If You Bought a New Cadillac-Would You Drive It?

Years and years ago, I heard Oprah interview several transgender women and their spouses who decided to stay with them through transition. A couple all the way through SRS. 

She (Oprah) zeroed in on one of the transgender women and asked her about the surgical procedures she endured. Then, she pushed the envelope farther and asked the trans woman about her "sexual" future. In other words, if she had a chance to fall in love and be sexually attracted to a man now-would she "try out" her new "equipment?" After pausing and with her wife sitting there-the trans woman said "no."

I paraphrase here and quote Oprah's quick response as a non believing "if you bought a Cadillac, why wouldn't you drive it?" Which brings me to another point.

Katie and Arin Young, Trans and Looking for Love, BBC

Katie Glover editor and publisher of Frock Magazine recently wrote a thoughtful article for the Independent  about the BBC3 Documentary "If you're young, trans and looking for love" you may want to check out. Katie doesn't "skirt" the issue and gets quickly to the "meaty parts."-or the promise (failed or not) of SRS.


You may want to follow the link above to read it.

My only point to be made is Sex Realignment Surgery should never be presented as a be all end all to any transgender person. After all, sex is sex and gender is gender and many times the two don't have to meet for a trans person to live a meaningful life.

To each his own though, so if you do have a new Cadillac in the garage, don't you at the least have to "test" drive it to keep it usable if you need it?

A Beautiful Frock!

Katie Glover from Frock Magazine just emailed this message: Hi Cyrsti, just a quick heads up to let you know that we have finally published the app version of Frock Magazine containing your column. 



You all can see it here!

If you didn't know, Frock is the world's fastest growing quality bi-monthly transgender and drag magazine. Voted 'Best Niche Magazine' in both 2013 and 2014, Frock is inspiring, entertaining and informative to transgender and drag people and their supporters all over the world.

Check it out!

Your Holiday Frock!

From Katie Glover, Editor of Frock Magazine :

The brand new Holiday issue of Frock Magazine is now available for desktop computer users at http://frockmagazine.com/frock/.

Read about the plight of a reader who came out and now has to live in her car!

Meet Olesia from Moscow and New York drag legend, Charles Busch.

Who are the 5 most influential trans people in the world today. Find out in this issue.

And meet The Trans Before Christmas plus heaps more. It's all in the new Holiday issue of your favorite free trans and drag mag - Frock! Please help us get this out there by telling all your friends! Now, it's time to hop into your Frock!

And! Don't forget my article "Frock of Ages"!!!!

On The Pill?

Recently Frock Magazine's Katie Glover brought up a rhetorical question on the "Gender Society" Facebook site. .  If you had the chance to take separate gender pills which would once and for all decide your fate- which one would you take?

The choices went something like this:

Pink Pill.- You would become a young pretty girl and live your life as a woman.
Blue Pill-  You would stay a guy without the burden of wanting to become a woman ever again.
White Pill- you stay as you are as a transgender person.

Of course, being a Libra I chose to pull out my scales and weigh out the issue and of course over reasoned it quickly.

Here is what I came up with...I flushed the white pill immediately.  No matter how I feel about my life as a transgender or gender fluid person now (and am even discovering some benefits to it)-I wish no one having to take the path I did.

Surprisingly to me I would have taken the harder of the two gender pills-the female one.  The easy way out would have been the blue, which I will explain. Being a generic from birth I think would have put me directly in the path of trying to live up to the imagined expectations of my Mom. I know, she expected a ton from me as a son, but it would have been worse as a daughter. Plus, I think very simply, girls have more layers in their environment to learn and deal with than boys. Plus females are the high maintenance gender physically of the two binaries.  There is more that can go wrong in the plumbing and wiring.

Having written all of that- STILL give me the pink pill!

Finally, the Blue Pill.  While I still think the concept of "Male Privilege" was a farce for me-the demands of growing up male ended up being a lot less.  I grew up in a family dominated by macho males and I found out early how I could play the game-if I wanted to or worse yet had to. Plus how much easier would have it been to wipe out all the stress and tension of wanting to be a girl?

All in all, what a wonderful question and one that I guess has been floating around for some time.

Which pill would you take?

"Frocked?"

No, fellow party girls, not crocked- Frock (as in the magazine).  Have you ever heard of it?  If you haven't, you should because it is quite the publication put together by Editor Katie Glover.  I like Frock because of the way Katie has been able to cover our very diverse community.  In Katie's own words:

Frock Magazine is your free drag and transgender related bi-monthly, for drag queens, transsexuals, transvestites, crossdressers and transgender people everywhere, full of features and articles about well known members of the transgender community, crossdressing clothes and clothing guides, make-up tutorials, transgender related movie and book reviews, trans-activism, news and fiction


In addition, you can count on colorful, classy pictures and you can view the whole magazine on line free or purchase it for your very own!

Oh yes, while you are there check out my article on page 52! "Frock of Ages" (Follow the link above!)

And yes sillies, I always read Frock before I was humbled and flattered to be chosen to write for it!

Frock Magazine Goes Mobile!

From Frock editor Katie Glover:

We have created a FREE App version of Frock Magazine specially for iPads and iPhones, Android tablets and smartphones and Kindles. You can download it to your phone or tablet from the App Store or from Google Play. Just search for Frock Magazine. We have also created a free issue of Frock Magazine which you can also download from within the app itself (see cover below). Go get yours now!

Frock Magazine

For what has seemingly been an eternity Katie Glover at Frock Magazine and I have been trying to get together for an article. Finally the sun, the moon and the stars came together and another literary masterpiece of mine made it into this issue.

The subject is a familiar one to those of you who frequent Cyrsti's Condo-MtF gender transitioning later in life.  I have tons of opinions on subjects but at the least I am living this one.  At any rate, if you have never visited Frock Magazine, it's is quite the effort.

Please take the time to follow the link above (and me too!)

Cyrsti's Condo "Sunday Edition"

Difficult to believe this is our last Sunday get together for 2013.  My Mom was right, "Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The quicker you get to the end, the faster it goes." A true philosopher was Mom!

Here we go:

"Social Media".-  Enough is never enough!  Cyrsti's Condo is now on Pinterest joining my Twitter link, Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin.  It seems "networking" has become part of my life as a blogger.  I know some of you already follow a couple of my other spots but in reality almost all my original offerings are here in "the Condo". Here's why I link to them (which means very little):  Twitter is a great place to retweet very timely and important news quickly to a whole different group and it is soooo easy!  Facebook, I have never really understood the full benefit of being there or how to use it effectively-so I don't.  Plus FB seems to be "time needy". Google+ is simple and is part of this whole platform, so why not?  Linkedin is interesting in that I've been able to say hello to more than a couple very influential transgender people I respect such as "Frock Magazine's" Katie Glover  , transgender veteran activist Autumn Sandeen, top of the line transgender blogger and writer Matt Kailey , Femulate's Stana Stana and many more including the "es-steamed" Bobbie.

"Public Media"- "DuckBoy Phil " of Duck Dynasty managed to "mysteriously" have homophobic and racist comments published in GQ just before a holiday "marathon" presentation of the Louisiana Yuppies television show.  Of course the "Duckster" has now apologized and will be brought back in the Spring. Blah, blah, blah.

"Da Holiday's"  In modern society, it seems the most difficult part of the holidays is to slow down enough to enjoy them, although to all too many of the transgender community, this time of year is excruciatingly painful. Hopefully, you were able to celebrate the true meaning of the season.

"Sports! "  I know better to even mention the Cincinnati Bengals and the NFL playoffs in the same sentence but I did and I was met by a flood of negative feelings.  Almost as the negativity I feel towards The Ohio State University football defense.  As Mom also reminded us, "If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all."  She reminded us but never came close to following the idea. But I'm going to follow the concept and shut up about sports! Could be worse, I could be a NYC sports fan! (Pat)

Coming up in the final days of 2013:  My much promised New Year's resolution and a final "Horror Scope".
Thanks for finishing the year with us here in Cyrsti's Condo!