My Behind
I have been behind it seems this time, for the past several days. When that happens, I rediscover posts I wanted to pass along to you here in Cyrsti's Condo. One is from Brynn Tannehill in an article she wrote for the Huffington Post called "Paper's Please" If you don't know, Byrnn is a transgender vet and Director of Advocacy for SPART*A.
Her very detailed post follows the incredibly convoluted path transgender and transsexual women and men follow in their lives-in and out of military circles. Here's an excerpt and you can follow the link above for more:
Imagine for a moment you work at a U.S. military base as a contractor. You step out of a bathroom after using it, and are immediately confronted by someone with base security. He demands you present identification proving your gender, otherwise he will arrest you. Your mind races, blood pounds in your ears, flight or fight kicks in -- being arrested will probably cost you your clearance, your job and any chance you have of working in your career field again.
It's no surprise to those of us who spent a significant amount of time in the closet, how scary all of this can be-and kept us in the closet. Then I began to wonder about those overly ignorant human's who think we trans folk had a choice in all of this? I constantly remind myself that no matter how much I enjoy where my gender life is now, if I had a real live choice to never go on this journey-would I? No I wouldn't and it's very difficult to explain to my friends what a luxury it would have been to have known what gender I was when I woke up in the morning. That's usually a real conversation stopper!
The "choice" idea is nearly as ludicrous as the occasional on line "genius" who tells me HRT must be great since I have my own boobs to play with. Tough to explain to such a suave guy, yes it is nice to have my own breasts as an expression of my femininity.
But, let's face it, the world will always have it's share of those who are just innocent ignorant. They just don't know much about transgender individuals and we should be able to educate them. The ignorant bigots are the tough crowd and some how some way we need to keep fighting to beat them down. Hopefully, along the way the gender marker problems will go down with them.
Her very detailed post follows the incredibly convoluted path transgender and transsexual women and men follow in their lives-in and out of military circles. Here's an excerpt and you can follow the link above for more:
Imagine for a moment you work at a U.S. military base as a contractor. You step out of a bathroom after using it, and are immediately confronted by someone with base security. He demands you present identification proving your gender, otherwise he will arrest you. Your mind races, blood pounds in your ears, flight or fight kicks in -- being arrested will probably cost you your clearance, your job and any chance you have of working in your career field again.
It's no surprise to those of us who spent a significant amount of time in the closet, how scary all of this can be-and kept us in the closet. Then I began to wonder about those overly ignorant human's who think we trans folk had a choice in all of this? I constantly remind myself that no matter how much I enjoy where my gender life is now, if I had a real live choice to never go on this journey-would I? No I wouldn't and it's very difficult to explain to my friends what a luxury it would have been to have known what gender I was when I woke up in the morning. That's usually a real conversation stopper!
The "choice" idea is nearly as ludicrous as the occasional on line "genius" who tells me HRT must be great since I have my own boobs to play with. Tough to explain to such a suave guy, yes it is nice to have my own breasts as an expression of my femininity.
But, let's face it, the world will always have it's share of those who are just innocent ignorant. They just don't know much about transgender individuals and we should be able to educate them. The ignorant bigots are the tough crowd and some how some way we need to keep fighting to beat them down. Hopefully, along the way the gender marker problems will go down with them.
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