Why I'm Leelah Alcorns Greatest Nightmare

And why I could have been her greatest hope.

As you remember, she had written she didn't want to go through life looking like a "man in drag"  It's no secret I have struggled with "passing privilege" my entire life and not the example I would want to show a young transgender girl.  Then again, I do.

I wanted to show her I could have been her greatest hope.  After all, at the least, transgender people like me are survivors. We have been through the taunts, the rejections and the suicide attempts.  With, or without our families we have made it.  If Leelah was sitting in front of me today, I could say yes it does get better to an extent but changes more.

I thought it was interesting Tom, the moderator/therapist of the show (who continually pleaded ignorance on LGBTQ issues) wasn't ignorant enough to not mention one person who went through SRS, lived as a woman for years and now wants to go back to living as a man.  About that time I was trying to call back the final part of the show and rejoin the discussion-but couldn't get back in.

You see Leelah, it would be easy for me to brush off your 17 year old ideas of finality. What you see at 17 is a brush with reality and far from final.  Don't we all know the kids in high school who peaked then?  Tom, could mention attempting to reverse a sex change after 30 years but didn't have the information about puberty blocking medications?  It just seems to me a person who deals with teen counseling would have some sort of idea.

I'm biased of course but if Leelah was my child, I would recommend the puberty blockers as a "hedge bet".

So yes, I am the person (quoting Tom) who sounded "like a man" on the phone. (I do) but Leelah, it's so sad no one encouraged you to go on puberty hold. The gender landscape is changing so rapidly, your future would have been so bright and not similar at all to mine. Plus, due to length considerations on the radio (I assume) no mention was made of the family's desire to pull Leelah out of school.  I didn't bring it up because I am not sure of the extent of the accuracy.

Plus, lost in all of this is the semi truck driver who was just making a living.  Does Leelah's church pray for him?

Can You Ever Go Home?

I have a very old friend and dare I say a bit frustrated at times with his life in the closet as a cross dresser on occasion. Then it is time to "chat" with me and try to pick an argument.

I use the "frustrated" word with him because he seems to delight in passing along stories of so called transsexuals who "went the distance" and completed SRS-only wanting to return as close as possible to their birth gender.

By trade he is a retired engineer and is the stereotypical "connect the dots" style thinker.  Although he won't come out and actually say it to me, he believes very few sex changes are needed and/or work.

It's an interesting concept and one neither of us or perhaps anyone has a true statistical answer which would satisfy him.

Personally, I think it is inevitable some gender dysphoric people maybe aren't that at all and really don't get a strong enough dose of living in the girls sandbox to see what it is about.

Plus then there is that pesky age thing which haunts the genetics as well as us too.  Being that "young pretty thing" is out.  So I tell him not to go making "hero's" out of these people who want to go back to their birth gender.  They just made a mistake, certainly a big one but in his engineering world does he toss out a whole project if one out of a hundred parts comes back as defective?

At the least, it's an interesting discussion and being an extremely "gray thinker", I am constantly taking him places he doesn't want to go.  For example HRT - another of his pet peeves. Paraphrasing: Why would anyone embark on such a potentially dangerous path with no concrete results. At that point I have to jump in for him and connect his dots.  Potentially undergoing hormone replacement therapy does have concrete results and has a positive affect on the very high number of suicide attempts in the transgender community.

I can never get him to admit he is talking about me and my decision to go down the HRT pathway. Or, is he a little frustrated he purged himself into the closet in the 80's never to see the light of day again.

Probably I will never know.  I just hope he can finally connect some of his own dots and quit counting how much money he has around.

Speaking for me, I never want to go home again.  If my medically monitored hormones take some time off my life, so be it.  The alternative was worse.

Not Front Page Yet...

If you are able to locate the September 2014 issue of Glamour Magazine-do it!  Every time I open a Glamour I am fairly sure I get an extra dose of estrogen for the day. 

Flip back to page 257 and you will see a very smiling picture of model Geena Rocero. (left)  Everyone knew she was a model, but had no idea she was transgender. In this article she tells Susan Dominus why she risked her dream career to go public.

If Geena's feature wan't enough, Glamour went on to feature several other of the transgender women who have made headlines this year and called it "The Year of Transgender Power." Below you can check out my scanned version of it, but you may be able to go to "Glamour's" site linked above and find more.

At the risk of not sounding totally obvious, finding this sort of layout in this sort of magazine was simply wonderful!  We are coming a long way-baby!

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.

Transsexual won - Spain zero.

From Spain's The Local:

Charlotte Goiar has been embroiled in a six-year long struggle with Galicia's government in the hope of obtaining the necessary funds for a vaginoplasty. "I've not managed to be happy a single day of my life," Goiar told Spanish daily El País, speaking about the psychological problems that stem from her being trapped in a man's body. Aware of her condition from a very early age, she's found it hard to find work and fit in due to the anxiety and depression disorders she suffers from. Goiar may now have set a precedent for other Spanish people trapped in a body they feel is not theirs, having obtained the go-ahead for a state-paid €15,000 to €25,000 sex change operation.

Read more here .