one of it's kind of the Gothic blind justice.

Speaker 2: 3:53

Yeah, well, or yeah, I don't know, or we can answer a photo or something, can that be saying yeah?

Speaker 1: 4:01

So that is my favorite one right there. Wow, and I got a couple of different pictures online and kind of told him the idea that I wanted, and then he drew that on my body.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Okay, and this is our collection throughout many years, right Including your old self.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Probably only. Most of these are five years or less.

Speaker 2: 4:29

Really, so you don't have any tattoo prior to transition? Yeah, so that's what I asked, because I want to ask. I have one. I want to ask one very interesting question, because I remember some people that they have a tattoo prior to their life and now they transition, they want to get rid of the one that's prior. So you say you have one, is it still there or you got rid of it?

Speaker 1: 4:56

It got changed. My tattoo artist came up with this great concept, so when I first saw him- what did you have before? I'm curious. It was a very small tribal sun right in my stomach area.

Speaker 2: 5:09

Okay, and then now he changed.

Speaker 1: 5:13

So when I went and saw him, I told him I wanted five roses on my side, and it ends up going from my hip all the way up to my back. So, there's the five roses, but it's like a really giant side piece, and so it took, I think, three settings to get everything done and then go all the way to the front and cover it as sun.

Speaker 1: 5:39

No. So I told him I wanted five, and then I said I wanted a colored rose to signify my transition. And so he said, yeah, I can do that he goes, but we spend a lot of time together. I kind of know who you are.

Speaker 2: 5:56

I kind of understand some stuff.

Speaker 1: 5:58

So what I was thinking of is we cover up that one that you have here and put a lotus flower, lotus blossom, because it grows out of something chaotic and muddy and becomes something beautiful.

Speaker 1: 6:14

And that transitions over into a colorful, amazing flower that's not like a regular flower, it's a special design type flower. And then it's unique and unusual. And then we incorporate the serpent and original sin and the apple, and so I ended up with this huge other piece that covers from my hip all the way up, and so that was and it was it's to signify my transition. So all of my tattoos on my right side are black ink. And all of the tattoos on my left side are colored ink.

Speaker 2: 6:58

I just noticed about the one in the middle of your chest.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Well, the one I have in the center here is black ink, and the one I have in the center on my back is colored ink.

Speaker 2: 7:07

Wow, so interesting. Yeah, so is it her meaning? Like do you do long sections?

Speaker 1: 7:18

I generally will do two hour three hour sessions with him and you know some of these. This one was like five sessions to fully get through on the side there. Some of them are, you know, one hour. It just depends on what the complexity is, but almost all of them tell a different story. So, like on my back shoulder, here I have a unicorn, but it's not just any unicorn, it's the unicorn that my, my mom and my aunt used for their stores, the unicorn boutique, and it has my aunt's ashes in it.

Speaker 2: 7:56

Wow, that's sweet. So now we're going to talk, since we're talking about your body. So we're going to go to your gender confirmation surgery.

Speaker 1: 8:09

I like to call it my genital correction surgery, because they needed to be corrected and now everything is just hunky dory.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Yeah, so you, you say you transition about your short time, right, then you move on and do that, I, I, I.

Speaker 1: 8:26

I. I did the express transition because I realized I was old. I was 53 when I came to my understanding. And so I knew I was a latent life transition, or I knew I didn't. You know I I knew I was going to do it because, as my therapist says, yes, it gets stronger as you get older and it never goes away. And I'm like, so, this shit's not going away ever, okay. So well then I'm going to. What do I do?

Speaker 2: 8:56

So, if you don't mind, because we have doctors and clear on the show before and he's more focused on the, you know, the, the colonic.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Colonic yeah, so I said, did you do that kind? No, no, I did the penile inversion and I did that. It was 18 months into my transition and that's because the first six months I was like, oh, I'm not going to do anything like that. No, I'm not going to, I like that, I'm not going to. And then it was like I think it was.

Speaker 1: 9:25

You know, shortly after I had my FFS and breast augmentation at six months, and then I started looking at myself in the mirror and I'm like that's not what I want to see, and so that started my one year of having to get electrolysis and other stuff for for the surgery and stuff. And it was then that I yeah, it was like, okay, yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

Speaker 2: 9:52

So, after you did the surgery, did I change your relationship lifestyle? Well, who you date change gender, wise sexually.

Speaker 1: 10:03

Well, that kind of changed right before the surgery. I had been going out with a woman for about six years right before my surgery and as Jesse right, as yourself or as a woman.

Speaker 1: 10:18

I started dating her as my old self, and then I became Jesse and, and so she stayed with me for about that 18 months after the the till right after the surgery when I ended up kind of breaking up with her, because when I started out she was pretty supportive for the most part. I mean, she did tell me that I would make an ugly woman and I was like, okay, but at least I'll be a woman.

Speaker 1: 10:46

Okay, that's the key focus on this is I don't care, I'm going to be what I'm going to be, I just get to be me.

Speaker 1: 10:56

And then she wanted to make me promise that I would not be attracted to men, and I was fairly well versed at this point in statistics and other things in dealing with what trans people go through, and I knew that there was a fairly good number, a percentage of trans women who, in going through their transition, changed who they're attracted to sexually and they become attracted to men. Or, if they were attracted to men previously, they become attracted to women. It goes all different ways. And so when she asked me that, I was like, look, I'm trying to be as honest with you as I can in this whole process, and I said I can't tell you that I won't do that because I don't know.

Speaker 2: 11:53

I don't know if I am in one of the percentage that does that, and so so I'm the same way because before transitioning I never thought about I would like men, and after transition I only date men which I stop, attracted to women in that way romantic way. So what happened after you broke up with her, did you tell?

Speaker 1: 12:19

somebody and part of the reason I mean I don't think she really liked women. That all the much so as I became more and more feminine she wouldn't like touch my breasts, which yeah, look, I'm a woman, my sex partner you're supposed to touch them. So she was not into. I have no doubt she loved me, but I don't think she was attracted to me at that point.

Speaker 2: 12:52

Yeah, non-sexually attracted to a woman.

Speaker 1: 12:55

And she had always said that the one hard line in the sand was that she didn't want me to be attracted to men, and so when I started becoming attracted to guys, I couldn't do that.

Speaker 2: 13:14

I could not say I'm not Right, right, right.

Speaker 1: 13:17

And so that's why I ended up breaking up with her, and that was like four weeks after my surgery. And then I lost my virginity two weeks after that.

Speaker 2: 13:28

Wow, that fast. I thought you have to wait until six months or something.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Well, the doctor said eight weeks, but Wait weeks.

Speaker 2: 13:38

Oh, why am I getting that six months from? Maybe I was? I think I'm going to have to be a lady monk for six months.

Speaker 1: 13:46

I was putting dilators in there, and so I thought, well, what's the difference?

Speaker 2: 13:50

Exactly. So. Now you've made a good point.

Speaker 1: 13:54

So I ended up losing it to another trans woman who I've dated for about four months, five months.

Speaker 2: 14:01

Okay, but she's not, doesn't have the bottom surgery yet.

Speaker 1: 14:06

She had not had bottom surgery. Okay, got it. She never will because she passed away a couple years ago. Unfortunately so many people passed, yeah, yeah. That's what some of my tattoos are memorials to my friends who have passed.

Speaker 2: 14:19

Well, you're going to have more, I'm sure.

Speaker 1: 14:21

Right, Well yeah, because I lose too many friends. It's something that's not good in the community.

Speaker 2: 14:31

Yes, Either through the violence that we're killed, or the self-violence and the suicide. It's truly heartbreaking, yeah, or alcohol abuse, drug abuse, those are also a larger number of the lost friends, and then I think there's also a lot of medical problems, because a lot of trans people tend to avoid going to the doctor.

Speaker 1: 15:03

In a legit way, right yeah, they self-medicate and they don't want to see a medical doctor for things because they're afraid of whatever they're doing. And now there's some states that are trying to make it even illegal to get medical treatment for being trans, and that is. It's gone suddenly from not wanting trans people to use the bathroom to not wanting trans people to live and take away our medical care, and that's truly a frightening thing.

Speaker 2: 15:36

that's going on right now donated to my brother.