Stealth and the "Pink" Pickett Fence?

For those of you of age, you grew up watching the iconic mothers of the 50's and early 60's like June Cleaver.  Mom's were the stay home types who kept the household running and had the dinner ready when hubby came home.  My Mom wasn't like that (school teacher) but almost all my friends mothers were. So the feminine stereotype so aptly pictured by our unnamed cross dresser below was alive and well.

Then Dr. Stanley Biber burst upon the scene as one of the primary sexual reassignment surgeons in the U.S. Biber performed his first sex change operation in 1969 after a transsexual woman asked him if he would be willing and able to do so.  Biber retired in 2003, at age 80, because his malpractice insurance premiums had risen to levels which he could not afford, probably because of his advanced age. Marci Bowers, a gynecologist and transsexual woman herself, took over his SRS practice. Biber was hospitalized in January 2006 with complications from pneumonia, to which he succumbed on January 16 while hospitalized. Biber was 82 at the time of his death.

Deserved or not, one of the basics of going through SRS from the Dr. Biber's era of thinkers was the newly "minted" woman should go forth into the world, find a man, have sex with him and disappear. (stealth) For God Sakes as Ophra used to say "why would you want to buy a new car (vagina) and not drive it?" (At the risk of getting too "X" rated, my lesbian friends tell me they could drive my "new car" better than any man." )  

But the question of even needing a "new car" doesn't define who I am or my life.  I know I can't meet the budgetary constraints of a store bought vagina or want to think of the health considerations at my age.With or without the new car, I have been shown a path to a wonderful life I never dreamed I could have.

So now, do I just walk away and go stealth or is there another road for me? I believe there is and it's in the example I mentioned in an earlier blog post about how I'm beginning to market my Etsy shoppes.

In the beginning of course, I did use my name and my male name only came into play when legally I had to use it behind the scenes because I had not changed my gender markers. (It all made for some interesting calls to Ebay, who were cool.)

Now, as I said, I'm seeking a broader social marketing base and it could be said I am in some sort of stealth mode because I don't say "Hey! this shop is a TRANSGENDER owned business."  But, I don't hide the fact it is either.  My hope is, that again the world sees me as just another person trying to make a go of it.

Maybe I'm naive enough to think how I identify would not make or break the sale of a vintage vase or comic book.  If it did, the person could go to hell, but overall I think of it as my one small Laverne Cox style statement:  Think of me first as a person you respect and oh yeah-I happen to be transgender.