Outward: Slate's LGBTQ podcast - Creating A Home for Trans Surgery Recovery
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
This week, Jules Gill-Peterson sits down with Owen Dempsey, the founder of Quest Healing House, a post-op recovery home providing safe, affordable lodging and wraparound support for transmasculine people. They discuss how Quest House, began, the urgent need for trans-led recovery spaces, and how the project has grown to meet community needs. Dempsey shares their vision for a future where no trans person has to heal alone—and why it’s so critical to talk about transition as an ongoing, years-long process.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Outward, one of the top podcasts to listen to while you're |
| 0:20.5 | convalescing in bed after a gorgeous, |
| 0:23.4 | gorgeous little procedure. I'm Jill Skill Peterson, your host for this episode, and let me say, |
| 0:29.3 | as a true quenasseur of the finest plastic surgery to be had, there's a lot of lies and omissions |
| 0:36.3 | out there that they used to make it seem like |
| 0:38.5 | transsexuality isn't the glory and the achievement that it is. Not only to feel good in your |
| 0:45.1 | body and put those dysphoric demons to rest, but to be snatched and beautiful to the gods. |
| 0:51.7 | Under this category of omissions, I would nominate the way the whole phraseology |
| 0:57.6 | of gender affirming care, honey, it's a euphemism. It's a tidy little weird phrase that gives you |
| 1:04.1 | no information, so you don't really have to think about how fabulous it is to take hormones, |
| 1:10.1 | remove hair, train that voice, |
| 1:12.2 | and get surged up. And the euphemism is also, I think, a way to avoid talking about how hard it |
| 1:18.8 | really is to get on that operating table and to get off. And I'm not even talking about all this |
| 1:25.8 | anti-trans legislation or all those insurance nightmares or even saving up the money to pay the bills for the main event. |
| 1:33.5 | I'm talking about all the time, preparation, and money it takes to be cleared for surgery in the first place and especially, especially to recover afterwards. And on today's episode, I'm sitting |
| 1:46.9 | down to talk with Owen Dempsey, who helps to run Quest House, a post-op lodging and peer support |
| 1:52.5 | home in the San Francisco Bay Area for trans men recovering from bottom surgeries. Owen and I get into |
| 1:59.3 | the history of this really interesting nonprofit, |
| 2:02.2 | how it feels a really specific and important need for trans men recovering from certain surgeries, |
| 2:08.6 | and also kind of a bigger conversation about what this project has to say, |
| 2:12.4 | but what supporting trans people who are going through medical transition really looks like. No more euphemisms. |
| 2:19.5 | Okay, so stick around because right after this short break, we'll be talking all things Quest House is a lodging and peer support home in the San Francisco Bay Area, |
... |
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